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Service Scheduling Part 3 of 3 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Post Author: Joe D365 | October 12th, 2010

Business Issue

I need to schedule my people and equipment resources to provide a service to a customer.

Solution

One of the most underutilized areas in Dynamics CRM is its Service Scheduling functionality. Service Scheduling in Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps organizations track the service scheduling process including:

  • Managing different service types and what resources are needed to carry those out (Part 1 of 3)
  • Scheduling of those services (Part 2 of 3)
  • Reporting on scheduling levels, performance, customer satisfaction (Part 3 of 3)

In the last two months we walked through the process of managing different service types, your resources and sites and then how we schedule those resources to perform services. This month we will look at how we report on those scheduled/delivered services.

Scenario

Let's look at a real life example of a dermatology office needing to schedule their services. This is a complex example that requires scheduling medical professionals who have different skill sets, work with specialized equipment and are located at different sites (clinics). For this scenario, the business must meet the following scheduling requirements:

  1. Various medical professionals have different skill sets, credentials, licenses. Not everyone can do all services.
  2. Employees work different shifts/times.
  3. Employees are working different sites.
  4. Specialized equipment is shared among the medical professionals.

Reporting on Service Activity using Reports

In the reports library you have a report called "Service Activity Volume". This report can be run based on a time period filter or any other filter you add while running it. Once the report is generated you can group the data by activity count or duration and then by month, week, day, user, facility/equipment, service type, site, customer or status reason.


Reporting on Service Activity using Dashboards

Create an Advanced Find view of all Service Activities and add the columns that you want to chart. Using PowerDashboards you can create a dashboard and add the charts that you want to display on that dashboard. You can watch a video on how to create dashboards at: https://powerobjects.com/blog/why-powerobjects.aspx

Below is an example of a dashboard with 4 charts:

  1. Scheduled Service by Day & Type – Stacked Column 3D
  2. Scheduled Services by Resource & Type – Stacked Bar 3D
  3. Scheduled Services by Day and Status – Column 3D
  4. # of Appts by Service Type – 2D Pie


Summary

Dynamics CRM has pre-built reports that allow you to view your scheduled services for a certain time period and then grouped in many different ways. PowerDashboard gives you limitless capability to chart any type of data regarding your service scheduling activities.

Joe CRM
By Joe D365
Joe D365 is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 superhero who runs on pure Dynamics adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe D365’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics 365 and bring the application to more businesses and organizations around the world.

One comment on “Service Scheduling Part 3 of 3 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM”

  1. I've just started with CRM 2011 and one thing I am not clear on is why instead of the typical "Regarding" field is there a field for "Customers", and it even allows you to select more than one customer. Why would I ever want/need to use that field? As opposed to the Regarding field which is employed on all other forms.

    Thanks

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