“What is the single most-effective productivity hack that exists in the world today?” Somebody responded, “Copy-Paste” to the question above – and at least, to me that makes a lot of sense. Copy-paste does have a literal meaning (which is also effective, if done smartly 😃) but more abstractly, copy-paste means to reuse previous work or maximize outcomes of already expended efforts. One way to do this is to use: templates.

In the world of Dynamics 365 Field Service, templates are called ‘Incident Types’. These are service templates that correspond to those services that are often delivered by field service organisations while using the same materials, checklists, series of steps etc. The logic dictates and experience has shown that a bulk of services (~80%-90%) in any organisation comprises of such repeatable but common set of work or service types. Dynamics 365 Field Service makes life easier for planners and schedulers to set up these templates once (with products, services, service tasks etc.) and then reuse them when creating new Work Orders.

This post reviews a new feature, introduced as part of 2021 Release Wave 1, which now allows creating Incident Types from Work Orders itself. Why this is a big deal? Well, previously you need to set up these templates (read: Incident Types) first and then use them. This might be difficult sometimes if not all templates are properly identified. Now with this new feature, you can start to create Work Orders and when you feel a certain Work Order is a representation of ‘repeatable work’, you can click on this new feature to create a template from the work order itself and use that template in future! Pretty cool, isn’t it 😎.

Set up and Play

Step 1

Create a new Work Order and make all the usual data entry and selections:

Optionally select any existing Incident Type

Add Products, Services and Service Tasks.

Step 2

Click on the new ‘Create Incident Type’ button on the top:

This will open a window similar to below image.

This window lets us select which ‘parts’ of the existing Work Order (such as Products, Services, Service Tasks etc.) should be added in the new Incident Type by Dynamics 365 Field Service. I think this is the best part of this feature as it really hands over the control of the feature to users to properly configure templates, based on business patterns. This is truly awesome 💪. Click on the button to create new Incident Type:

Step 3

When you click Yes on the above message (or navigate through Settings -> Incident Types), you will see a brand-new Incident Type with all the constituents (Products, Services, Service Tasks etc.) as they were selected in previous screen. This Incident Type can be used in new Work Orders now.

Conclusion

Does this impact an existing Work Order in any way? No, it doesn’t. The new Incident Type is created for future use. Lastly, I think this is one of those features in this release wave which is going to be used extensively. For reading further on Incident Types, have a look at this Microsoft article. Happy D365-ing.

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Thanks for reading!

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