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Time Zones and Appointment Booking
In large field service operations, the service appointment’s call center rep, assigned resource, and customer could all be in different time zones. Field Service’s appointment booking process shows each user’s appointment details in their own time zone.
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. |
This is a Field Service managed package feature.
If your operation spans multiple time zones, follow these guidelines when creating records.
- For work orders, complete the Service Territory field. A service appointment inherits its parent record’s service territory when the parent is a work order or work order line item, but you can set a unique service territory on an appointment.
- Ensure that each service territory is aligned with one time zone only and doesn’t span multiple time zones. Every service territory must be associated with one Operating Hours record that specifies one time zone. For example, if your operations cover Kentucky, United States, you must have at least two service territories: one for the Eastern time zone and another for the Central time zone. Use Map Polygons to define the geographical boundaries of these territories to ensure that service appointments created with specific geolocations are linked to the correct service territory. By implementing this architecture, you can guarantee that your service and communication with customers are conducted according to their local time zones.
- Create operating hours in Guided Setup that represent the arrival windows offered in the Book
Appointment action.
- From the App Launcher, find and open the Field Service Admin app, and then click the Field Service Settings tab.
- Select Go to Guided Setup | Customize Appointment Booking.
- Update the operating hours, and save your changes.
When the Book Appointment action is used, Field Service doesn’t consider the time zone defined on the arrival windows operating hours record. Instead, it uses the time zone of the service appointment’s service territory’s operating hours. This way, when a customer selects a time slot, the appointment is scheduled according to the customer’s time zone.
- A call center rep’s time zone is Eastern Standard Time (EST).
- A service resource’s time zone is Mountain Time (MT) on both the user record and the primary service territory.
A customer in Nevada, which is in the Pacific Standard (PST) time zone, calls the company for an appointment, and the call center rep creates a work order. The work order is identified as being within the customer's service territory (PST) because the Map Polygon record associates the job's geographical location with the PST territory.
On the Book Appointment page, the customer selects an arrival window of 1:00 PM–3:00 PM. The arrival window is in the customer’s time zone (PT) because it uses the work order’s service territory’s time zone.
After the appointment is scheduled, each person involved can view its details in their time zone.
- When the customer (PT) receives an email confirmation, the arrival window is shown as 1:00 PM–3:00 PM.
- When the call center rep (ET) views the service appointment, the arrival window is shown as 4:00 PM–6:00 PM. The call center rep’s arrival window differs from the customer’s because the date and time fields are automatically converted to the viewer's time zone. To ensure call center reps communicate with customers in the customer's local time, consider creating formula text fields that show the service appointment times in the customer's time zone, referencing the Operating Hours associated with the service appointment's territory.
- When the assigned resource (MT) checks the schedule in the Field Service mobile app, the arrival window is shown as 2:00 PM–4:00 PM. The service resource’s arrival window is in the MT local time because the date and time fields are converted to the user's time zone. To ensure technicians communicate with customers in the customer’s local time, consider creating formula text fields that show service appointment times in the customer's time zone, referencing the time zone from the Operating Hours associated with the service appointment's territory.
For more information on scheduling across time zones in Field Service and example configurations, see this webinar.
