Define resources
It's important that organizations can schedule resources to support all the potential scheduling scenarios they provide. To help this, Universal Resource Scheduling provides multiple resource types that can be used to handle everything from, simply booking a room, to more advanced scenarios where we need multiple resource types for the same job. In addition, it defines resources for specific users, accounts, contacts, or pieces of equipment. Resources are defined by switching to the Resource area of the Field Service application and selecting Resources. Resources can also be defined to represent facilities, crews, or pools of resources.
Defining facility resources
When there's a scheduling need for a physical space, you can create Facility resources. Facility resources are helpful when you need to reserve something such as a room for an event or party, or a repair bay at a mechanic shop. Facilities are also useful when you might need to schedule an appointment with a person at a facility, such as an appointment for someone to fix a laptop at a Microsoft retail store, or a wealth management consultation at a bank.
Like people resources, which are associated with records such as users, accounts or contacts. When you create facility or equipment resources, they'll need to be associated with specific facility or equipment records. For example, if you're going to create a facility resource for a training room, you'll first need to make sure that the training room exists as a facility record.
Because facilities represent a physical location such as a conference room or meeting space, they're required to be associated with an Organizational Unit that contains a valid Latitude and Longitude address. Organizational units are used to organize and maintain a company’s business by geography, function or other areas. When you define a Facility resource, it's starting and ending locations need to be set to the organizational unit address.
Crews
Crews are a type of resource that is used when you need to represent a predefined group of people that can be scheduled for items. For example, a crew might be used by a company that provides maid services to represent and define the individual cleaning crews that are sent out on jobs. Crews appear on the schedule board like any other resource. The members of a crew can be displayed on the schedule board, so you can see the overall availability of all the members of the crew. When a crew is scheduled, all the members of the crew are scheduled as well.
When creating a crew, you'll need to define the Crew Strategy. The crew strategy determines how the crew manages its work.
There are three options to choose from:
- Crew Leader Management: The crew leader manages the work of the crew. Consider this option when a crew is made up of multiple people. You can designate more than one user to be a leader and manage the work.
- Crew Member Self-Management: Crew resources can manage their own work. Choose this option for crews that are made up of users who regularly work together, but might not always work together at the same place or time. Self-management also means better time capturing, which is good for organizations who bill for time spent on work.
- Cascade and Accept Cascade Completely: All resources on a crew can manage all the work. It's the ideal option when a crew is made up of one user and the rest of the crew is equipment.
When creating a crew resource, you'll need to define the members of the crew. This is done by selecting the Related tab, choosing Resource's Children and creating a New bookable resource group. Unlike other records in Dynamics 365, when you're defining a crew member, every field on the form is required.
For each crew member you define, you need to provide the following:
- Name: The name of the resource as it appears as part of the crew. For example, install Team 1 - Dave.
- Parent resource: Defines the name of the crew that the resource will be associated with. (This is prepopulated by default).
- Child resource: Defines the bookable resource that you want to associate with the crew.
- From date: The first date that the resource will be available as a member of the crew.
- To date: The last date that the resource will be available as a member of the crew.
- Crew Member Type: Defines the type of member the crew member is. A crew member can be a Leader, Member, or None.
Important
A resource can only be associated with one crew or resource pool for a specific time period. For example, if Ashley is assigned to the maid service crew one 1/1/2023 - 1/31/2023 Ashley can't be in another crew or resource pool during that time period. Only resources with the type of user can be defined as a Leader. A crew can have multiple resources assigned the leader type.
When attempting to schedule a crew for a specific date, only resources that belong to that crew on the dates and times specified will display and be able to be scheduled.
For example: An organization has defined a new crew called Maid Crew 1. They've added the following child resources for the crew.
- Crew 1 Lead: Alan Rock -From: June 1 to December 31
- Crew 1 Member 1: Bernadette Foley -From June 1 to December 31
- Crew 1 Member 2: Clarence Desimone -From June 1 to October 31
- Crew 1 Substitute 1: Dick Cowley From September 1 to December 31.
If a dispatcher attempts to schedule the crew for a job on December 4, the entire crew will be displayed and scheduled since they're all defined as crew members for that date. However, if a dispatcher attempts to schedule the crew for a job on December 12, only Alan, Bernadette, and Dick will be displayed and schedule because Clarence isn't defined as a crew member after October 31.
Since crews are scheduled like any other resource, it's important that your crew has working hours assigned to them. This is done by selecting the Work Hours tab, creating a new working hours schedule. In the following image, the crew’s working hours are set for Monday – Friday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM with a 30-minute break.
Resource Pools
Resource Pools enable schedulers to book requirements to a generic pool without needing to decide which resource will perform the work. We can then reschedule these bookings to pool members on a later date.
There are many reasons why defining resource pools can be useful:
- Prevent over committing: When scheduling jobs, resource pools can act as place holders to block the time off as being committed until the actual resources can be provided.
- Assist in regional dispatching: Enable central dispatchers who oversee multiple regions to use them as place holders, until the specific details can be supplied by a local Resource Manager.
- Capacity planning: We might not know the specific resource yet, but the capacity of a pool can be established, and resources named later. Schedulers can still schedule since the capacity of the pool can be set as if it was a named resource.
- Deliberately enable overbooking to expected cancellations: With resource pools, we can overbook resources with the understanding that customers are going to potentially cancel.
Resource Pools are created the same way you create Crew resources. The primary difference is when you select pool as the type of resource, you need to define the type of resource pool it's going to be. Resource pools are intended to be homogenous resources, meaning that they should all be of the same type. For example, you might have a pool of resources that are electricians, or a pool of rooms that have the same scheduling capacity. Resource pools also have the capability to auto calculate the pool's capacity, meaning how many resources are in the pool.
A resource pool type can be one of the following:
Facility: Represent buildings or locations.
- Facilities must have an organization unit defined for them.
- The start and end location must be set to the Organization Unit that is selected.
Accounts / Contacts/ Users: Represents individual people and items that can be scheduled.
Equipment: Pieces of equipment
Once the resource pool is created, you'll need to define the resource pool's members, by adding Resource Children, and specifying the Work Hours for the Resource Pool.