Every Visit in Workforce Scheduling has an underlying Service Appointment and Work Order
that the scheduling engine reads and writes. When you create a Visit, Workforce Scheduling
creates these underlying records automatically. Users see and act on the Visit; the scheduling
engine acts on the Service Appointment. Visit fields are mapped to Service Appointment fields so
that these records stay in sync.
Required Editions
| Available in: Lightning Experience |
| Available in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions |
When a user schedules a new Visit (creates a Visit), Workforce Scheduling creates the
underlying Service Appointment and parent Work Order automatically. The Work Order inherits the
Visit’s account, contact, and address. A Service Appointment carries the fields the scheduling
engine reads and writes: Scheduled Start, Scheduled
End, Assigned Resource, Status,
Priority, Arrival Window, Work
Type, and Geolocation.
The Visit references (links to) both underlying records through lookup fields. The Service
Appointment and Work Order behind a Visit don’t appear in the Operations Console, only the
Visit does. When a Service Appointment is associated with a Visit, Workforce Scheduling hides
it from the Service Appointment list, the Operations Console Gantt, and the map view. The
underlying Service Appointment record is still queryable through the API, and exportable through reports. This gives the
scheduling engine a record to act on while keeping the Visit as the record users see.
Updates flow in one direction:
- A user creates or edits a Visit.
- The scheduling engine reads fields from the Visit and writes the change to the underlying
Service Appointment.
- The scheduling engine runs the requested action against the Service Appointment.
- The Service Appointment’s assigned resource, scheduled time, and status flow back to the
Visit.
On the Visit record page, the assigned resource, scheduled time, and status are read-only —
users see the current state without opening the Service Appointment. Reports and API queries
against the Service Appointment object return the underlying records alongside any other
Service Appointments.
The data model object mapping between Visits and Service Appointments is defined by the
standard Context Service definition that ships with Workforce
Scheduling.
