by Colin Hamilton, Field Service Product Lead
Salesforce Field Service continues to lead the Field Service software market with features that give their customers the industry-best business processes that give them a meaningful and calculable competitive edge. Every Salesforce release brings remarkable updates to existing features and exciting new functionality that helps ensure Salesforce's offering is at the front of the pack when looking at Field Service Management solutions. Each new release brings a host of upgrades and enhancements that further build up Salesforce Field Service's value proposition and let customers and implementers bring out the best solutions for their businesses, not just in terms of use in the field but how it, as an FSM, can be integrated with other business areas using other Salesforce Clouds and even external systems (like ERPs.)
These are some of our favorites - i.e. the ones that we like best - but as always, each release brings a pile of possibilities and both the Spring and Summer '24 releases are no exception. There's so much in it and you can review what the releases bring to the table for Field Service in their entirety here.
Note: Many of the features listed are only available in Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization. There are steps needed to make the transition from the "old" version of Field Service to the "new" version that uses ES&O but with each new feature/update, the list of barriers preventing a customer from making the change gets smaller and smaller.
Artificial Intelligence continues to be the trend and Salesforce has committed to making AI a big part of solutions going forward and that started to take off in the Winter '24 release and changes keep coming in the Spring and Summer '24 releases.
The main reason why we love the potential of Einstein Copilot for Field Service is its potential use conversationally, making the possibilities incredible for ease of use and streamlining processes. Instead of navigating through many screens and tapping a lot, ask-and-answer and voice summaries have the potential to provide great efficiencies for technicians out in the field. Admittedly there are several steps to get to the point where this can be implemented but the "art of the possible" gets the juices flowing for sure - science fiction becomes more and more real, even at work!
We mentioned the pre-work brief in our Winter '24 article and while the message is much the same, Salesforce has updated the name and changed some of the look and feel of it. As mentioned previously, the efficiency gains here can be fantastic, especially when considering that some of the information that a worker might need could be in the Service Appointment, while some in the Work Order, some in Notes, some in Attachments, and even in connected custom objects. This allows for all of that information to be summed up nicely via AI so they can read just one thing that gives them all they need to know when they start their day, before they get to the job, or just when they arrive. This can ultimately lead to fewer truck rolls and improved customer satisfaction if there's less of a chance of missing any important information that is stored in non-obvious locations.
This may seem like a relatively low-benefit feature but we challenge anybody to integrate payment software with the Field Service Mobile App and then come back to tell us how it wouldn't have been easier if Salesforce had their payment service that could play nice with the mobile app. Well, that's the case now, via Salesforce Pay Now. You can build a page using Salesforce Payments and then send a link to the customer where they can make payments using almost any payment method. The Payment Link is mobile-responsive so customers can make payment via their mobile device. No more handing over your mobile phone or having to have a payment processing machine on your person to collect payments. Very cool stuff and very customer friendly. You can even send the link and be on the way to the next job if business process and payment policies allow.
While we must admit that we are a bit partial to the Salesforce UI in terms of look and feel, often customers want their own brand's personality to be shown in the solutions that are built for them using LWCs. Initially, the Salesforce UI was the only one available but now developers can utilize Styles to update how an LWC looks to the end user. This is a nice feature to allow for a client to make a solution feel like their own, whereas sometimes the overarching 'Salesforce-ness' can be a downer, especially to customers that are used to having everything they use look and feel a certain, branded way.
While fairly simple in description, a huge win for our friends using Android devices. The use of barcodes and QR codes is becoming ubiquitous so that option not being available for FS Mobile App users on Android was something that needed to be fixed. Not everyone is an Apple fan and not every company gives out iPhones as company phones.
In our Winter '24 article, we mentioned that the guided process to move from the "classic" Field Service to Enhanced Scheduling & Optimization. It's a big deal to make the move but one that can ultimately yield benefits, especially when it comes to scheduling performance and the new features that Salesforce has added now that the processing is done 'in-house'. Anything making it easier to make the move is much appreciated, so more guidance to help things flow smoother and help the Administrators through the process is definitely welcome.
Matching Skills is one of the cornerstone features of Salesforce Field Service's Scheduling Engine, and while it could do well in finding skills in an "Either/Or" fashion, there was no way to indicate that you would prefer candidates with one of the skills over the other(s) until now. The Skill Preference Service Objective allows just that, so you can indicate inside of a Work Order which Skills are needed but indicate the preferred Skill using the Priority values (remembering that 1 is highest, 10 is lowest!)
The system will then try to find candidates having one or more of the required Skills but will indicate those with the preferred Skills in the calculated scores in Candidates/Book Appointment (or custom scheduling built on the APIs.)
Definitely adds more scheduling flexibility and allows for more possibilities in configuration to meet customer requirements.
Customers who have schedulers/dispatchers who manage or oversee a huge number of appointments can understand how onerous it can be to try and search through the list that appears in the Gantt view of the Dispatcher Console.
While this is in Beta, this feature should allow for improved performance when dealing with large datasets in the list, which caused problems - even failures - when using the filtering function before. Probably not something in use by small or medium-sized customers but when looking at large communications companies, this could be a God-send for their teams managing their Field Service appointments and staff.
One of our clients has indicated to us that the Service Reports they provide their customers are the key to their business - they're what the customer sees and gives them tangible evidence of their job and are the next best impression they get of the company aside from the actual physical work they've done. As a result, that Service Report has to be accurate but also be presented in a way that "shows off" - no typos, visible logos, clean formatting, easy readability, well-placed photos, and more.
Service Documents is a great feature that gives more control and flexibility in terms of the documents being produced as Service Reports (and others) for Field Service. Looking and working on something like creating and editing a Lightning Page, the interface and built-in functions make it much easier for Admins to create and update templates while it also enhancing the overall ability to create Service Reports from said templates. We've had to look for and use other document generation tools in the past (Adobe, Conga, etc.) to fill the gaps when it comes to Service Reports and other documents, so this is a welcome addition to the Salesforce functional portfolio.
Anybody working with Salesforce or any other system - from System Administrator to Business Analyst to Developer to Architect to QA - can tell you horror stories about configuring, building, and testing time zones. Working with time zones is confusing at the best of times and soul-crushing at its worst. While this won't solve all our time zone-related woes, it does make things a little better by allowing for secondary service territory membership time zones to be considered in scheduling automation. A great example is listed in the release notes posting, but basically it gives the flexibility to indicate that a resource services multiple time zones and the system can now consider the operating hours in each time zone when scheduling. These are little things that can make schedulers' lives a lot easier.
The funny thing about this change is that we actually built functionality for a client to do this exact thing, so it's good to know that they weren't the only customers to experience this same type of issue.
The gist of the problem comes down to how precise the travel time estimation is - it does a great job of estimating how long it will take to get from one place to another when scheduling and post-scheduling but there's no "wiggle room". If it believes that travel time will be 1.5 hours, then that's exactly what it is. The problem our client - and others apparently - run into is that if there's traffic or the previous appointment runs long, then the resource will be late and there's no accounting for that possibility. The system says that the previous appointment ends at 10:00 and it will take 1.5 hours to get to the next one so the next appointment starts at 11:30 sharp.
The buffer allows for some cushion between the previous appointment and the next so that while travel time is considered and is generally accurate, if anything happens there's a buffer to ensure that the resource won't be late. If they're early, great. If the last appointment ran late or traffic is terrible, no big deal, there's enough time in the gap between the previous and the next appointment to account for that.
Aside from a custom solution, the next best thing was to build this into the duration of the appointments but that causes havoc when trying to compute efficiencies. Having this buffer available is a great option to account for variability in travel time estimation, because we all know that not everything goes to plan, especially when it comes to travel.
One of the most encouraging things about Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization is the amount of effort Salesforce is putting into the reporting related to issues that are encountered when running scheduling and optimization jobs so that they can be effectively addressed. One of the most disappointing things in technology, and it's pretty much in any platform or system we've been exposed to, is a lack of meaningful and clear error messaging to communicate the root cause of an issue is so that it can be resolved efficiently and effectively. Luckily, Salesforce has identified this as something to work on in Field Service (likely through loud feedback from it's many users) and has implemented better error messaging to help Admins work through the issues encountered, with enough information to be able to tackle them quickly and pointedly. A great step in the right direction - now if only they could do something about error messaging in a few other places...
There are a lot of relevant changes in Salesforce Field Service's work capacity functionality and much of it is likely related to client feedback around ways to make it more flexible and useful for customers. The initial implementation of work capacity was fine for what it was but when we talked to end customers about their needs, often the initial functionality was bypassed and we had to build something custom to make it work. This change is one of a handful related to work capacity in the Summer release but we like it because it gives the ability to add a limit for an entire territory and not just for individual resources. The example in the release notes is a great one - a single weather event can cause complete and utter chaos for schedulers and dispatchers, so the ability to at least proactively try to address it helps those affected. You could also see this being useful in scheduling during high-traffic events like *cough*Dreamforce*cough*. This type of dynamic functionality is needed as workforces become more mobile and the scheduling needs of customers require more adaptability.
We did cover Service Documents above and a quick Summer follow-up addition is the ability to add expressions to rich text components, which gives the option to include related record data into the documents. Seemingly simple but ever-so-powerful, it lets data from related records - like Account - populate automatically into the documents but now with style. A must-have for the customers that we deal with and a perfectly prioritized update for this functionality.
"So what," someone might say, "we can get to Files in the Field Service Mobile App. What's the big deal." But let's say 100 files are automatically related to the job and now you're on site and you have to scroll through those 100 files to find the one or two that you're looking for that have the instructions on what's being done. Now that's a problem, right?
This allows for Field Service Mobile App users to have access to Content Libraries which organize files into folders, making for an improved user experience when finding and getting to the files they need to get the job done. The less time scrolling and searching, the more time that can be spent on the tasks at hand, which is usually what technicians would rather be doing anyway.
So we're techies over here at GyanSys and while we might be wizards with the technology we use at work and at home, many of the technicians that are using the Field Service Mobile App are not as comfortable as we are with the taps, drags, and scrolls. They'd also rather be spending their time actually handling tools and getting the work that a Work Order represents done.
One way to make their lives easier is to reduce the required navigation to view and update work-related data. The Field Service Widget does just that by giving them access to the most relevant information and actions right from their home screen. Even those who are more technologically savvy will appreciate having this right at their figurative and literal fingertips.
For many years there's been a desire to give the technicians - acting as the face of the company in direct communication with the customer - the tools to sell or at the very least pass along sales opportunities to those who do. These technicians are often the ones that identify additional opportunities for product and service deals but either don't feel comfortable in making the sale directly or they don't want to. Their job, at the end of the day, is installing or repairing products and not acting in a Sales capacity.
For those types, Salesforce Field Service gives them the ability to create Leads or Opportunities from the field using the Mobile app - giving them the ability to identify sales opportunities (like upgrades or additional products) but also taking off the pressure of having to close the deal. Also, for larger opportunities, this gets them into the hands of the sales professionals (using all the goodness that Salesforce has to offer) so that those best equipped to make the sale are the ones doing so.
For the others in the field who are gifted and/or skilled at making those deals or at least are comfortable setting the table for the sales professionals, Salesforce is beta'ing the ability to create Quotes directly in the field. This is MUCH NEEDED as a lot of Solution Implementer and developer time has been spent handling this very scenario - since those out in the field often have a good idea of what would be needed to handle a new job that's discussed between themselves and a customer. So instead of having to build an LWC from scratch or use complex FS Mobile Flows or a different AppExchange or external app to build quotes, there will be a Salesforce-built solution that handles this. A very good development and something that will make a lot of customers (and Admins) happy.
As always, there are a ton more in the Spring and Summer '24 releases for Field Service and enormous amounts in these releases for other clouds and Salesforce as a whole. Salesforce continues to get better with each release and these changes help to ensure that the system stays in the lead in terms of CRMs and enterprise platforms as a whole.