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Schedule Appointments by Using Priorities
Prioritize appointments to schedule them even if your calendar is full. This way, you can schedule important appointments over less urgent ones. When you’re using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, and no time slot is available, appointments with lower or equal priorities can be unscheduled (dropped) and replaced by higher-priority appointments. When you’re not using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, and no time slot is available, lower-priority appointments can overlap with higher-priority appointments.
Required Editions
| Available in: both Salesforce Classic (not available in all orgs) and Lightning Experience |
| The Field Service core features, managed package, and mobile app are available in Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions. |
| User Permissions Needed | |
|---|---|
| To set up scheduling priorities and customize the service appointment page: | FSL Admin custom permission set |
| To schedule from the dispatcher console: | One of these custom permission sets:
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This is a Field Service managed package feature.
Use priorities with scheduling actions, such as Get Candidates, Book Appointments, or Schedule. To maximize the strategic value of scheduling, define priority values that reflect your unique business goals. Integrate data from across your Salesforce org to make sure that scheduling supports goals such as strengthening customer relationships, maximizing revenue, and maintaining critical assets. Identify key priority drivers and configure your settings so that scheduling actions accurately prioritize visits to reflect these values.
This topic covers:
- How Priorities Work
- Set Up Priorities
- Scheduling Prioritized Appointments When Using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
- Scheduling Prioritized Appointments When Not Using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
- Considerations When Scheduling Using Priorities
For examples on how to define service appointment priorities so that the most critical work is addressed promptly, see Use Cases for Prioritizing Field Service Appointments.
How Priorities Work
Field Service behavior differs depending on the optimization type you’re using and the features you’ve enabled.
| ENABLED FEATURES | RESULT | EXCEPTIONS | HOW IT WORKS |
|---|---|---|---|
With Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization:
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A service appointment isn’t dropped if it:
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If an appointment can be scheduled but the overall schedule is of a lower quality, based on your scheduling policy’s objectives, the appointment won’t be scheduled. |
Without Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization: Schedule over lower priority appointment |
When scheduling appointments or using get candidates, appointments with higher priorities can be booked over appointments with lower priorities, causing an overlap. | If a service appointment has a lower priority and is in a pinned status, it isn’t dropped from the Gantt and a higher-priority appointment isn’t booked over it. | Lower priority appointments are ignored, leading to possible overlaps. |
Set Up Priorities
If you have just a few urgent appointments, you can use priorities with scheduling actions, such as Get Candidates, Book Appointments, or Schedule. Identify what drives your priorities first. Then you’re ready to configure Field Service so that scheduling actions can prioritize visits.
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Specify a priority field.
- From the App Launcher, find and select Field Service Admin.
- Click the Field Service Settings tab.
- Under Scheduling, click General Logic.
- Under Scheduling Priority, select a priority field. You can select one or more fields on service appointments, work orders, and work order line items.
- Assign a fixed priority. For example, the managed package provides the Scheduling Priority field on parent work orders and work order line items. By default, Scheduling Priority values are 1 to 4, where 1 is Critical and 4 is Low.
- Create a dynamic priority field by using a custom formula field. For example, create a formula that sets appointment priorities based on the difference between today’s date and the due date.
Scheduling and optimization looks at the service appointment priority field first. If that field isn’t defined or empty, the appointment’s priority is derived from the field on the parent work order or work order line item. -
Select a priority scale.
The default priority range is a 1 to 10 scale, where 1 is the highest priority and 10 is the lowest priority. The 1 to 10 scale works well for most priority cases, but we recommend using the 1 to 100 scale, especially if your use case requires a broad range of values. Go to
Field Service Settings | Scheduling | General Logic in the Field Service Admin app, and select the optional 1 to 100 scale.
Field Service supports only whole numbers such that decimal points are ignored when calculating priorities. For example, 3.94 is considered as 3. Any number above the priority range is considered as lowest priority.
- Customize the service appointment page layout, and add the Schedule over lower priority appointment field. If you aren’t using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization and you enable this option, scheduling actions can schedule service appointments at the same time as lower-priority appointments that are already scheduled, creating an overlap. If a lower-priority service appointment is in a pinned status, other appointments aren't scheduled over it, and there's no overlap. If you’re using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, enable Reshuffling and Sliding. Low-priority appointments are dropped instead of overlaps occuring.
Scheduling Prioritized Appointments When Using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
- Enable Sliding and Reshuffling.
- Open the appointment and select Schedule over lower priority appointment.
- Click Schedule, or Reschedule if the appointment is already scheduled, or if the appointment isn’t scheduled, click Book Appointment.
- If an appointment is dropped from the Gantt, schedule the appointment at a later time.
Scheduling Prioritized Appointments When Not Using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
- Open the appointment and select Schedule over lower priority appointment.
- Click Schedule or Get Candidates.
- If a higher-priority appointments are scheduled over lower-priority appointments, use scheduling recipes or in-day optimization to resolve overlaps.
Considerations When Scheduling Using Priorities
Before you use priorities to schedule appointments, review the considerations.
- If you’re using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, when scheduling considers slots for the appointment, it ignores the Schedule over lower priority appointment field for already scheduled appointments. If you don’t want appointments to be dropped, use the Keep Scheduled criteria. When you’re not using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, scheduled appointments that have Schedule over lower priority appointment enabled, aren’t scheduled with an overlap even if they are a lower priority than the appointment being scheduled.
- When you have many high-priority appointments to schedule, use In-Day or Global optimization. Optimization considers priority fields and reschedules lower priority appointments if possible. Optimization doesn’t use the Schedule over lower priority appointment field. See Optimize Field Service Appointments Using Priorities.
- If a service appointment with priority 2 has a 30-minute travel time and you can schedule 2 appointments with priority 32 and a 5-minute travel time (assuming all service appointments have a duration of 15 minutes), the engine prefers the two low-priority appointments because their combined priority is higher. For an appointment to unschedule two or more appointments, it must have a priority that is higher than the sum of all other appointment priorities. For example, one service appointment with priority 2 is equivalent to Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization priority 99, and two service appointments with priority 32 are equivalent to priority 69 + 69 = 138. The engine sums the priority of the two service appointments, and because it’s higher than the priority of the single high-priority service appointment, it schedules the two low-priority service appointments.
- If a higher-priority appointment overlaps with a lower-priority appointment, the appointment is ignored in travel calculations. This means that travel time from the last appointment or home base and travel time to the next appointment or home base is calculated using the location of the higher-priority appointment.
- If both Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization and the Sliding and Reshuffling are enabled:
- When you try to schedule a complex work chain, other appointments can slide only to earlier or later in the day. The appointments can’t be reshuffled or dropped.
- When you try to schedule a multiday service appointment, it can slide only to earlier or later in the day. Multiday appointments can’t be reshuffled or dropped.
- When you try to schedule a high-priority service appointment, scheduled complex work chains can’t be reshuffled or dropped, even if they have a lower priority.
- When you try to schedule a high-priority service appointment, multiday service appointments can’t be reshuffled or dropped, even if they have a lower priority.

