Schedule, Reschedule and Unschedule Appointments

Records You Schedule in Workforce Scheduling

Workforce Scheduling manages appointments using several record objects. Users schedule and rearrange these records in similar ways, though some actions apply only to certain objects.

Visit

The record for appointments that take place in the field at the constituent’s location, such as a home, business, or inspection site. Each visit maps to an underlying service appointment—users schedule the visit, and the service appointment updates in the background.

Interaction

The record for on-site appointments that take place at a physical location, such as a branch or office. The record object users schedule for a customer or constituent engagement, for an office. Each interaction maps to an underlying service appointment—users schedule the interaction, and the service appointment updates in the background.

Service appointment

The record that stores the resource assignment and the scheduled start and end times. Every scheduled record maps to a service appointment. A service appointment can be an underlying appointment for a Visit or Interaction, or a leading scheduling object.

Automatic and Manual Scheduling

Workforce Scheduling offers automatic and manual ways to schedule and change appointments.

Automatic actions run based on the active scheduling policy. The Schedule action assigns the appointment to the best resource and time slot in one step. Reschedule automatically reassigns an already scheduled appointment. These actions run from the Operations Console or API.

Manual actions put the time slot selection in the user’s hands. Find Candidates (field scheduling only) grades qualified resources and their available time slots, and the user selects a slot to assign the resource and schedule the appointment. The Schedule a New Appointment, Change Time Slot, and Cancel Appointment actions run a guided flow that provides a list of time slots for the user to select from. These actions use the default scheduling policies (defined in Setup, under Workforce Scheduling | Scheduling and Optimization | Appointment Scheduling Logic | Scheduling Policies). Drag-and-drop and changing the status in the Operations Console lets a dispatcher schedule appointments directly.

Scheduling Actions

Several scheduling actions are available in Workforce Scheduling. Where users find each option depends on the scheduling object. With the right permissions, users launch these actions from the Operations Console, a record page, or API.