Resource Scheduling Optimization overview
Organizations that are using Dynamics 365 Field Service can schedule items in two ways:
Manually - Schedule items manually by using the schedule board in Universal Resource Scheduling.
Semi-Automated - Schedule Assist identifies qualified resources and offers time suggestions.
Both methods are excellent options for scheduling items. The challenge with both options is that it's almost impossible for individuals to manually schedule large quantities of work orders in a way that maximizes agent productivity and minimizes expenses to keep costs low. Many organizations turn to automated scheduling solutions to assist with these more complex scheduling scenarios. With automated scheduling, dispatchers can focus their attention on handling the scheduling anomalies that occur throughout the day.
Resource Scheduling Optimization (RSO) is an add-on capability for the Dynamics 365 Field Service application that enables organizations to automatically schedule work orders for the most appropriate resources. Organizations can optimize bookings to minimize travel time, maximize working hours, schedule the most qualified technician, and more, based on their configured objectives such as "minimize travel time" and "maximize working hours."
Benefits of using Resource Scheduling Optimization
The benefits of using RSO are:
Automated scheduling - Automatically schedule most requirements to save time and allow dispatchers to focus on exceptions and billing.
Achieve scale - Dispatchers can manage more resources, enabling the business to scale up the resources that they manage.
Customer satisfaction - Improved efficiency drives more predictable arrival and completion times, and seamlessly schedules alternate technicians for urgent situations.
Technician efficiencies and reduced cost - Fitting more appointments into working hours drives revenue and reduces overtime costs.
Also, matching work orders and technician skill sets reduces the cost of lost appointments.
Reduced fuel consumption and less vehicle maintenance - Ensuring that your technicians are taking the shortest possible route with turn-by-turn directions reduces fuel consumption and wear and tear on vehicles.
For example, in many organizations, if each field technician saves one tank of gas a month, the savings can typically surpass the cost of RSO.
Improved customer retention - Giving preference to higher-priority work orders helps avoid service level agreement (SLA) penalties and helps you meet customer service commitments.
How Resource Scheduling Optimization works
Resource Scheduling Optimization (RSO) starts by looking at an organization's resources and what makes them unique. Next, it looks at the scheduling requirements for the items that need to be scheduled. It provides an optimized schedule based on optimization objectives that the business defines. For example, maximizing technician working hours, using the most qualified technician, and minimizing travel time.
For example, an organization that services air conditioners receives a call that an air conditioner at an assisted living facility breaks on the hottest day of the year. Because many residents likely have health issues that heat and humidity affect, it's critical that the closest qualified technician is sent over immediately.
After a work order for this request is created, RSO could be triggered. It would look at the scheduling requirements for the air conditioner repair. RSO would also consider the skills and certifications that are required to fix this item. It also factors in where the customer is located and if any other restrictions exist that could affect who is scheduled.
Next, RSO identifies which resources are skilled and/or certified to work on that brand of air conditioner. If it identifies multiple resources, then it looks at factors such as technician availability and location in relation to the item needing to be scheduled.
RSO returns an optimized schedule where the most appropriate resource is scheduled to fix the broken air conditioner.
How RSO can be used
While every organization has different scheduling needs and desired outcomes, several common situations can be considered starting points for more specific scenarios where an organization might use RSO.
These scenarios typically include:
Overnight scheduling - Typically involves creating an optimization schedule that runs in the evenings or after hours. After-hours jobs typically involve larger amounts of data, such as optimizing resources, requirements, and bookings for the next day or, in some cases, the following week.
Intraday scheduling - Used to schedule or optimize items as the day progresses. This scenario typically involves creating a schedule that runs multiple times during a specific day, such as every hour. This scenario might be used to schedule new high priority items.
Condition-based scheduling - This option doesn't use predefined schedules to run. New items are scheduled, or existing items are modified based on conditions that are being met. For example, an item that is flagged as an emergency might be scheduled right away.
Cancellation and delays - Used when a cancellation or delay is going to affect only one individual resource. Organizations can optimize the schedule for one specific resource, as needed, for the time frames that they specify.
Simulations - Lets organizations run predefined jobs in a simulated manner to evaluate the results before they commit them to the schedule. If they like what they see, they can choose to apply the simulation.
Getting started
Organizations must have Resource Scheduling Optimization installed and configured into a Dynamics 365 environment that is running Field Service. After the solution is installed and configured, RSO begins to optimize and schedule items based on how it's configured.
The following image provides a high-level overview of the data flows.
After the solution is deployed to an organization, it should take the following steps, which provide further detail of the previous graphic.
Configure Resource Scheduling Optimization
The organization defines what objectives and constraints are most important to their business. For example, an organization ranks the importance of minimizing travel time versus maximizing work hours versus high priority appointments. This process is done with no-code configurations.
The organization defines which resources, requirements, and bookings should be optimized by using no-code configurations.
Run Resource Scheduling Optimization profiles - Optimization jobs are sent to the Resource Scheduling Optimization service. This task can be completed in multiple ways:
By using the schedule, for example, every morning at 8:00 AM
By using triggers, for example, when a customer cancels a job
On command with a Run Now option
The service requests data and receives data - All the records (resources, requirements, and/or bookings) in Dynamics 365 that match the conditions that are defined in the optimization scope are sent to the service for optimization.
View results - View results on the schedule board and mobile devices. Dispatchers see optimized appointments across all resources on the interactive schedule board. Field agents see their optimized daily and weekly appointments on their mobile device.