Let me continue my blog series about FieldOne, from Microsoft – this time by start introducing the first steps of configuring the solution after installing it and trying to build up a short checklist for configuring FieldOne Sky solution.

Because of the Configuration Part will take more than one action – I decided to split topics into multiple articles and finally summarize it as a checklist that you can reuse while setting up your environment.

Resources

The very first task right after installing the solution is to configure your Resources. So what are Resources? Resources are anything that needs to be scheduled, such as:

• Users,
• Crews,
• Service Centers,
• Company Assets (Equipment),
• Accounts or
• Contacts

For  organizing and structuring your various Resources, FieldOne Sky is introducing Resource Categories. Examples could be: Operators, Trucks, Supervisors or a Technician.

Once you create a new Resource you actually notice that the Facility/Equipment Entity has been customized and will be reused for setting up your Resources. As this technique allows to setup multiple types for Resources, you will find a field called Resource Type.

A Resource Type can be either one per Record as of:

• User: meaning the resource is a member of your organization who has a license and access to FieldOne Sky

• Account or Contact: resources that are not directly a part of your organization, but that you subcontract to

• Company Asset: equipment

• Service Center

• Crew: any collection of Resources. Examples: two or more workers or a group of workers and equipment

If you select one of the above types, you will notice some modifications done in real-time on the form, where some fields become visible and others are hidden.

Addresses

While not a required attribute, you can select a start and an end location from an option list. Depending on the selected option this address will be used for FieldOne Sky service.

Working with Customer Equipment

If you´re working with equipment such as Spare Parts that you might sell in a maintenance scenario, make sure you also setup a Warehouse.

Skills

As the FieldOne Sky service – for instance the Scheduling Assistance needs to know about Skills that the Resource has it is mandatory to associate Skills to Resources once they are saved with a name and all the required fields. Skills are maintained in a Sub-Grid

Work Hours

Don´t forget to select the correct time zone this Resource should be scheduled in. And also make sure that if you selected a User as a Resource Type that you configure the Work Hours on the Resource entity as related entity. This sometimes can be confusing as a company could already work with Work Hours related to their User entity. But as a reminder, those are not used, when you list the Resource inside the Schedule Board.

Territories

Notice that while setting up my environment – I might have found a bug inside the system where I was able to associate the Resource to multiple Territories not having a name. This was done by using the + sign and adding new Territories. The follow-up issue was, that I could have created the same Territory twice and therefore associated my Resource twice to the same Territory.

Notes

To optimize and calculate Routes, the system needs to have geocoded Addresses. So make sure the selected Address Type for Start- and End-Location on the Resource has been geocoded.

Keep in mind that a Warehouse can be a Truck or a Distribution Center as well.

Conclusion

While working with the Facility/Equipment entity inside the system you really feel the pain about the not upgraded form design. Again not the fault of FieldOne, from Microsoft – I wished this will be updated soon and it feels more natural in a CRM 2015 Update 1 Online or CRM 2016 Online environment to work with the Facility/Equipment entity.

I found some bugs inside the solution that can be solved by setting up a simple process for instance and setting the name of the Resource Territory correctly. And also to help manage that Administrators are not creating the same Territory twice like I did.

As I said there a multiple tasks of configuration – so watch out for my next article