MB 910: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fundamentals (CRM) Part 2

Hello everyone we welcome you to the second part of the three-part exam prep series on Microsoft Dynamics 365 fundamentals customer engagement apps CRM MB 910 I'm Monica from techn focus and I will be serving as your moderator today we're glad to have ey cman with us who will be presenting today's session he is a Microsoft certified trainer and a Microsoft MVP for business Applications he is currently based in the UK so let me now hand it over to our presenter calman the floor is yours now welcome to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 exam prep for the

MB 910 exam Dynamics 365 fundamentals for CRM so we're now going to take a look at the third module which is the third of the five core customer engagement applications and this is Microsoft Dynamics 36 5 for customer service and we're going to take a look through how Customer service works and the application for it so let's start off by taking a look at what customer service actually is so by using Dynamic us65 for customer service what we're able to do is are able to enter and track customer issues by creating case records customiz an

issue we can create a case record with the details of the customer in and the details of the issue in there as well we're also manage able to manage record all interactions around case Records so we've talked about activities and activity timelines for marketing and for sales it's available in customer service as well on the case we have an activity timeline we're able to put in phone calls and emails and tasks and appointments as when and Associated so overall when we're dealing with a customer case which could be something with support for instance we're able

to see what's happened during that we can use knowledge articles knowledge Articles essentially things like f frequently asked questions or items around how to handle a specific scenario and when something happens with a customer and we want to share that experience with other people we can create knowledge articles so that if somebody else has a similar issue they can search the knowledge base to see what has happened and what steps they should take if we think about specific products take a printer for instance Something's Happened with a printer or people are having problems with a

specific printer configuration that could be saved as a knowledge article and then if a different customer contacts our organization two months time with the same printer same issue somebody else would be able to look it up and be able to fulfill the customer needs for it we're able to create cues and root cases through to the right channels because again if we think of Large organizations multiple different types of products and services you want to go through to the right customer support agent who can help you with your issue you don't want to go just

to a generic one and then be passed around so we can rout cases through to specific hes based on pre-qualifying questions for instance or information that they've provided we're also able to create and track service levels through service level agreements Or slas so how long has it taken to respond normally a company organization would say we will respond within say 24 hours or 72 hours and we can track that to confirm that we are indeed falling within our kpis and AR key performance indicators we can manage performance and productivity through reports and dashboards we're able

to participate in chats using Omni Channel support customers aren't just calling in they're not just emailing us they may engage With us through things like WhatsApp through Facebook through Linkedin through other channels as well and we don't want to have separate teams each team one team for social one team for email one team phone we want to enable our customer support customer service agents across holistically across all sorts of channels and Omni channel is for that as well and then we can manage those conversations across that so the core element is the customer Service Hub

or for Omni Channel capabilities would be the Omni Channel hub for it so we're able to analyze all of the interactions we're able to perform analytics on this we're able to see how the responsible gone is there something that we're falling over with we could do better in it we can pick it up what's our response time to people how can we do better in that at the certain times of the day or the week or the year in which we could do better at Them times responsive we may be overloaded at a seasonal point

in the year with with queries from customers so let's go and take a look at some of the terminology around customers so as we can see from this image right we have a specific customer has a support agreement with organization entitles them to open 15 cases with the organization with organization during a predefined time Period this could be a week this could be a month this could be a quarter this could be a year so based on their support agreement the customer can open new cases from multiple channels they could do this over the phone

they could do this from a mobile device they could do it through social media through email or through chat for example they can send an email in this case uh that's requesting support So to better serve customers as the email is received by The system case creation rules examine the email to identify who it came from and examine the content of the email to create a case record for the customer in the customer service application after a case record is created routing rules then examine criteria on the case to automatically root the case to the

most appropriate Quee so in our example because it's a gold customer it would root the case to a dedicated gold que for cases that submitted by gold Customers also because the customer is a gold customer we have a service level agreement in place and determines that an agent must make initial contact with the customer within 15 minutes of the case being created so this starts off the SLA for it a support agent who has access to the gold queue takes the case from the queue assigns it to themselves and is now responsible to be able

to go ahead and resolve the case within the case record Case resolution business process flows provide guidance to the agent when they work through resolving the case just as we saw with the sales process there is the sales business process flow we also have a customer service business process flow on cases and by using the organization's knowledge base the agent can find knowledge articles that could contain potential resolutions to the case from within the case record they can then email this knowledge based Article directly to the customer to resolve the case and then the customers

entitle recomend entitlement record that stores their support agreement is updated to reflect that out of 15 entitlements that they have they now have 14 remaining on their entitlement with it so this takes care of the entire support process we can also make things more uh automated we could take a look at the types of that come in we could search for keywords within it again Based on the routing rules we could have multiple different cues multiple different product offerings and and support offerings for it as well again we can build out the knowledge article base

in order to support all of this as much as possible within the system now within Dynamic ser65 for customer service there are several dashboards there's a tier 1 dashboard a tier 2 dashboard and of course the table specific dashboards which are specific Of course to the tables they're in and this allow allows both supervisors as well as customer service agents to be able to see the information relevant that's going on such as the number of cases coming in number of interactions the state that the cases are in as well it allows agents to be able

to see the cases that come in and to be able then to open them up take uh assign them to themselves to be able to take control of them to move it forward and handle the Cases through the different stage of it they're able as well to see the timeline on as we said with the activity and they're able to go through the business process flow so if we look at an example of a life cycle here for instance which is around phone call to case life cycle so somebody in this case Nancy places a

call for the service and it comes in and the customer service agent takes this and logs the phone call activity phone call activ is then taken it's converted Into a case we've identified who the customer is and who the contact is the phone call record is saved within the system itself there's then a research done into the issue with it in this case it's a faulty printer so we're going to add a 30-minute research task to the case itself I'm going to use knowledge articles to find appropriate resolutions for it once we found an appropriate

resolution what we can then do is we can move ahead and we Can then call Nancy around the resolution to be able to let her know what the resolution is to the problem provider with the details unlock that phone call and then finally we can resolve the case and overall that's one hour spent two phone calls each of 15 minutes and 30 minutes in terms of researching the issue and then we we can build an hour to the customer with it so this allows us to move through it and is an example of a life

cycle for it Now in terms of the actual case life cycle there are several different ways in which cases can be created customers of course who need support can submit help requests in many ways historically the most common way was through a phone call so support agents would create cases manually as I receive calls from customers so this is the basic concept of how it goes so phone call comes in the support agent will then go ahead and create the case For it so as it will come in through whichever channel is there will be

an activity created then created and then the data is put into the DAT alternatively cases can be created automatically we can use record creation rules to define the different types of Records in the system and when certain records are created say phone call activity with certain information specified audit we can specify the System to then go ahead and automatically create the case for us so again this is the other way we can do it when cases are created as we've alluded to already what we're able to do is be able to go ahead and root

it now Dynamics ISF if a customer service uses Q's to root cases a q is essentially a holding container for cases organizations typically create multiple cues based on how they would want to rout a case for example you could create A queue that represents each of the different departments that handles cases cases can be rooted through to cues in multiple ways agents can manually Place cases into specific cues for example however if we think of larger organizations who should could be taking hundreds or thousands of cases a day they're probably going to find that process

is too large of an inconvenience to have to do it manually in most cases in this matter cases are therefore Frequently root rooted to cues as part of an automated service management process so for instance we could have the concept of gold silver and bronze Roots so customers would be categorize as a gold customer a silver customer or bronze customer and when somebody from the customer would raise a case it would look at what is the customer categorized as and based on that we'll go ahead and root it so what we can see for instance

In here is that a gold customer contacted therefore it's come in it's not rooted to this General support queue it's not rooted to the silver queue it's roed through to the gold queue and the agent picks it up and Associates it to their own personal queue to handle the case deal with the resolution for it when they've finished the case it's then released back and it's rooted back to the queue that's if they hav't resolved it they have resolved the Mark is Resolved and of course is then confirmed as resolved within the system and no

further reactions need to take place for it so we can out of that alternatively we could have cues around products or around services that we're offering as an organization so there are many different ways in which organizations can specify the creation of cases and how to root them and this is really based on how the organization handles it the aim is to be Able to support the process that are in place obviously we can make them more efficient and automate them through the capabilities of Dynamics 365 for customer service with being able to do that

we can then make things work a lot better and we can see the analytics based on how it's going how many cases are coming in how many being resolved how many a waiting in a queue and going outside of our slas and kpis we're capturing all of that Information along the way and therefore we can report on it to overall make life better for us and for our organization as we go through it because we can see where the pain points are and we can then look to address them to make things get better overall

now something else we've touched on already is around Knowledge Management and knowledge articles so what we have here in this image is an example the default process that is there with the standard outof The Box functionality for creating and using knowledge articles in the customer service Hub so we start off with uh an article that's been created so a customer server representative goes and creates an article they put some information in for a case they're working on for instance which they found a resolution for and they go and create an article and this then goes

into draft State it's marked as review once it's marked as review some Who's then got the reviewer functionality reviewer role can pick it up and they would evaluate the content that's in the article and then they can either approve or reject the article obviously if they approve it then the article is great and it contains all the information needed within it and fit it if it's rejected it's missing something and need something changed with it so if it's rejected then it's sent back to the original author for edits or updates so If the reviewer rejects

it it goes back to the original customer service as representative within the system you can then change it as necessary and then that's submitted for review and it goes through a review process again if the article is approved then it's published and it's available for consumption but it's able to be consumed in different ways so it's able to be viewed within the Dynamics 365 Interface overall by anybody who has access to the knowledge base it's able to be viewed on case records which are being worked on by other customer service Representatives they can look for

knowledge articles they can do a search for it using keywords to find out if it fits the case that they're working on it's also available in search but more importantly it's able to be put into a company portal now this is an internal portal for available so only Internal users would be able then to access it within the system so that's after it's approved now once a knowledge article has been been reviewed and approved the next stage is to be able to publish it it can also be translated incidentally as well so it's possible to

do once approved it can then be translated Etc um but then it can be published and once published the article is then available to both internal users which has been available already as well As external users to consum when resolving cases or accessing it from a portal so if there's a self-service portal for customers we are able to expose knowledge articles on there for customers to self- serve themselves but the knowledge articles need to be published they can't just be approved they need to be published to be able to be visible and accessible for external

users accessing via a portal to be able to see and access now one of the Benefits of using knowledge articles as well is it's possible to analyze statistics so how many times people have viewed it how many times people have marked it as being something that helps them resolve a situation that they are so it's possible really to see within the system how helpful knowledge articles are overall and we can see which are the most popular knowledge articles maybe it's something that we can then expand and provide more Information on and split it out into

multiple knowledge articles or if there ones which aren't really being used we can look at the metrics for it and try to understand why they aren't really being used at all and hopefully make them better or if they're actually not relevant anymore we can then look to retire them so quite useful for that so let's go ahead and look at the scenario where by we then going to use knowledge the knowledge base and knowledge Articles to resolve case so if we look at this diagram here what we've got is then the customer and this is

our Go customer so they contact us and it comes in for support for support for an email we're automatically creating that case using C creation rules either based on the subject or based on the person or the account that they're associated with and is then rooted to the gold que agent goes ahead and selects the case from the queue and sees the issues and then looks At the knowledge base to be able to find any article that are relevant for it so they go ahead and they would use keywords to be able to locate appropriate

knowledge articles and they then find the appropriate knowledge article for it and they found the resolution and what they can then do is they can send a link assuming that the article has been published so it's available externally it's possible to then email the knowledge based article Directly to the customer so rather than needing to retype it out or copy and paste the agent is able to send it directly externally to the customer again it has to be published and then it goes out and then the customman can see the information and be able to

resolve it now it doesn't finish there what also happens in this case is that the agent can then link that article back to the case so what we're able to do we're not just able to create knowledge articles Within the system and use them internally as well as publish them externally and we're not only able to look at the analytics how many times has it been seen and marked as useful what we're also able to do is you look at a knowledge article and see how many cas cases has it been linked to and we

can see not just how many it's not just an overall number but we can see the cases that it's linked to and we can also look at a case specifically and see which Knowledge based articles have been linked to it because there could be multiple knowledge based articles that are relevant for a single case so we can analyze that within the system see how it goes better see which ones are really being used again and make our lives a lot easier and better through the analytics for it so we've already mentioned service level agreements or

slas so let's take a bit more of a look at that um SL is really around to track Whether we are meeting our obligations to clients and to customers now different level of customers may have different slas in place and we want to be able to track whether we are meeting them or not kpi key performance indicator is whether we've met it or we haven't met it and we could have different kpis in place per SL such as first response and resolution time now these could vary based on the type of customer so we could

again using your Example have a sort of a gold tier which is a very Swift response a silver tier which is a slightly longer response and a bronze tier which is a longer response over and above the silver tier so bronze tier would uh take less priority essentially we got more time to uh respond to deal with it to say 8 hours for response silver could be 4 hours for response and gold could be 1 hour for for response for the initial response of it and what we're able to do is when a Case is

created we're able to automatically kick off the tracking for it so we're able to see where it is within the process uh what we're also able to do is we're able to trigger notifications along the way so we could turn around and say for instance um if it's a high priority because it's not just about the type of customer you know customers could have low priority medium priority and high priority items so say if it's a High priority item and it needs to be dealt with you the first response at least within 1 hour if

it's coming up for 45 minutes in so it's 40 been 45 minutes and we need to respond by an hour what we can do is we can generate an alert and we can send an email warning to the case owner to specify them to let them know that it's approaching the threshold if it goes more than another 15 minutes it's going to breach that SLA for it it's also Possible if it then goes past that to be able to send warning emails to other people within the company within an organization that it's breached the SLA

for it so we get notifications from it and we can track this across the entire life cycle of it as we need to now of the back of this what it's possible to do is then again using analytics we can see what percentage of time we are falling out or breaching our slas and how we are performing with our Kpis to then be able to see and put in place mitigation actions for it so that we don't do it in the future so do we need more Personnel do we need to make a better process

do we need to streamline things do we need to get more information from the customer for example are all things organizations would look at to see if it would work better in order to get it better so let's take a look at how an SLA would then fit within our process over Here so again we have the the contact that's coming from the customer and it's gold customer so the case is autocreated has gone through to the gold queue and because it's that gold customer it's a priority item it needs a response within 15 minutes

of the SLA clock essentially starts ticking and when the agent then picks it up and sends that first response within 15 minutes it's then noted that the SLA has been uh it's been met I it's been within the Tolerance of it because say they responded within 7 minutes so they have 50 minutes to respond we've done it within 7 minutes so the condition for the SLA have been reached and as a result this is now successful and the case can go through it and can be closed Etc and and we're all very happy with it

so let's now take a look at customer service scheduling now Dynamic 365 for customer service includes a feature called customer Service scheduling and there are several different components that there are within this so we have resources and resources can Define the specific people facilities or equipment that can be scheduled to work on items resources could represent internal employees third party contractors facilities or equipment we have Services Services represent the services that an organization provides to customers the Service record defines the resource types and number of resources required to complete it for instance if we have

to go and service tractor we may need one service technician who can do that along with the various Tools around it in order to say to lift it up or to open it up Etc service activities our activity records that represent things like the delivery and execution of a service to customer these could include details Such as which services to be delivered and which customer it is for facilities and Equipment defines the facilities and equipment that might need to be sheduled as part of a service activity for instance a facility record could be created to

represent a specific service Bay or specialized equipment used to complete a job once defined resources that represent these items are created and associated with the facilities and Equipment Records resource categories Define the different roles or categories that resources might have within an organization for example an organization might create resource categories for positions like developer consultant or project manager the schedule board is an Interactive calendar that's used to schedle specific resources for different items it can be filtered as needed and can be viewed as a map to make it easier To schedule items so you can

see overall what's happening business closures can specify when an organization is not open such as annual holidays and seasonal times of the year now services and service activities are used in conjunction with each other for example if we had a garage that wanted to oil changes to customers they could set it up as follows they need to create an oil change service this would Define the type or types and quantities of resources required to deliver an oil change for example an oil change might require a service Bay which is an equipment resource and two technicians

which are human resources to be able to complete it they need to create a service activity and the oil change services added to the activity as the actual service that will be provided as part of the service activity the service activity record also Contains additional details such as the customer which the activity is being carried out for and where the activity will be taking place and finally they need to schedule the service activity and when the service activity is scheduled Dynamics 365 will look at the types and quantities of resources required for the attached oil

change service and identify which qualified people facilities and Equipment resources are available to Complete the service activity and then it can put it all together and actually schedule the job so it's particularly helpful when being able to schedule things when providing services not so much products but services and all the items around Services cuz we need people and we need resources to all come together to provide the service so we're able to do this and then schedule it appropriately and we can see it on a camand style board by we can see Everything then available

and we can go ahead and schedule it but customer service is not just about being reactive when things come in it's also about being proactive and we have the ability for Remote device management we have connected customer service and what this does is it helps organizations to be able to remotely monitor manage and maintain iot or internet device Internet of Things devices directly from within Dynamics f Isif for customer service so the components that make this up are as follows we have iot devices Internet of Things devices this is a connected device that can be

registered with an iot Hub we have iot alerts and these are alerts that are sent to Connected customer service because of a notable event that was logged by the device so for instance if it was measuring temperature and it went above the threshold the iot device could send an Alert we have the device categories which are used to group iot devices together based on similarities such as the type of device and we have iot device commands and these are an outgoing message that is sent from Dynamics 365 connected customer service to the devices to the

it devices that are connected to an iot Hub so for instance to provide updated parameters we could send it out for it so let's take a look at how this would actually Work we have a nice little flow diagram so the first thing we need to do is we would need to go ahead and create create an asset a customer asset record so we do this within Dynamics 365 customer service when we've done that we get an iot device record created and the customer asset is registered as an iot device which uses automation software such

as power automate to register the device in an iot management solution such as Azure iot Central or iot Hub Once it's been registered the iot device record is created within Dynamics 365 is then Associated to the customer it then carries out whatever function needs to carry out so for instance it's monitoring temperature and it's got thresholds and it knows what the thresholds are and say the temperature goes above the threshold so the iot device would report an anomaly and this is logged in an iot Management Solutions such as Azure iot Central or Iot Hub and

off the back of this an alert is send through to Connected customer service and it's logged as an iot alert related to the device using automation software such as power automate and it's stored against the iot device record so we can look at all of the iot devices and we can see all of the alerts that a specific device has registered once the alert is in we then can interact with it so for instance if we believe it's 40 we Could send a reset command to it from connected customer service now in scenarios where the

device cannot be interacted with we can escalate the alert into to a case and or work order in field service so this allows us to be able to be proactive in what we're doing we can have the iot devices that can register alerts if there are issues with it and based on that what can then come back is we can set cases to be able to resolve the case or even raise work Orders for field service technicians to go out and address whatever issue is happening to be able to do it so this gets the

customer experience to be extremely good cuz they don't have to raise cases anymore they don't have to raise support requests or issues it's done automatically through it there is the automation put in place using the iot devices and everything else around it to be able to do it and we can then hopefully prevent major malfunctions Major issues occurring by carrying out the maintenance and support earlier on the we don't need to come to a point where by everything fails and then we need to pick up it up and deal with it if something knows that

it's going to be failing at some point in the future and it's already registering that now then we can go ahead and we can fix the situation right now which makes life a lot better overall for everybody involved so that's one way in which we Can Empower customers now another way that we can Empower customers is using Omni channel for customer service and I've mentioned this earlier on in this series obviously customers can contact us they can phone they can email Etc and traditionally large or organizations are dealing with you know that have a social

media team that have a phone support team that have email support team that have uh various teams around but what we have now is Omni channel for customer Service and the Omni Channel solution provides us with the tools to be able to allow multiple channels to stream through into a single place into a single interface so traditionally again customer service agents you had different teams they were using different systems and therefore they needed to be able to interact with the systems to know how to use it which required training and if it system was changed

it required new trading up to Date every single system would be different and pulling all the systems together is would be complicated so the benefits of omni channel is that it all comes through doesn't matter which channel it's from and it comes through into a single interface so agents don't need to be constrained on multiple systems they're using that same system regardless of whether communication is coming in Via WhatsApp or via Facebook or via a variety of other systems as well it enables not just that but also things like SMS so text messages customers who

want to interact with us for text messages again it will come through into that same interface so it's able to be there social media other sorts of channels the capabilities are expanding over time it also allows things like real-time notifications so if a chat comes in an agent is notified gets a pop Up at the bottom of the screen that's there agents can handle multiple chats if they're waiting for the customer right information depending on their capabilities and their capacity they could be handling multiple support chats at the same time time we're able to use

power virtual agents so intelligent chatbots customers can selfs serve through it and if it doesn't give all the information they need it can offer them the ability to escalate it to an Agent and it would escalate it through and integrate with Omni channel for customer service agents can follow scripts to present the same experience to customers every single time and can follow through it and the ability to use things like quick responses as well where by agents don't need to type out things again and again again and again we have standardized responses that all agents

are able to use within the system so omine channel for customer service is Extremely powerful and one of the newer capabilities but is really empowering organizations and empowering their customers to be able to go ahead and support them in best possible way as interactions come in CES are created we can provide knowledge based articles back to the customer we can ser sear for them we can use keywords we can associate knowledge based articles with the case we can capture information we have that same Dynamics 365 interface And therefore based on that what we're able to

do is we're able to open account records and contact records and all the other types of Records we need as well in order to support the case and then we can update the case directly within the Omni channel for customer service experience and close off the case as necessary very very powerful very very helpful now Omni channel for customer Serv is its own app but what we also have in general one is the customer Workspace app so if we take a look at the customer workspace what happens is is this combines the session management capabilities

of omni Channel with very much the Core case management and Knowledge Management capabilities found in the traditional customer service Hub application so let's take a look at some of the key capabilities that are available for it we have session management session tabs allow the a to Work with multiple customers simultaneously this allows them to increase their efficiency and switch between sessions as they are working with customers without losing conversation context or customer details we have case management we can create cases we can root them and manage them in the customer service workspace using the same

features that are available in the customer service Hub so include things like activity so the interactions With the customer we can create activities we can associate them with cases we have cues available so we're able to root cases through cues as we need we have the record creation and update rules these are the rules that can be applied to different activity types that automatically create other types of Dynamics 365 records and we have rooting rules which are reply to cases that automatically rout a case to specific que or user we have Knowledge Management available to

be able to search a knowledge base along with entitlements and slas entitlements of course used to specify the amount of supports services that a customer is entitled to it's essentially really a support contract and SLA is of course the way of tracking and defining what should happen when a case is opened and such as you know initial time to respond Etc so very helpful to have within the interface it is slightly different from The Omni channel app from the Omni channel app and works in a slightly different way now we've been looking at all of

the capabilities and just as been went through marketing and sales and we looked at the insights into it we have customer service insights as well which are available and again are very very powerful and driven by AI underneath so customer service insights provide organization with actionable Insights into the critical performance metrics operational data and emerging Trends from the customer service system it includes things like different built-in dashboards interactive charts and visual filters that can provide insight into the support operations data across different channels it can also help highlight Improvement areas that can have the greatest

impact on the organization so we can quickly evaluate and respond to key performance Indicators kpis and customer satisfaction levels and all of this is driven by AI analytics underneath customer service insights include things like workspaces so displaying customer service data of a specific customer service environment a single customer service inside instance can contain multiple workspaces we have Insight dashboards these are filterable dashboards that group together both Graphical and AI driven charts into a single space based on different key performance indicators and we have topics which group related support cases together for easier analysis topics are

used throughout the different insights dashboards that are available set of glance the five items on the navigation pane that we have are the home which takes us to our our home our main landing page experience and includes the workspace information such As the cases imported and topics discovered we have the kpi summary which provides a broad overview of the customer service experience in our organization new cases provides an overview of new cases in the customer service system customer satisfaction provides an overview of customer satisfaction scores or seats resolutions provides an overview of the customer service

systems case resolution performance so are we Resolving cases over time and there specific case of not resolving Etc and topics provides a detailed overview of key performance indicators for a specific topic so all very very useful very very capable it's that all the analytics underneath for all of the core the five core customer engagement applications are there to be able to have organizations really understand their data and to be able to improve and get better at it so this concludes the Third module around Microsoft Dynamics 365 for customer service so we're now going to move

on to module 4 and module four is the fourth of the five core customer engagement applications for Dynamics 365 and more specifically it is Microsoft Dynamics 365 for field service so what exactly do we mean by field service well let's go ahead and take a look at this so if we think of organizations that provide services and Products some of these in terms of products we'll be able to just sell the products to the customers and we'll ship it out to them or we'll have online shops they can purchase it and we send them out

if they got a problem they'll send it back to us we can supply Services we can supply advisory Services we could Supply things like accountancy for instance uh which is not neily advis service it as a service so we could be their account accountants in which case We're dealing with you know all their accounts we're filing all the necessary paperwork etc etc and that's fine not a problem again it's a service we don't necessarily need to travel to them to do it they can upload it to the cloud we can get the documentation they can

use Finance systems Etc but there are organizations which provide services which require people to go out into the field so to speak we need remote technicians remote Engineers remote People and field service is used to describe this it's a service that's done outside of the company facilities because of course as an organization we could have many different facilities and different repair facilities that we have products come into but we will need if we're providing certain Services certain products to travel to client locations and perform servicing and repair there and this is what field service is

about so examples of this are the Manufacturing industry so for instance if we are manufacturing health equipment medical equipment and we're selling these to hospitals and we have support contracts in place what we can do is we can use field service applications to manage maintenance services over the lifetime of the machines and the products that we have supplied if we think of the utility sector one wouldn't think particularly of utilities or something you know you get your Electricity it comes through the RO you plug into it if you've got a problem with your homework wiring

the electric company doesn't send out an engineer to fix it for you you need to get an electrician in to deal with it which could possibly be field service as well but in terms of things like field service in the utility space if they're needing to lay new cable say for instance you've got a Communications company and they need to put a new fiber Optic cable or there's been a problem as I know it's happened several times um you know the local Authority is doing Road works and they're digging up the road and by mistake

of course by mistake they cut through the cables whether it's electric whether it's water gas obviously is much more of a problem for that I guess cuz there could be an explosion um you know the phone cables and stuff like that and in that case the utility company needs to be able to go And fix it at that location it's a field service item if we think of things like the healthcare industry for instance um we may be dispatching healthcare workers to administer medicine and other care to patient patients who are too uh unwell to

travel into say hospitals or main facilities we may have mobile healthcare workers who would go and take care of them it's like the El elderly or the infirm H and general equipment maintenance you know If we're going out and again just like as I said in the manufacturing space when we're manufacturing equipment and we're supporting that but we may not manufacture items we may support it so for instance if we think of washing machines we could be um and I'm using this example cuz this happened to me recently my washing machine broke down I have

a service contract in place with a company they don't sell washing machines all they do Is they provide fixing so they had to dispatch a field service engineer to my house to be able to go ahead they brought the products out they diagnos what was wrong with it and they faed the washing machine and my family was really happy because we were able to use it again so these are some of the examples there are many many other sectors that it's possible to use as well as an example for field service but these are some

of the examples that we can use Around it and if you think about what your own organizations's are doing think about are you providing facilities are you providing services at your facilities or are you needing to go out into the field and into client locations or other places to be able to deliver your services around them so we're going to take a look at some key terminology around it so so in field service we have these items so we have field technicians and a field technician Refers to the person or persons people who are performing

the work or carrying out the services for customers in the field they're the field service engineer the washing machine repair man he would be referred to in Dynamics 365 as a field technician we have work orders and work orders specify the work that needs to be carried out by the field technician so the work order will include customer detail tell so the customer name the customer phone number The service location so where the field technician is actually going to go to the appointment day and time and as well if applicable the customer asset so in

the case of me for instance the washing machine with the washing machine make model and serial number because I've reported that all in when I called with the fault and that's all on the work order the work order is everything that the field technician needs in order to know what they're going to need to do Where they're going to need to do it and who they're going to need to deal with and this is important because if for instance they need to bring tools along or they need to bring replacement parts they need to know

what they're going to bring for because they can't carry everything in their van so they need to know exactly what they need in order to get it ready and bring it with them customer assets refer to a piece of equipment that is owned and located at a Customer location so these could be things like appliances and pieces of equipment for machinery for instance would be a customer asset a dispatcher or shed this is a very critical role in field service they oversee field technicians and they're responsible for scheduling field technicians and dispatching them to execute

the work orders so they see when they're available and they'll handle the calendar and make sure that everyone is Available at the right time and they'll schedule them in accordingly as well you're not going to have somebody start at one side of the country in the morning and go to the other side of the country for a job in the afternoon they wouldn't be able to get there regardless of how large or small the country is probably so what they need need to do is they need to see who is which where the field technicians

based what is the most applicable jobs to them how they can Root them effectively Etc the first time fix rate or the fdfr is the resolution of a customer's issue on the first service visit now organizations of course strive for a very high number here because it means that they don't need to go back reduced visits in turn result in reduced costs higher profitability higher customer satisfaction and of course higher productivity the want is this technician to have to go out multiple times to fix It IDE they should have all the information they need all

the tools any replacement parts they need fix it the first time that they're on site that they do not need to come back the ETA is the estimated time of arrival this is the estimated time that a field technician is expected to arrive at the location or customer site to Begin work truck roll is referring to a situation that requires the technician to be sent in a truck to the customer for service This could be because of the amount of material that they need the number of replacement parts or special tooling possibly that's present in

the trucks which is not possible to take otherwise and windshield time refers to the amount of time that a field technician spends in a vehicle while performing activities relating to service customers so this isn't talking about they're actually fixing it this is things like paperwork or commuting between Places we want to keep this as low as possible increased windshield time impacts utilization so organizations really do look to keep this as low as possible so that as much time as possible is of course spent by the field technician in actually getting the work done and carried

out so let's now go take a look at a typical life cycle and regardless of the industry it's almost always the same there could be some slight tweaks for very specialized Parts But essentially this is what it looks like the first thing is demand generated this is the trigger that creates the work order for it so as we said workorders include all the information so who it's for the products and all services the time frames and the location and are generated in various ways so for instance a work order could be generated with an item

being purchased you need a field technician to install a piece of Machinery so the Customer would buy the machinery and immediately a work order could be generated for a technician to have to go out and install the Machinery or if we have devices and we spoke previously about Internet of Things iot devices if a device automatically notifies of an issue it could create a work order off the back of that and based on that with then able to create that work order so the field technician can go out and will be able to fix whatever

the problem is And of course we have customers who will call up to report the issue themselves or they may not call up they may send in an email absolutely fine and we'll create work orders off that so that's how the demand is generated this is how work orders are created we then have the schedule and dispatch we take the work orders and we're going to schedule them in we're going to look at the availability of our field technicians we're going to look at what the days Currently look like in the calendars again where the

jobs are located to ensure that we can optimize their root as best as possible for the area that they are in and we're going to go and schedule all of this and we schedule it in advance of course there can be lar minute work orders but normally scheduling will take place a day to possibly a week or several weeks in in advance if we think of installing heavy machinery the customer is not going to Buy it today and necessarily expect it to be installed tomorrow I mean they may expect it to be installed tomorrow but

you know we know the reality of this it's likely to say you know you buy it today and in 2 weeks time we have a slot whereby we can then deliver and install it and they would work with the customer to work this out so they would schedule it in sheduling canac manually or even automatically based on sheding rhythms field service has the ability to Automatically schedule various items and then they're dispatched the technician would the the field technician would then go out on the appropriate day with the information they need with any resources they

need with them and carry it out service completion is when the technician is actually executing delivery of the service at the location so it's where they're going to fix something or they're going to install something and they're going to lck time Typically the technician will have a mobile device with a application running on it to assist them in doing the work uh this will include the work order on it and will allow them for instance to make additional notes and take pictures or look up additional information some of them have cameras in which they can

scan serial numbers and barcodes to gain additional information or possibly even to carry out Advanced Diagnostics so they will Then go ahead and they will actually carry out and complete the service the review and sign off stage is when the work is complete the customer needs to sign off I'm sure we've all had it somebody you know come out to our house to fix something and they say right we finished please can I get your signature on it to confirm that it's been done it's when the C customer approves the work obviously customer can review

the work and then we'll sign off To accept the work that's being done and the item will go through a final internal review before being marked as complete just to check that all of the necessary paperwork and steps have been done and that's done internally once the customer signed it off having the ability for the field technician to have a mobile device with mobile application means that even when they're out in the field as long as of course if they got network connectivity customer signs off And they can immediately go back into the system and

what ever else in the process may happen is able to be kicked off before the technician returns to the office and finally we have the back office support so the back office will take all the information provided from the field and can then go ahead and invoice the customer they can also see the parts that were used during the service and then they can replenish Parts they can Submit payroll hours and reimburse expenses such as the fuel that's needed or if there was an overnight Hotel spay hotel stay because the technician needed to stay away

because they were too far away and and they need to do that they can then deal with the expenses around it so this is the general life cycle that field service items would go through and again I said mostly it will remain the same with possibly some slight tweaks but it does Really look the same across all Industries so how do we get started with field service so we have some key terminology in here some of which we've touched on already but let's take a further look at it so we start off with work orders

these are the primary record type that's used in Dynamics 365 field service it specifies important information such as who the work is for so the customer all the customer details where it should be Performed so the location that is going to take place what needs to be done so what the technici is actually going to need to do such as fix a washing machine the skills required as it could be a specialized job that the technician needs to do so we need to have a technician with the appropriate skill level for it and timelines when

it's supposed to be carried out we then have work order products and these Define the products that will be used on the work Order they typically represent items that could be installed such as an appliance or items that will be used during the process such as for instance if you're putting uh specialized Appliance in place you may need a special type of electric cord to connect the Appliance in so all of these would be the work order products separately we then have work order services and this is to Define services that have been carried out

as Part of the work order for instance when we installing a new Appliance you may give the customer the option for us to remove the old Appliance so if we're installing a new washing machine normally at least where I am they will say okay we'll charge you a smaller man and we will take your old washing machine machine away so they're not installing the old washing machine they're going to charge a fee it's going to be a service for it they're providing A service they're taking the old one away and they will charge a small

fee from it so this is an example of something that could be considered a work order service and then we have service tasks this sort of acts as a to-do list for the field technician who will be performing the work it ensures that they're not missing anything during the process for example if we think of installing a washing machine which is is I think a really great example we could put things like connect the plug into the electricity and turn it on confirm that the washing machine turns on check the hose connections to ensure that

there are no water leaks with the hoses that are in use so all of these will be tasks and these can be put in so the technician can then see it and work through it's essentially their checklist of what they need to do if there are additional task the technician can of Course add additional tasks as necessary but this is sort of you know their initial checklist that they would need to run through and can be tweaked and modified as necessary and finally we have the incident incident ACC as a template to pre-populate information into

a work order to save time during the intake process an incident is the system name what incident really is is incident is a case we talked about cases when we were Looking at customer service so it is possible if you have customer service Dynamic 365 customer service and dynamic 365 field service when you take information in for something that will require a technician to handle and deal with you can convert a case into a work order and what it will do is it will then populate information from the case into the work order which cuts

down on the number of manual data entry that you need to do and saves time during the Initial process it also links it back so if a customer raises an issue my washing machine is faulty or is leaking that would be a case for customer service a work oder will be created out of it for a few F technician field technician go away it's got the work order it's got the work order steps to do and the service tasks on it and can then close it down and then customer service can see that it's been

carried out and close the case there is the entire Loop Available for it let's continue taking a look at then how it goes so this is how work order is entered so once a work order is entered we then have lots of work orders within the system and we need to schedule it so we have the schedule board sort of can band style board available it shows the calendar it shows all of our resources available that are available for it it shows the time frame for the day it's a bit like an Outlook calendar I

guess um But shows across lots of different people and we can move things around in it and it provides the tool that's necessary to manage and schedule resources to work on it so we have resources a resource can be a person such as a field technician it could be a piece of equipment such as some specific toing or facility a service Bay for instance that can be scheduled to perform work Dynamics 365 field service gives several different types of Resources that can be defined there's a generic resource which is usually used as a placeholder to

define a type of resource that is needed until a specific named resource can be used in his place you'll say this needs two field technicians we don't know who those field technicians actually going to be they're going to be Bob and Jim in the end we don't know now that it's Bob and Jim so they're considered a generic resource we have a contact which is a Specific resource that's associated with the dynamic 365 contact record this wouldn't be a user this would be somebody external to our organization so somebody needs to be that the site

manager needs to be there to open up for us to be able to access the site we have a user type this is a resource as an internal user that's mapped to a Dynamics 365 user record so this would be a field technician usually we have Equipment which defines the resource as the specific piece of equipment say for instance if we're going out to deal with Machinery may need a hydraulic lift in order to lift the Machinery up we have account which defines the resources associated with the Dynamics 365 account record we have something called

crew and this represents multiple resources that can be scheduled together for a single item so if we think for instance of uh Road repairs we need various people to Carry out the road repairs they can be set up as a crew so where we don't need to go and schedule each person in that group individually we can set them up as a crew within the system and then we can schedule the crew so everybody involved in the crew can then be scheduled out at once we have facility which represents a facility to be scheduled such

as a building or room or an equipment Bay or a service Bay and finally we have pool which is a pool of resources so a bit Like crew but crew refers specifically to people um a pool represents a much larger pool of resources Al together so we have those different types we can specify requirements so these represent items that are ready to be scheduled that have not been assigned to a specific resource they Define what is needed to schedule it such as resource skills time frames and location details we have bookings which are items that

have been scheduled for a specific day And time and have been assigned to a resource so it starts off essentially we had the work orders and they're unscheduled and then we can see the requirements for them we can see the shadow board and then we'll go ahead and we'll get them booked in so that's there we also have the shadling assistant and this uses artificial intelligence it simplifies shadling by offering suggestions of potential resource and time slots to schedule an item four it's Based on requirements that are captured on the work ORD or record such

as the skill needed time windows and a variety of other things too so all of this works to be able to go ahead take workorders into our system get the information that we need for them schedule them appropriately with all the different resources that we need in place so that we can go and we can deliver the actual service to the customer let's go ahead and take a look at actual work orders Within the system itself so we have some key information that's defined on here we have a summary overview which is general information such

as the work order type so what type of work order is it a service is it a fix is it something else what the current status is of it so is it in draft has it been scheduled is it in progress has it been completed pricing information such as how much it's going to cost and of course who the work order is for we have the sheduling Details which has more detailed information that could impact how it's scheduled such as the priority the territory service preferences perhaps we can only access a site in the morning

somewhere if it's a low priority it could be dealt with within the next week if it's a high priority it would need to be dealt with today so these work of things like date and time windows for it we have we have the products which says the products that are going to be used Or installed during the execution of the work order once the work order is complete the parts are then removed from our inventory we have Services which Define any services that are going to be completed on the work order so for instance in

our washing machine example this could include things like a disposal service or a recycling fee we have the service tasks which act as the To-do list for the technician and outline what they need to carry out out whilst working on site and of course we have the address and location information and this is used to assist in the shading process because again we want to optimize it as much as possible for the technicians they should be going to jobs that are as close to each other as possible don't have to spend a lot of time

driving potentially stuck in traffic we also have account Relationships from the work order so we have a service account and the service account is the account that the work is being done for we also have the billing account and this specifies the account that's responsible for paying and where the invoice should be sent now this could potentially be the same these could be the same or these could be different if you think of large organizations we're going to build to one specific Place although the service Is actually taking place in another location and possibly for

you know a different related company but so we have the ability to split it out as we need we have the work order type and the work order type is used to categorize the type of work that is it is again what type of work is the technician carrying out the priority rates the importance of the work order so is that a high priority is a medium priority is a low priority if there's a water pipe broken In the road that's a high priority if it's I need I've ordered a washing machine and it's going

to be installed within the next two weeks or 3 weeks or four weeks that's probably a lower priority item I mean it's high priority to me cuz I need to have my washing machine installed but it's a lower priority item overall and we have the service territory and this can help organize work orders and Resources by geographical areas so possibly we have Um country or look split up into Geographic areas you know the North Region the east region the west region the South Region more of them less of them and we'll have technicians that are

assigned to each region so we need to know essentially where it's Lo where the job is located in order to work out who we can associate with it and we have service preferences service preferences has for instance things like The time that we promised to deliver so it's the time window that a customers promised that the technician would arrive so think I say will'll be there between 9 and 11:00 in the morning now if we have promised a Time window it takes higher priority over all other date and time preferences because we've communicated this to

the customer and we've essentially to the custom so we will be there then it looks very bad for us it's not good customer service if we Turn up at 3:00 in the afternoon especially if we haven't communicated it we have dates for window start and window end so we can provide a range of dates that the customer like somebody to work on the incident so they can say I'm available in 2 weeks time because the site won't be ready until then for example and we have fulfillment preferences and fulfillment preferences provide additional sheding options around

how we can actually fulfill the Work order so let's go back to the life cycle of the work order and let's go take a look at how we can then start fitting this along the way so what we started off the workorder creation now we've seen this already the process overall for it so when we have we have a work order creation we could have a case that's come in so work orders are usually created from cases or even from Opportunities and that's done in that work order creation point we have an agreement we are

going to be working on it we communicate this to the customer and what happens is is that this goes then goes through the process the work order is then scheduled out it's then dispatched the field technician is dispatched at the appropriate point in time with the details they need with all the products and other other things else they need in order to deliver the Service they go and they carry out the service they update the details it's reviewed internally to say that it's you know approved and then finally we have an invoice generated off the

back of that and we can adjust our inventory because if they've used three three hoses we have three hoses Less in our inventory so we need to know about this so that we can order new hoses from for instance for us so I've mentioned incident types and we have different Incident types within the system now incidents in Dynamics 365 field service can best be described as templates and they are used to easily populate items populate items such as tasks and products and service definitions on issues that are commonly worked on by field agents inance a

great way of autop populating the information listed but any of these can be manually added at any time so if I think for instance instant time would be installing washing Machine they're going to need to know to bring hoses out they're going to need to bring uh some wrenches in order to be able to connect the hoses they may need some other equipment as well probably not much equipment but what it's possible to do it's possible to autop populate the required products the required services on there so that we don't need to manually enter it

each time time and time and time again because the last thing we want in an Organization is for them to have to manually enter essentially what is the default checklist for each incident type so what we can do is we can set all of these up as static data in the system and then when we create a work order when we set the incident type for it it will then start setting all of this information across it it's very helpful especially if we think of Highly specialized tasks and scenarios you know if we've got highly

complex equipment Say uh it's an MRI scanner for a hospital you're going to need somebody with the right skills of very skilled field service technician to be able to go out and do that they're going to need a probably a lot of specialist equipment and rather than having to manually go through and put it in what we can do is we can set up all in the system so we don't need to worry that we may miss something out by mistake now apart from work orders and incidents so something's Gone wrong and we need to

fix it support it for Dynamics 365 field service we also have inspections and inspections are easier to handle and deal with they're easier to create easy to fill out we're going to inspect a piece of Machinery we're going to check it so we probably will not need all of the products you know all the tools and equipment that we need in order to fix something it's much lighter it's also possible to run Inspections through the Dynamics 365 field service mobile app and one thing that's really important about this is the app is available across all

devices and it's offline first this means that it doesn't need an internet connection if we think of field technicians who are going out into the field there are times when they will not have network connection and they will not be able to connect into Dynamics 365 into the cloud And be able to get the information that they need the Dynamics 365 field service mobile app has been built specifically to handle scenarios such as that so it connects occasionally pulls the data to the device for all the work ERS that the technician is assigned to and

then keeps it offline so it's got all the information there for the field technician to be able to view and see and not just view and see but they can update the record and then when they get Network connectivity at some point it will then push the data back in to the cloud so it's then able to be seen by other users within Dynamics 365 field service within the app as well it's possible to be able to see a list of customer assets manage the versions of customer assets as well and a variety of other

things so it is offline only and technicians can for instance take pictures and attach them to the work order and the app will then upload it Very very helpful very very useful now one of the things that we will need to know for the exam is the sheduling capabilities and as mentioned already we have three different options available we have manual sheduling which will have dispatchers looking at a list of work orders that are ready to go out and they'll be using the shadling board see the resources and they'll be able to do that manually

we have the sheduling assistant which can Suggest when to schedule it won't actually schedule it it can suggest it looks like this time slot is free and therefore it will go you know will suggest to the dispatcher that they should be able to put the work order into there but we also have optimiz or automated scheduling which is something that we can activate for the system and what this will do is this will take a look at the work orders all the information Associated so things like the location of the work orders uh where they're

supposed to carry out the products needed the skills needed take a look at who's available the equipment available and then we'll automatically schedule it accordingly this does use artificial intelligence underneath to be able to look at it and work out what is best and the thing with automated scheduling is it can move things around to fit things better as needed obviously if a Technician is already on the way to go visit a specific customer location to deal with the work or it's not going to change that to 2 weeks down the line but it will

look several days into the future and it will optimize things accordingly as best it can see to do now when looking at a work order we need to think about is it ready to be scheduled does it have all the information needed on it what resources do we need to schedule it we need people We need locations we need equipment variety of other stuff it is you know in terms of fixing a road maybe it needs a crew of people for instance for it who is qualified to work on the item we can't just send

anyone out again if we think of an MRI scanner for a hospital we need somebody with the skills to be able to deal with the MRI scanner so we're not just going to send somebody who started 2 weeks ago and is an apprentice technician because that would Not be appropriate for it so this is how we use skills when does it need to be done do we have any specific time frames do we have any time restrictions or time windows for it so we see when that is available customer constraints customer may not be around

the site may not be ready for it yet if we're delivering Machinery to install but the site isn't ready for us to go ahead and install it yet well that's uh that's a customer constraint Which the custom obviously needs to communicate to ourselves where is it located in terms of the geography is it somewhere far away and we don't have any technicians in the area yet so we need to work out how we get a technician into the area to be able to actually carry out the service and finally of course cancellations which do happen

from time to time the customer may need to cancel the appointment So in that case we then need to move things around we may need to reschedule it and this is where the optimiz and automated sheduling comes into place because if we've got it booked in and the customer goes up and says I'm terribly sorry but I'm not going to be able to make it then uh I'm not going to be able to be there or there's another problem you know the road is flooded so you can't get into it what it will do is

then automatically rebook it at an Appropriate point in time so very very helpful for this so when we schedule in of course as mentioned we have to think about what types of resources and we want to be able to schedule qualified resources now again these could be specific people specific technicians specific facilities or specific equipment and the option of sheding resources have resource roles and resource skills resource roles specifies roles a single role or Multiple roles in an organization that can be associated with different resources roles can be added to specific resources and schedulable items

like a work order to ensure that only resources without role are suggested as people to work on an item we also have resource skills and this specifies a specific skill or possibly a certification that can be associated with different resources resource skills can also be used to Support specific scenarios where resources may need to possess specific access to something like a building or need a specific level of security clearance so these are similar but are also different in terms of roles maybe we want somebody more senior they don't need to be certified whereas in terms

of skills we may need somebody to be very familiar with an MRI machine or piece of farm machinery so we would associate those specific skills with the Person and then we can look to book them in in terms of working with the shedule board itself so we seen the shedule board so we've talked about manually shadling items using the assistant to suggest inter schedu it and being able to automatically schedule items as well but it's a bit like an Outlook calendar cuz what we can do is we can drag and drop items around to allow

dispatchers to schedule items or substitute different resources It's possible to drag and drop appointment around on the on the calendars for the resources and then it fits in if it's not available and it will tell you if it overlaps you will be able to easily see it visually we have the find availability option and what this can do is this launches the schedule assistant to suggest when would be the best time to be able to book something in for we're able to manually block time off on the calendar so for Instance if we know that

the technician has a specific time that they're going to take lunch and or they have a medical appointment possibly we can block that time out in the calendar so that we know for that technici that we know that they are not available during that time period and we have a map view and the map view will show everything all the locations for it all the jobs and we can drag and drop things between it we also have additional functionality available So we have the ability to rebook this gives us the ability to move a book

into a different day and time as well as assigning it to a different resource and we can substitute the resource what this does is this keeps the original booking at its uh the booking at the original time date and time but it replaces the original resource that's associated with the booking with a different resource so say for instance we've got Bob and Jim who are field technicians and something Has been assigned to Bob and Bob calls in sick what we can do is we are able to substitute Jim as the resource for it because Bob

is unable to carry it out and the system supports us and allows us to do it in it now I've mentioned a couple of times about automating resource and automating scheduling and this is refer to as resource scheduling optimization and we have several use cases for it now we can do it overnight Scheduling condition based scheduling simulation so we can simulate how it's going to be and then move it around if we need to Etc but overnight scheduling is probably the most common way of leveraging resource scheduling optimization to go ahead and optimize schedules typically

the optimization job is working with larger amounts of data it's not just one or two jobs we're talking about hundreds or possibly even thousands of work orders that need to go Ahead and be scheduled in for this reason it's most effective to Define schedules that will run the resource schedule optimization after normal business hours so for instance an organization could create a nightly or even a weekly schedule based on what they want to optimize each schedule job has an attached record scope that defines what resources requ requirements and or bookings to optimize so it's got

all the Information there on the work orders and can then be picked up and when the shedule job is executed so the system job for it the resource sheduling optimization will go ahead and optimize all items within the scope so it's not going to look at absolutely every single work order what we do is we Define the scope so it could be looking for stuff for specific time frames or specific locations or specific types of customers And it can then automatically go ahead and optimize it so if we have a specialist unit to repair for

machinery for instance we don't want them to go out on generic jobs but as well they could be traveling large distances because in order to go from Farm to farm and they would need specialist equipment with them so we could look at something all the work orders are relating to farm equipment we could then assign to the specific uh Crew for it the group of people and we can then optimize them up to week or two weeks in advance for to look at all work orders in the system which fit those criteria and then it

populates our schedule board with the information so as we can see we've got an overnight sheding example when it runs it runs at different times it runs you know to create a week schedule it runs to create a nightly schedule for it um which is absolutely fine and what does it Resource it resources different types of things based on the territory or based on the status of the work order Etc and can then go ahead and schedule it now something we've touched already is the concept of inventory because if we think about it we're going

to have products and we're going to have equipment and say spare parts that we need to use for repairs and for servicing so we need to understand Inventory management for basic inventory Requirements many organizations will utilize the inventory module that's included with Dynamics 365 field service however for more complex inventory and pricing requirements fi Services designed to integrate with Erp systems for example common example is integrating with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain management using a pre-built prospector cache template and the capabilities within Dynamics 365 field service around Inventory includes things like warehousing inventory adjustments and transfers

consuming buiding products during the work orders purchasing returns and inventory Journal so we're now going to start taking a step through each of these just at a high level to be able to understand them so if we take a look at warehouses and product inventory so each Warehouse which is a physical location will have an inventory level that can be monitored from within the Warehouse record so as we take a look at the record we can see the quantity that is currently available how much is on hand which is separate to the quantity currently available

the amount of product on order so how much are we product are we ordering in that we need to see it's not yet been delivered to the warehouse we know that's been ordered in the current amount of product that's allocated to things like work orders you know I could have 100 uh Hoses 100 washing machine hoses in but if I've got 30 of them already allocated out to specific work orders I only have 70 that I'm able to use I can't have 100 that I'm able to use CU otherwise the technicians who are going out

those work orders may not have it and that's going to be a problem we can also see the reorder point for the product so we can specify the when product goes that when the quantity of product goes down to a certain level say 20 hoses Washing machine hoses are left then we should order more and we're able to see this across it and we can see the inventory float through warehouses so we can see what the starting quantity is say at the beginning of the day then John who's a field technician comes in and takes

various items and then we can see what the ending quantity is at the end of the day now a warehouse doesn't need to necessarily just be a physical actual Warehouse the warehouse could Also be for instance the field technicians Vans or trucks each of those could be a warehouse especially if they have product that they're going to take with them they're going to take with parts for the servicing and for the maintenance so they would be considered a warehouse as well essentially it's somewhere where we are storing it it's not going to be a shipping

box between places that moves between locations but Vans and trucks doke would be considered A warehouse for Dynamics 365 field service now one thing about inventory is usually it's necessary at some point to carry out adjustments and transfers so what we're doing is we're going to do a if we've got a warehouse we've got items in the warehouse and we're going to go into it and we're going to see we say oh hold on a moment actually the roof leaked in this part and it's corroded some of the items so instead of 100 Taps that

we've Got in place actually you know five of them have problems with it so we need to adjust the inventory now we an inventory adjustment allows them to to adjust the quantity of products in a specific Warehouse or we can turn around and say we're expecting a shipment of a you know of 50 CS to come in and the sinks come in and then we realize hold on the moment they haven't delivered us 50 sinks they've delivered us 75 sinks so we can adjust it upwards so allows us to Take inventory take stock of what

we've actually got and reflect the actual true number of what there is based on the conditions that we need to take into account we also have the ability to transfer and we can use this to be able to transfer product between one Warehouse to another Warehouse so if I have a warehouse warehouse in the north and a warehouse in the South and what I want to do is I want to move 20 washing machines from the north Warehouse to the South Warehouse I can put an inventory transfer in and what that will do is that

will then within the system take the stock out of it will reduce the quantity in the north Warehouse by 20 and it will add it to the South Warehouse obviously somebody needs to actually go and take those washing machines and transfer them physically across but that's how the system would deal with it now we mentioned about obviously stock going low and then we Need to create orders to order new product and this is there to replenish our stock level so what we are able to do is we're able to have a purchase order so purchase

orders allow us to request products from the vendors by creating it and adding the products to it we then obviously need to submit the purchase order for approval to order it it and then when the products actually come in we need to have a receipt of it by creating a purchase order receipt Again if they've you know the manufacturer saying that they're going to ship us 30 washing machines but only 25 arrive we need to we would show the on the receipt that we only received 25 of them now we also may need to handle

returns sometimes a unit could be faulty for instance so we are able to create returns within the system and there are three steps to doing this we create an RMA which is a return merchandise authorization all returns have to be Initiated with rmas designates the product to be returned and all of the other important information such as pricing it also specifies the processing action which is the type of return we then would create an RMA receipt the return Isn't finalized until the receipt is created that we have actually received it back it confirms we have

received the product and what the product was and the quantity of it as well as the date and the person who Handling the receipt and finally inventory and customer asset adjustments are carried out and these adjustments are done automatically in the background so we can handle ordering items we can handle items being returned to us I mentioned about customer assets previously and we have Asset Management capabilities so what we can do is if we're installing equipment at a uh equipment at a customer we're able to log these and store these records as Assets and this

allows us to be able to have essentially inventory not of our own products specifically cuz those are within our warehouse but see what does the customer have at their site so the customer calls up and says they've got this we can go we can double check and we say yep we have that they give us a serial number for instance and we can pull up all the information relating to that serial number off our system this in turn allows us to be able to create Work orders against specific assets and we can track it against

it we know where the asset is located obviously if the customers move the asset around that could uh present a a problem and a challenge but hopefully they haven't done so and it allows us as well to be able to interact with a monitor iot devices when we have connected field service in place so we spoke about connected customer service earlier and if we now take a look at Connected field Service uh we have iot devices that there they can report anomalies they can send alerts it can then go ahead and create work orders based

of that automatically and the key benefits of this is to reduce the down Time by having the devices to diagnose problems before customers aware of an issue or before issues get to be serious it allows us to address the issues Faster by able to monitor them and keeping customers updated with it and device Data and service maintenance data can help make Intelligent Decisions around dispatching technicians with the right expertise availability and proximity to the job again it's about shling in the right people to handle it but we can see the situation developing before it's getting

to a point where by it's going to cause major problems and possibly cause the customer downtime or the whatever the product is to stop working for the customer and the customer is Unhappy allows us to be able to get into that so this is what connected field service is for so with that we've now come to the end of module 4 which is around Dynamics 365 for field service thank you and have a lovely day thanks for sharing all the great information I hope our participants will really benefit from it don't forget to join us

for the third and last part of this session series of exam prep on Microsoft Dynamics 365 fundamentals Customer engagement apps CRM MB 910 we'll see you in the next part of this training bye