Manage field appointments to address your business needs. Use a scheduling flow to schedule, reschedule, or cancel a field appointment where a service resource travels to the customer’s location.
Required Editions
| Available in: Lightning Experience |
| Available in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions |
| User Permissions Needed | |
|---|---|
| To schedule, reschedule, or cancel field appointments: | Workforce Scheduling Field Resource OR Workforce Scheduling Dispatcher |
Field appointments require a service resource to travel to the customer, so the scheduling flow works with the customer’s address and service territory. A service territory defines the area in which service resources serve customers, and the operating hours on the service territory define the time zone for the slots. The scheduling flow operating hours, resource availability, and Account operation hours are used to validate the visiting hours for when a service can be provided for an account. The scheduling flow ranks candidate time slots based on scheduling considerations defined in your active scheduling policy, such as skills, availability, and travel time. The highest-graded slots receive the Ideal and Recommended tags to help you choose the best option. The default scheduling policy and default operating hours for the slot windows, used to generate time slots, are defined in Setup, under Workforce Scheduling > Scheduling and Optimization. You can select a different policy in the flow. The scheduling flow also uses data from related records, including Preferred Resource, Visiting Hours, Excluded Resource, Required Resource, and Entitlement. You don’t enter this data in the flow. For visits, the flow derives this data from the Account. For service appointments, it pulls the data from the Account, Asset, or Location. The Visit record shows a related list of the derived resource preferences, which points to the resource preferences on the Work Order.
Add the appropriate Workforce Scheduling flow and appointment components to supported record pages and actions. In Flow Builder, clone the standard flows to customize fields, default values, and screens.
Schedule a Field Appointment
Schedule a new field appointment (visit) for a customer. The scheduling flow assigns a qualified resource who travels to the customer’s location.
- Navigate to the Case or Application Form record page from which you want to schedule an appointment.
- Select the record.
- Click Schedule New Appointment.
- Select a Work Type. The work type defines the type of work being performed (for example, annual maintenance, consultation, home inspection, or installation) and determines the requirements for completing it, such as required skills, duration type, due date, and estimated duration.
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Under Appointment Details, set the Scheduling
Method to Field.
The methods displayed here are controlled by the associated work type and its scheduling method. For more information, see Create Work Types in Salesforce Go.
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Enter the appointment details.
- Customer Address: the address where the appointment takes place.
- Service Territory: the territory that covers the customer’s address. The scheduling flow uses the territory to match resources who work in the area.
- Earliest Start Permitted: the earliest date the appointment can begin. Defaults to today.
- Due Date: the latest date the appointment can be completed. This is taken from the work type. If it doesn’t exist, the org level setting is used.
- Subject: a brief summary of the work.
- If the scheduling object is Visit, Visit Priority: Low, Medium, High, or Critical. This is mapped to a numeric priority behind the scenes.
- If the scheduling object is Visit, Special Instructions: access codes, safety hazards, or other notes the resource needs at the location.
- Click Next.
- Select a time slot from the graded list of available slots.
- The list is sorted by grade by default, with the highest-scoring slots at the top. To sort chronologically instead, select Sort by Time.
- To narrow the list, apply Filter by Date.
- To score slots against a different policy, change the Scheduling Policy to rerun the search.
- The Ideal tag marks the highest-graded slot or slots. The Recommended tag marks slots that share the next-highest distinct grade.
- If no slots are available, switch to a different scheduling policy, or click Back and adjust the Earliest Start Permitted or Due Date, and rerun the search.
- Select a time slot and click Next.
- Verify the account (customer information), and the date and time. The Auto-Assigned To value indicates that the resource is assigned automatically when the appointment is scheduled.
- Click Confirm & Schedule.
The scheduling flow creates the Visit and its underlying scheduling records (Service Appointment and Work Order), assigns a qualified resource, and updates the resource’s schedule. A confirmation appears on-screen, and the customer receives a notification.
Reschedule a Field Appointment
Change the time slot of an existing field appointment. The scheduling flow reschedules the appointment.
- From the Visit record, or from the field appointment in the Operations Console, click Change Time Slot.
- Under Original Appointment Details, confirm the work type, date range, and slot duration.
- Under New Time Slot, select a slot from the graded list. The same Scheduling Policy, sort, and filter controls from the initial scheduling flow are available here.
- Click Confirm & Reschedule.
The scheduling flow updates the appointment with the new time slot and reassigns the resource if needed. A confirmation appears on-screen, and the customer receives a notification.
Cancel a Field Appointment
Cancel a field appointment when it’s no longer needed. The scheduling flow releases the resource’s time and notifies the customer.
The cancelled appointment’s status is set by the org-level default status setting. For more information, see Set Default Statuses for Categories.
- From the Visit record, or from the field appointment in the Operations Console, click Cancel Appointment.
- Enter a Cancellation Reason.
- Optionally, add notes with additional context.
- Click Cancel Appointment.
The appointment is removed from the Gantt, the assigned resource’s schedule frees up, and the customer receives a notification with the cancellation reason.