Field Service - Ali on Tech

Dynamics 365 Field Service and IoT – Technology Stack and Approaches

By Ali | August 24, 2021 by Ali

In the previous article, we looked at the fundamental premise of connecting IoT devices with Dynamics 365 Field Service. Today let’s have a look at various technology options for enabling this conversation between IoT devices and Dynamics 365. There are essentially three different approaches while working with Azure and Dynamics 365 Field Service: Let’s delve into details of each of these approaches for further details: 1. Azure IoT Central with Dynamics 365 Field Service First…

Azure Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 Field Service and IoT – The Complete Guide

By Ali | August 16, 2021 by Ali

Whenever I talk to customers or within #Dynamics365 community, one of the most FAQs is about IoT (Internet of Things). Nothing garners as much interest as this one. Is IoT just a buzzword or a reality? How does it work with Field Service – or why in the first place IoT has anything to do with Field Service? Does it require any specialized skill set? I intend to cover all about IoT and Dynamics 365…

Dynamics 365

2021 Release Wave 2 Plan – Top 5 Features [2/2]

By Ali | July 31, 2021 by Ali

Continuing the review of Release Wave 2, this is the second post in this series. As I am going through 2021 Release Wave 2 documents (Dynamics 365 and Power Platform), it is great to see so many amazing features are on the way. It is evident that innovation and product enhancements are underway in all three areas – propelling the entire platform’s growth: Let’s jump on to few more ‘Top 5’ features: Thanks for reading!…

Dynamics 365

2021 Release Wave 2 Plan – Top 5 Features [1/2]

By Ali | July 21, 2021 by Ali

The plan for Release Wave 2 is out last week and it is time to check out the exciting list of all the amazing features arriving later this year. Since this is a long document (in addition to a similar plan for Power Apps), this post will be an-going series as I read, rank and share top 5 features per product/app. Are you ready? 😀 More to come later.. watch this space. Thanks for reading!…

Dynamics 365

Exploring and Setting up ‘Track Technician Location’ in 30 minutes

By Ali | June 29, 2021 by Ali

One of the *biggest* and *flashiest* highlights of the latest release wave (2021 Release Wave 1) is the ability for customers to (a) view arrival times, (b) see a live view of a technician on the way in a map, and (c) receive emails/SMS notifications. All of this further solidifies Dynamics 365 Field Service’s position as the market leader in this space and therefore, I couldn’t hide my excitement when I saw this feature arriving…

Dynamics 365

Work Order Resolutions

By Ali | June 15, 2021 by Ali

One of the standard requirements for Field Technicians is to record ‘what’ happened after they finished the work. This ‘what’ relates to two things: 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…

Dynamics 365

Quickly Create New ‘Incident Types’

By Ali | June 7, 2021 by Ali

“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

How to Hide Tax Fields? 🤔

By Ali | May 27, 2021 by Ali

Do you calculate taxes in Dynamics 365 Field Service? In my experience, most of the implementations do not use this feature due to several reasons, such as: Don’t take me wrong, tax calculations from products to services, and from work orders to agreements, is one of the strongest features of Dynamics 365 Field Service. However, since this feature is not used in many implementations, often developers have to hide these fields to improve user experience.…

Dynamics 365

Quick Tip: How to enable maps on your Dynamics 365 environment?

By Ali | May 26, 2021 by Ali

You set up a brand new Dynamics 365 environment, create a Bookable Resource and are pumped up to see map and routing work on the mobile app, but then you see the following error on a map – sounds familiar? Map is disabled for this organization. This was a story of my life in the last couple of hours – so thought to document resolution steps to save time in future 😊. Step 1 Go…

Dynamics 365

Unpacking the new Self Scheduling Portal

By Ali | May 25, 2021 by Ali

There are good days and then there are very good days in the life of consultants. Probably arrival of Self-Service Scheduling Portal (albeit in preview) falls in the later such events. The reasons are many but top of all is the fact: this was among the top of most requested features in Dynamics 365 Field Service. I have seen with many implementations, once customers see, feel and touch the value that Dynamics 365 product in…