How Workforce Scheduling Visits Map to Service Appointments

Available in: Lightning Experience

Available in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

When a user schedules a new Visit (creates a Visit), Workforce Scheduling creates the underlying Service Appointment and parent Work Order automatically. The Work Order inherits the Visit’s account, contact, and address. A Service Appointment carries the fields the scheduling engine reads and writes: Scheduled Start, Scheduled End, Assigned Resource, Status, Priority, Arrival Window, Work Type, and Geolocation.

The Visit references (links to) both underlying records through lookup fields. The Service Appointment and Work Order behind a Visit don’t appear in the Operations Console, only the Visit does. When a Service Appointment is associated with a Visit, Workforce Scheduling hides it from the Service Appointment list, the Operations Console Gantt, and the map view. The underlying Service Appointment record is still queryable through the API, and exportable through reports. This gives the scheduling engine a record to act on while keeping the Visit as the record users see.

Updates flow in one direction:

1. A user creates or edits a Visit.
2. The scheduling engine reads fields from the Visit and writes the change to the underlying Service Appointment.
3. The scheduling engine runs the requested action against the Service Appointment.
4. The Service Appointment’s assigned resource, scheduled time, and status flow back to the Visit.

On the Visit record page, the assigned resource, scheduled time, and status are read-only — users see the current state without opening the Service Appointment. Reports and API queries against the Service Appointment object return the underlying records alongside any other Service Appointments.

The data model object mapping between Visits and Service Appointments is defined by the standard Context Service definition that ships with Workforce Scheduling.