Set Up Sliding and Reshuffling for Scheduling and Appointment Booking
Free up time for scheduling more appointments when using Field Service appointment booking and scheduling. With sliding, service appointments on the Gantt can move to an earlier or later time, within the resource’s availability for the same shift. By using reshuffling and sliding together, service appointments on the Gantt can also move to a different day or to a different resource. Reshuffling and sliding service appointments provide more time slot availability and faster SLA compliance and enable the scheduling of longer service appointments by reducing white spaces.
Required Editions
| Available in: Available in Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic in these editions where Field Service is enabled: Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
| User Permissions Needed | |
|---|---|
| To enable service appointment sliding: | Customize Application |
This is a Field Service managed package feature.
Enable Service Appointments Sliding and Reshuffling When Using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
Watch the video to see how to free up time for a new service appointment when using appointment booking and scheduling operations by sliding service appointments on the Gantt to an earlier or later time, within the resource’s availability.
To schedule critical service appointments even when the Gantt is full, the service appointments’ priorities are considered when using sliding and reshuffling together. If a scheduling action can’t find an available time slot by sliding and reshuffling, service appointments with lower or equal priorities can drop from the schedule. See Schedule Appointments by Using Priorities.
Before you enable service appointment sliding and reshuffling, make sure you meet these requirements.
- Field Service is enabled.
- The latest version of the Salesforce Field Service managed package is installed.
- Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization is enabled.
- From the App Launcher, open the Field Service Admin app, and then click the Field Service Settings tab.
- Select Scheduling | General Logic.
-
Under Sliding and Reshuffling select one of the options:
-
Select Sliding only to enable service appointments to move
between time slots for the same resource within the same shift. Sliding is the default
value.
Select Enable complex work sliding by territory for complex work chains scheduled to multiple resources (for example, same start appointments).
-
Select
Sliding
and reshuffling to enable service appointments to move
between time slots on any day or to another resource.
From the Keep Scheduled Criteria picklist, select a service appointment status to use as criteria to make sure that the appointments aren’t dropped from the Gantt during scheduling and appointment booking. These appointments can be moved to a different time slot or to a different resource.
- Select None prevents appointments on the Gantt from moving.
-
Select Sliding only to enable service appointments to move
between time slots for the same resource within the same shift. Sliding is the default
value.
- From the Pin Criteria picklist, select service appointment statuses to use as criteria to pin appointments to the Gantt (maximum 155 characters). These appointments are excluded from scheduling and appointment booking.
- Click Save.
Considerations for using sliding only:
- Service appointment sliding doesn’t violate any scheduling rules.
- Service appointments can’t move from one resource to another.
- Service appointments can’t be unscheduled.
- Service appointments can move left and right within the shift without changing the order of the service appointments scheduled in the shift. They can also move from before lunch breaks to after lunch breaks.
- Sliding service appointment functionality is applicable to appointment booking and schedule services only.
- Service appointments that are part of a complex work chain and are scheduled to multiple resources can move only to the right.
- If a service appointment that’s part of a complex work chain is violating a work rule, the entire chain is considered pinned.
- Sliding isn’t supported for service appointments that are part of a complex work chain and that are scheduled during shifts that span over midnight, except for service appointments with a same-start dependency.
- Users must have sharing access to all scheduled service appointments in the service territory where scheduling is requested to allow for sliding and reshuffling to occur.
Considerations for using sliding with reshuffling:
- Service appointments with Schedule over lower priority appointment selected, can cause a lower priority appointment to be dropped from the Gantt.
- If sliding and reshuffling is enabled, to increase the chances of finding availability, all
resources in the service territory can be reshuffled.
For example, there are three resources in the service territory with these skill sets:
- John - Repair
- Maria - Installation, Repair
- Adam - Maintenance, Installation
- Reshuffling maximizes the possibility of finding available time slots, but it takes longer than sliding alone.
- Service appointments that are pinned to the Gantt aren’t moved.
- Service appointments with a status that matches one of the statuses defined in the Pin Criteria field on the General Logic tab aren’t moved.
- A service resource’s appointments are reshuffled to another day or to another resource only if there's no availability to schedule with sliding.
- When sliding and reshuffling is enabled and Get Candidates is used to find availability, if the selected available time is no longer available when the user clicks Schedule—due to changes made after the candidates were initially loaded—the system attempts to reshuffle appointments. If the new service appointment has a higher priority than existing appointments, the reshuffle process can drop another appointment to accommodate the new selection.
Customize Service Appointment Reshuffling When Not Using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
You can define the time period in which lower priority appointments can be postponed when reshuffling.
- From the App Launcher, find and open the Field Service Admin app, and then click the Field Service Settings tab.
- Click Scheduling | Dynamic Gantt.
- Under Reshuffle Assignments, define the time period in which lower-priority appointments can be postponed. When appointments are reshuffled, lower-priority appointments are rescheduled during the time period between their Earliest Start Permitted—or the current date, if the Earliest Start Permitted has passed—and this many days later.
- Save your change.
