Connected Field Service with Azure IoT Hub – The Setup
This post is part of a series on Dynamics 365 Field Service and IoT In today’s post, we are going to set up “Connected Field Service” with Azure IoT Hub. A quick recap from the last two posts: We started this series by having a look at the raison d’etre of using IoT with Dynamics 365 Field ServiceNext, we took a satellite view of various approaches with respective technology… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s Article on...
Dynamics 365 Field Service and IoT – Technology Stack and Approaches
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com This post is part of a series on Dynamics 365 Field Service and IoT 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… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s Article...
Dynamics 365 Field Service and IoT – The Complete Guide
Photo by Ruiyang Zhang on Pexels.com 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?… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
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2021 Release Wave 2 Plan – Top 5 Features [2/2]
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: each product is getting stronger… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
2021 Release Wave 2 Plan – Top 5 Features
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. <hr class=”wp-block-separator”… Continue Reading...
Demystifying Dual-Write
Photo by Kulbir on Pexels.com How can we make Dynamics 365 CE talk to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations? The answer to the question is getting more and more important as: many solutions being developed on Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform are hybrid,for getting digital feedback loop completed, the idea of ‘one interface’ working end to end is extremely important, and having data view… Continue Reading Ali...
Exploring and Setting up ‘Track Technician Location’ in 30 minutes
Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com Part of a series on review of all the new and amazing “2021 Release Wave 1” features 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… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
Work Order Resolutions
Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com Part of a series on review of all the new and amazing “2021 Release Wave 1” features One of the common requirement 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… Continue...
Quickly Create New ‘Incident Types’
Part of a series on review of all the new and amazing “2021 Release Wave 1” features “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…...
How to Hide Tax Fields? 🤔
Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com 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: Services (Work Orders) being managed by Dynamics 365 Field Service are being provided to internal customers (eg. servicing internal assets) or services are not taxable in the first place… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s Article on...
Quick Tip: How to enable maps on your Dynamics 365 environment?
Photo by Andrew Neel on Pexels.com 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… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
Unpacking the new Self Scheduling Portal (preview) feature
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… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
How to create a follow-up Work Order?
Photo by Anete Lusina on Pexels.com This is a quick “How-To” article on an oft-used scenario in field service organisations: how to create a follow-up work order for future work? The ‘Why’ This may happen for several reasons, such as: Technician does a quick workaround fix today and is wanting to book a future work for parts replacement, field service staff installs a new part… Continue Reading...
Essential Azure for Dynamics 365 Professionals
Since it is becoming more common that the solutions built on Dynamics 365 are hybrid (multiple first-party apps, use Power Apps app, PCF etc) and integration is becoming cheaper and easier (thanks to 100s of connectors), I talked about “Essential Azure for Dynamics 365 professionals” in Power Platform 24 event last week. We looked at a few problem statements (common challenges in… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s Article on...
The new Work Hours calendar – review of 2021 Release Wave 1 Enhancements
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com The heart of every field service-related business (sales, service or operations) is ‘scheduling’. If you do it well, customers are happy, assets are up and working, and faults are happening less frequently (descending rate of failures) and getting fixed quickly. In this backdrop, anything related to ‘scheduling’ is of paramount importance to keep the entire… Continue Reading...
Many shades of Dynamics 365 Alert Notifications
Photo by Ono Kosuki on Pexels.com Long time ago (read web 1.0 era) there was a time when systems alerts meant sending emails to users. That led to ’email deluge’ with Dynamics 365 (err.. CRM in those times) sending emails to users on every new lead, case or order getting created in the system. Thankfully that time has gone and now we have actually so many smart ways to send alerts that it… Continue Reading Ali...
Out of Stock Products – can I use them?
Photo by ELEVATE on Pexels.com like implementing Dynamics 365 Field Service for clients in various industries because, in any field service organisation, there are literally dozens (if not hundreds) of rules, approvals and specific processes, and therefore every implementation is unique in many ways. It also underlines how broad and deep the landscape of the product is, to be able to fulfil… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
Implementing Dynamics 365 Field Service – 3 anti-patterns
Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com Anti-patterns are generally defined as a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. These are those commonly suggested and used solutions, which actually don’t work although they may seem like working. They are usually a product of gut-feeling, imperfect analogies (comparing the… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s Article...
How to setup & install Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile app
The new Dynamics 365 Field Service app arrived in 2020 and is almost there (as of February 2021) in terms of features parity with the old app (called Xamarin app now in the Microsoft documentation). This new app is more native to the Microsoft platform as it ‘plays’ a model-driven app developed in Power Platform. Therefore, developing, configuring and administering this app is easier and… Continue Reading Ali...
Understanding Product Types in Dynamics 365 Field Service
Photo by Afta Putta Gunawan on Pexels.com How do products work in Dynamics 365 Field Service? Let’s look at three examples: Imagine we work in a fictitious Atlantis Coffee Servicing company where we install coffee machines, refill machines and fix if they are broken. To keep it simple, let’s consider the following three services: Install a new coffee machine: Coffee machines is a… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
Checking out ‘Check Access’
Imagine going to work desk (aka kitchen top for me) in the morning and finding a new gadget, stationary item or something useful. Dynamics 365 is a little like that, recently — with a stream of enhancements and new features (big and small) are arriving subtly as part of Dynamics 365 product updates, Power Platform updates, and Dataverse enhancements. One recent one is ‘Check… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s Article on...
Scottish Summit and Connected Field Service
As my binge watching of Scottish Summit 2021 continues, today I came across awesome session of Kyle Mclendon on ‘Alternative Design patterns for Connected Field Service‘. The session was full of valuable original content on IoT, CFS and architectures from POC (proof of concept) to real-life implementations. This was the first speaking session of Kyle in any conference, which makes it all… Continue Reading Ali...
Understanding “Products to Assets” process in Dynamics 365 Field Service
Photo by Gustavo Fring on Pexels.com For field service organisations, once product is installed at client site, it actually becomes an asset from the operations perspective (since it needs to be serviced and maintained in future). These assets are then inspected (Inspections), maintained (Agreements and Work Orders), and then monitored (Connected Field Service) – all of these are features… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
How to Inspections in Dynamics 365 Field Service?
Photo by Field Engineer on Pexels.com This is a curated post to share best resources to explore, understand and use one of most amazing feature of Dynamics 365 platform: Inspections in Field Service. “Inspections” is the only option (other than Customer Voice) in Dynamics 365 for business administrators to design a form, end users to fill it up, and then business users to be able to see… Continue Reading Ali...
Understanding Security & Permissions in Field Service
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com This article is part of a series on Field Service for Beginners Dynamics 365 Field Service, like its other Dynamics 365 siblings, comes with a bunch of security roles and field security profiles. These out-of-the-box security configurations are then updated and tailored in each implementation. This article is to have a look at these roles & profiles, and… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
Technician Service Reports
Photo by Lukas on Pexels.com Among the latest and greatest in Dynamics 365 Field Service is the introduction of Service Reports. It is very common for service technicians to send a report on maintenance work, installations etc., once the work is completed, with detailed items of products/services, comments, next service date etc. All these information is part of Dynamics 365 Field Service… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
2021 Release Wave 1 – Summary of new features from end-users perspective
Photo by Startup Stock Photos on Pexels.com As most of us were still exploring features released in the previous wave, Dynamics 365 development team has already published ‘2021 Release Wave 1’ document earlier this week. As I started reviewing Field Service related features, I thought to do a “features summary” a bit differently this time. Instead of looking at features separately, I’ve… Continue...
Multi-session, multi-tab user experience in Dynamics 365
Photo by Ryutaro Tsukata on Pexels.com Imagine a user experience in Dynamics 365 where: you could open tabs within same browser tab and then easily navigate without losing context,keep a few most frequently used entities, dashboards etc. pinned as tabs,open multiple tabs for a session eg. to process a case, open account profile, contact profile, and knowledge baseif interrupted during a… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s Article...
How to setup Location Tracking in new Dynamics 365 Field Service App
One of the eagerly-waited features in new Dynamics 365 Field Service app was the ability to track the location of bookable resources (aka technicians) from the field. The feature was not only required from a compliance perspective in many industries but also has practical benefits such as informing customer while a technician is on the way, ensuring ‘access’ is ready before technicians reach… Continue Reading Ali...
Smart Reports and Analytics in Dynamics 365 Field Service
Dynamics 365 Field Service is a data-rich system. Imagine just a scenario of a resource picking up a scheduled job in the mobile app, changing the status from Scheduled to Traveling and then from Traveling to In Progress – this leads to system capturing the following data and resulting analytics: Travel time per Booking/Work OrderTotal work time per Booking/Work OrderTotal work hours of… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
How to make a copy of Model-driven Power Apps app?
Working on a new Dynamics 365 project or creating a new (model-driven) Power Apps for your customers? One of the first few things to do is to setup a new app. Particularly in the context of Dynamics 365, this “new app” approach makes a lot of sense as it enables a more personalised and tailored user experience for users while hiding all those features and screens which are not part of the… Continue Reading Ali...
Better Calendar Control to Manage Resource Requirements
Resource Requirement is to a Planner what laptop is to a Programmer. Okay this is a bit too cliched but the fact is, as a planner, you’d mostly work on these three entities in Dynamics 365: Bookings,Resources, andResource Requirements A Resource Requirement record sits at the heart of URS and Field Service. The record basically defines the shape and form of the booking to fulfil the… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
Can Field Service handle new iPhones? – Using Asset Properties
Sorry for cheeky title < p class=”has-drop-cap”>New iPhones are launched and the whole world is going gaga about them. In the other news and equally exciting, Field Service’s 2020 Release Wave 2 is arriving with new features every couple weeks. The latest feature is the introduction of Asset Properties in Field Service. I thought to give it a try by modelling the properties of a new iPhone model. <...
4 TILs about Dynamics 365 Field Service – 2020 Release Wave 2
Photo by Andrew Neel on Pexels.com I was exploring Dynamics 365 Field Service over the weekend and it was very exciting to see all the new features – big and small updates – on both web and mobile. I also checked the mobile app after a couple months but between then and now, a lot of exciting things happened (clues: MS Ignite and stream of new videos on the official channel of Dynamics 365… Continue Reading Ali...
Subgrids ➡ Dialogs on Work Order
Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com Can UX be quantified? I think one way to assess usability is to count the number of clicks required to complete a functional activity in the system. In the context of Dynamics 365 Field Service, for example, this could be creating a Work Order, scheduling, setting up a servicing schedule for assets etc. So then the question is – how good is the… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
Functional Locations
Photo by Aksonsat Uanthoeng on Pexels.com Note: This is a preview feature; part of 2020 Release Wave 2. Imagine we are implementing Dynamics 365 Field Service for facilities management of a residential complex. The complex includes a couple buildings, park, swimming pool etc. Our client manages all the electrical and mechanical aspects of all the assets. Now as the project commences, one… Continue Reading Ali Khan’s...
Hidden Gems of Dynamics 365 Field Service
I loved talking about “Hidden Gems” of Dynamics 365 Field Service in Field Service Bootcamp event. Following are the slides and video from the event. Hope you find this useful. If you have any follow-up question, comment or just want to say Hi, feel free to contact and I would love to chat . Video Slides < div class=”wp-block-embed__wrapper”> < div class=”embed-slideshare”> < div...