One of the standard requirements for Field Technicians is to record ‘what’ happened after they finished the work. This ‘what’ relates to two things:
- Log of the work (fixing, maintenance, installation, work around etc.) performed, and more importantly;
- Record any future implications of the work performed
This requirement was usually met using ‘Work Order Summary’ field on Work Order, Status/Sub-status or a combination of these options but now an introduction of ‘Work Order Resolution’ opened new avenues. In this post today, I am going to explore this feature.
What is Work Order Resolution
Resolutions is a new table in Dynamics 365 Field Service. It links with Work Order and also can be related to Incident Types. You can find it under Settings -> Resolutions.
How to Setup
Click ‘New’ to create a new record. I am calling my first resolution record as ‘Standard maintenance resolved the issue’.
Notice a second tab called ‘Incident Type Resolutions’? This is an excellent but an optional feature where you can link certain resolutions with specific incident types. For instance, you can only ‘replace batteries’ (resolution) of ‘electric car maintenance’ (incident type), therefore it will make sense to relate them. In real life, you may have some ‘Incident Type’-specific resolutions while others could be generic.
In this particular example, I am linking my resolution to a specific incident type. Go to the next tab and click New to create a new record, select incident type and click Save:
You can similarly link this same resolution with multiple incident types:
Next, lets create one more resolution record:
How to Use
Lets create a Work Order now:
Go to resolutions. A resolution record can be added both from web (by Dispatcher, most likely) or Field Technicians on mobile. If any Incident Type specific resolutions are defined, then you will only see those records. Alternatively, you can create a new Resolution record too:
Once resolution is selected, you can also see that under Related Records:
Last but not the least, resolution form also contains a ‘Customer Asset’ field while enables dispatcher or Field Technician to select any asset.
Conclusion & Further Reading
I think the design of Work Order Resolution is elegant as it allows you to be both very generic (resolution not defined against any incident type) and very specific (resolution record per incident type and also per asset). The reality could be on any ends or in the middle of this spectrum – based on business requirements.
For further reading, have a look at Microsoft Docs.
Thanks for reading!
Feel free to share your feedback, I’d love to hear your thoughts 😊
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