Introduction
Services represent specific schedulable items that a company can perform for a customer. For example, a computer company might use services to define types of work that they provide such as tune-ups, virus removal, or data recovery. An automotive service center might define services for oil changes, tire rotations, engine tune-ups, or factory recalls. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service scheduling allows you to set up which services that your organization provides. When creating a service, you can predefine how long it should take and what resources are needed for the service activity.
Create services
You can create services by selecting the New button. When initially creating a service, you'll need to define the following items:
Name - Specify the name of the service.
Initial Status Reason - Specify how the item should appear on the schedule board. You can select Requested or Tentative.
After you have saved the record, the Resource Requirements tab displays. In this tab, you can define the specific details that are related to the resources that are needed for performing the service.
Resource requirements
Each service requires different types of resources to schedule and implement the service. When defining a service, you can specify which types of resources are needed to complete this item. For example, an oil change might only require an automotive technician and a service bay, whereas an engine overhaul might require two technicians, a service bay, and an engine lift.
When defining a service, you can define the required resources for the service. The requirements are grouped together for scheduling, which enables dispatchers to schedule an entire team of resources for a single service activity. For example, in the previously mentioned scenario, an oil change service would be created that includes the requirements for a technician and service bay. An engine overhaul service would include multiple technician requirements, a service bay, and an engine lift.
Occasionally, you'll encounter situations where multiple combinations of resources would be acceptable for a solution. In this case, you can add more subgroups to provide more flexibility.
You can add requirements directly to the main requirement group or to one or more subgroups that might be defined. For example, a senior technician might be able to perform a service, such as an oil change, by themselves, whereas it might take two less-experienced technicians to complete the service. Though the service requires more people, two technicians would be preferred over one senior technician because you might want to keep senior technicians available for more complicated jobs.
To accomplish this scenario, you can set the service to contain two subgroups:
Preferred Oil Change
Technician
Technician
Service Bay
Secondary Oil Change
Senior Technician
Service Bay
When you've created the service, you can specify if all requirements need to be fulfilled or if only some need to be fulfilled. You can accomplish this task by using the Select column, which contains two options:
All - Specifies that all defined requirements need to be fulfilled.
Any - Specifies that only one of the defined requirements needs to be fulfilled.
For example, the preceding image shows that Any was selected for the oil change service, which means that you only need to fulfill the Preferred Oil Change group or the Secondary Oil Change group requirement, but not both. The image also shows that, for each subgroup, you need to fulfill all resource requirements.
Another consideration is the order in which the subgroups and requirements are shown. Because the Oil Change group is set to Any, and the Preferred Oil Change group is listed first, the system attempts to fulfill this requirement first. If it can't fulfill the requirement, it moves to the Secondary Oil Change group, which has only one technician resource.
The grid provides many options to assist in the creation of the individual requirements, including the ability to duplicate requirements, delete requirements, and edit groups, subgroups, and requirements directly inline on the grid. You can define some available settings that are editable on the grid at a group level and an individual requirement level.
Requirement group items that you can define include:
Part of Same - Allows you to define whether the resources should belong to the same organizational unit, resource tree, or location.
Fulfillment Preferences - Defines if fulfillment preferences should be used when the system is suggesting resources.
Organizational Unit - Defines that all resources should come from a specific organizational unit.
Resource categories - Defines which resource role should be associated with this resource.
Make sure that you carefully define the service selection criteria. While you can save a service without defining the criteria, you won't be able to schedule that service.
Additional items to consider at a requirement level are:
Sort Option - Defines how resources should be presented in the search results. The four options that you can choose from are:
None - Does not perform sorting.
Randomized - Presents a randomized available resource.
Most Busy - Presents the available resource that has the most bookings.
Least Busy - Presents the available resource that has the least bookings.
Effort Required - Defines the number of resources that are required for that type. While booking, you can use this option to view all resources who satisfy the minimum effort requirement. For example, if the required effort is defined as 100, only resources with the capacity value of 100 and more will be displayed in the list while you are booking the service in the schedule board.
Activate or deactivate a service
You can make a service available or unavailable for scheduling by activating or deactivating it. To accomplish this task, go to the list of service records, select a service, and then select Activate Service or Deactivate Service in the command bar. You can only deactivate a service if no open or scheduled service activities are associated with it.