Field service: schedule and dispatch technicians to service orders

Field service schedules technician visits for your service orders, with a per-day dispatch board. Mark who works in the field, schedule the visit with date, time and address, assign the technician and track the status. The system prevents double-booking and highlights time conflicts.

Field service connects your service orders to the technicians who go on site. It reuses what already exists: the order is the Service order object, the technician is a tenant user, and skills and capacity come from Resource planning. You only mark who works in the field and schedule the visits.

Mark the technicians

1. Open Field service in the Service group of the menu.
2. Go to the Technicians tab: the list shows every person in the tenant.
3. Check the Field technician box for whoever goes on site. Department and skills appear when the person has a profile in Resource planning.

Schedule a visit

1. On the Dispatch board, pick the day and click Schedule visit.
2. Select the service order, the technician, the visit start and end and the address.
3. Leave Create a reminder for the technician checked to get an automatic activity linked to the order.
4. Click Schedule. The visit lands in the technician's column on that day's board.

Dispatch and track

1. The Dispatch board shows one column per technician with the day's visits in time order.
2. Change the status right on the card: Scheduled, Dispatched, En route, On site, Completed or Canceled.
3. On the Appointments tab you filter by technician and period, reassign the technician and adjust the status in a list.

Access follows the Service module. Scheduling, reassigning and changing status requires a role with write access; read-only roles can view the board without changing it.

Customer communication

The Communication tab sends proactive updates to your customers: appointment reminders, an On my way message with the technician's ETA, a follow-up after the job and a missed-call text-back. Messages go by SMS, email, WhatsApp or in-app.

1. Open the Communication tab in Field services.
2. Under Send a message, pick the event and channel, type the recipient and send. The customer profile is optional.
3. Under Message templates, save your own wording per event and channel; the system uses built-in defaults until you do. Use variables like {{customerName}}, {{eta}} and {{techName}}.

Forms and checklists

The Forms tab builds checklists and inspection forms per trade, with fields of different types (Yes/No, text, number, choice, photo). Filled on a job, each answer can flag a non-conformance, and a supervisor approves or rejects the submission.

1. Open the Forms tab and create a template: name, trade and type (checklist, inspection or form).
2. Add fields with a label and type. Mark the required ones and set Non-conformance when to the answer that should raise a flag (for example fail or false).
3. When a technician fills and submits the form, the system checks completeness and flags non-conformances; a supervisor then approves or rejects it.

Technician routes

The Routes tab builds an optimized visit order for a technician on a given day. Pick the stops from your properties that have coordinates and the system sequences them to minimize driving, showing distance and travel time per leg and the totals.

1. Open the Routes tab, choose the date and the technician, and set the average speed used to estimate time.
2. Check the properties to visit (only those with latitude and longitude appear).
3. Click Build route to get the optimized order; Publish freezes the plan for the day.

Online bookings

The Bookings tab registers booking requests. The system checks the service area and the availability on the requested date, then accepts the request or rejects it with a reason (outside the service area, or no availability). Accepted requests can be confirmed, rejected or converted into a job.

1. Open the Bookings tab and fill the request: customer, phone, address, trade, service area and preferred date and window.
2. Submit it. If the area and availability check out, it lands as New; otherwise it is rejected with the reason.
3. On the list, Confirm or Reject the New requests. Confirmed requests can later be converted into a job.

Replacement opportunities (service to sales)

The Replacements tab turns aging equipment into sales. A scan reads your equipment alerts (age, repeated failures, out of warranty) and materializes a replacement opportunity per equipment, scored by how many risk signals it has, and tracks it through a simple sales pipeline.

1. Open the Replacements tab and click Scan opportunities. Equipment flagged as a replacement opportunity becomes an entry.
2. Work each opportunity: Quote it, then Mark won or Mark lost; or Dismiss the ones you will not pursue.
3. Re-scanning is safe: it refreshes the score and reason without downgrading an opportunity you already moved forward.

Production board (roofing and contractors)

The Production tab runs roofing and contractor jobs on a production board. Each project moves across stages (estimate, permitting, scheduled, in production, punch, closeout, complete), carries a contract value adjusted by approved change orders, and closes out through a punch list.

1. Open the Production tab, create a project with a name and contract value, and select it.
2. Move it across the board stages; toggle Weather hold to pause a job for weather.
3. Add change orders (scope or price changes); approving one adjusts the contract value. Build a punch list and check items off to reach closeout.
4. Track permits (needed, applied, approved, closed) and takeoff quantities per unit right on the project.
5. For storm work, file an insurance claim (carrier, claim number, amount, deductible) and follow it from filed to paid; the net to the customer is the amount minus the deductible.

Commercial service agreements (B2B)

The Commercial tab holds B2B service agreements with the terms that govern commercial work: SLA response time, a not-to-exceed (NTE) amount per work order, whether a PO is required, and an approval threshold. You can evaluate a job against an agreement to see if it is allowed, blocked, or needs approval.

1. Open the Commercial tab and create an agreement: name, SLA response hours, NTE per job, PO required and approval threshold.
2. Use Evaluate a job: pick the agreement, enter the job amount and whether there is a PO.
3. The result shows Allowed or Blocked (over NTE, or PO required but missing), whether it Needs approval (over the threshold), and the SLA due time.
4. Set up recurring inspections (preventive maintenance): give a name and a frequency in months; the system tracks the next due date and flags them Due or Upcoming. Mark one done to advance the next date.
5. Use the multi-site billing rollup to consolidate a customer's invoices across all their sites: billed, paid and outstanding totals, with a per-site breakdown.

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