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Optimize Field Service Appointments by Using Priorities
When your team’s availability is limited, prioritize critical service appointments over less pressing work. You can assign dynamic priorities, such as values that increase as due dates approach. Optimization can consider priority values when it schedules appointments to time slots.
Required Editions
| Available in: both Salesforce Classic (not available in all orgs) and Lightning Experience |
| The Agentforce Field Service and Operations core features, managed package, and mobile app are available in Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions. |
| User Permissions Needed | |
|---|---|
| To configure priority settings: | FSL Admin custom permission set |
| To optimize from the Classic Dispatch Console: | One of these custom permission sets:
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This is a Field Service managed package feature.
Salesforce Field Service helps you prioritize work based on data, not just urgency. Use your Salesforce data to make informed scheduling decisions so that you can decide which tasks to tackle first and how to best use your team. Focus on the most impactful work by considering factors like customer lifetime value, asset health, and potential revenue, in addition to due dates. In this way, you can make sure that scheduling directly supports your most important goals and that you make the right trade-offs when demand exceeds capacity. The scheduling and optimization engine then uses these priority values to schedule appointments to the best time slots.
To maximize the strategic value of scheduling, define priority values that reflect your unique business goals. Service level agreements and other factors can affect how you prioritize work. The type of work, due dates, or a combination of factors can influence appointment priorities. You can also 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.
After you identify what drives your priorities, define settings so that optimization and scheduling can prioritize visits.
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Specify a priority field.
In the Field Service Admin app, under Field Service Settings | Scheduling | General Logic, select a priority field. You can choose one or more fields on service appointments, work orders, and work order line items. If you define a priority on multiple records, the priority value defined closest to the service appointment in the record hierarchy overrides the priority value on records further from the appointment in the hierarchy. For example, if a service appointment has a parent work order line item that has a parent work order, the work order line item priority value (if defined) is interpreted by the scheduling engine before the work order priority value. If you define a priority value on a parent work order or work order line item, that priority applies to all service appointments with that record as the parent record.
- Assign a fixed priority. The managed package provides two fields related to priority on the work order object: Priority and Scheduling Priority. The Priority field is a picklist with values Low, Medium, High, and Critical. The Scheduling Priority field is a numerical formula field that interprets the selected value and assigns a number to it. For example, Critical is priority 1, High is priority 2, Medium is priority 3, and Low is priority 4. Set the numerical priority of appointments so the scheduling engine can consider them. You can select a value for the Priority field manually or use automation that considers your business process, logic, or other variables. For a more granular scale than 1 to 4, you can create other numerical fields on the service appointment, work order, or work order line item and set the fields based on additional variables.
- 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, or assign a higher priority based on the duration. You can also combine the two approaches.
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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 simple prioritization. If your use case requires a broad range of values, select the optional 1 to 100 priority 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.
After you configure priority settings, you’re ready to optimize. When you're using Global, In-Day, Resource Scheduling Optimization, or Reshuffle, priority can help the optimization engine decide which appointments to schedule first when resource availability is limited. For example, if all your service resources are booked, the optimizer uses priority to determine which higher-priority appointments to schedule and replaces lower-priority ones as needed.
If you have just a few urgent appointments, you can use priorities with scheduling actions, such as Get Candidates, Book Appointments, or Schedule. Add the field Schedule over lower priority appointment to the service appointment page layout. When you select this Boolean field on appointments, scheduling actions consider the appointment’s priority. If a service appointment in a lower priority is in a pinned status, other appointments aren't scheduled over this pinned appointment, and there's no overlap.
- Setting Up Priority Values When You’re Using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
When the optimization engine calculates the score for a schedule, it considers the penalty applied to each appointment that can’t be scheduled. When the engine compares two schedules, the one with the lowest total penalty is preferred. - Setting Up Priority Values When You’re Not Using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
When the optimization engine calculates the score for a schedule, it considers the reward earned by scheduling each appointment. When the engine compares two schedules, the one with the highest total reward is preferred. - Use Cases for Prioritizing Field Service Appointments
Effective prioritization is crucial in Salesforce Field Service to optimize resource allocation when your team's capacity is limited. Review the use cases to learn how to define service appointment priorities and make sure that the most critical work is addressed promptly.
