What Are Workforce Scheduling Interactions

How Interactions and Service Appointments Work Together

An Interaction and a Service Appointment describe the same piece of work from two different points of view.

• The Interaction is for users: A case worker, inspector, or supervisor creates an Interaction, selects the Work Type, selects a branch, assigns resources, selects a slot, and schedules it. An Interaction is the primary record users interact with in list views, on the Operations Console, Gantt, and on the map. Status updates on the Interaction reflect real-time progress at your branches. You can’t edit the status of an Interaction manually from the record page, or through API. The status changes only through an action that updates it, such as Schedule or Change Status in the Operations Console.
• The Service Appointment is for the scheduling engine: Workforce Scheduling automatically creates a background Service Appointment for every Interaction. The scheduling engine uses this underlying Service Appointment to find time slots, assign resources, and schedule the Interaction according to the scheduling policies. All scheduling and optimization logic, including overlap detection, runs on the Service Appointment. Changes then sync to the Interaction.

The Interaction and its Service Appointment stay in sync automatically. When you schedule or reschedule an Interaction, the scheduling engine updates the underlying Service Appointment first, and the changes immediately sync back to the visible Interaction record.