Service Scheduling in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Out of the box Microsoft Dynamics CRM doesn’t provide much around service scheduling, therefore if your organization plans to use this module it needs to be set up manually. The information below highlights the steps involved:

Services

Create a Service, i.e. define a Service or a Job to be done.  Go to MS CRM > Settings > Business Management > Services 

Click “New” to Create a new service, you can see existing services in the list below

• Default duration is usual time take to perform the service which is editable at the time of booking the Service
• Start activities every … this option allows you to define time slots for the entire day that you provide that Service , for example : for a service with default duration of 30 mins and start activities every hour starting from 9 AM will have time slots such as : 9-9:30 , 10-10:10

 

• How many people are required to perform this task, ex. 2 or 3 engineers
• Whether they need to belong the same geographic region

• Site – Location of the service to be provided
• Facilities/Equipment – a piece of equipment or a facility associated to the service to be provided
• Resource – Microsoft Dynamics CRM User
• Resource Group – A group of users or facilities/resources

Select the number (quantity) required to perform the task and whether they need to be from the same site or not.

After choosing number of people and location details, choose a group of workforce – users who can work to perform this Service, selecting from user, team, resource group or facilities/equipment (you can select as many of these types as needed).

If you have not created a Resource group, you can create one while creating the resource selection rule, this will help to make it easy to add or remove users from the group

You have now successfully created a new service in the system.

Work Hours

The Menu will present the options to set their schedule by day, week or for time off.  Select “New Weekly Schedule” and you will be presented with the following screen which will ask which days the user works, if they observe business closings and if their work hours very or are set.

To edit their work hours/breaks etc…select “Set Work Hours” in blue.  Add Start and Finish timings routine, add break time in between.

Specify any restriction this staff has on the service jobs they can perform, ex. in this case, Mark Harrington cannot participate in “Cleaning Service”

Create a New Service Activity

After setting up workforce – user’s working hours and Service & Resource rules, create a service activity and Schedule it.  Go to MS CRM Workplace > Activities > New > Service Activity  OR Service > Service Calendar > “Schedule.”  

Choose the Service, Customer, Resources (will appear as per resource selection rule for the service on the right side on form assistant)

 

Meg Moss