Dynamics 365 Field Service Release Update Guidelines

Dynamics 365 Field Service Release Updates Guidelines

Don’t Miss Out! Discover What’s New & Planned for Dynamics 365 Field Service

Dynamics 365 Field Service is an industry-leading field service management application that allows companies to transform their service operations by connecting people, places, and things to deliver customer-centric experiences. It includes work order management, resource scheduling, and asset management capabilities as well as frontline worker tools.

In this blog, we share the latest Dynamics 365 Field Service Release Update Guidelines from Microsoft to help you to plan and prepare for Dynamics 365 Field Service…

Field Service allows organisations to move from paper-based reactive service to delivering proactive and predictive world-class service, empowering digital transformation and allowing innovative business models such as outcome-based service.

In 2023 release wave 2,Microsoft are launching the next generation of modern, task-oriented experiences for service managers, dispatchers, and frontline workers along with a brand-new copilot experience built right into Microsoft 365 applications like Outlook and Teams, harnessing the power of AI. Frontline workers get further improvements and brand-new capabilities in The Field Service Mobile application.

Service managers receive new capabilities to simplify how they manage customers and the work order process. Dispatchers can more efficiently triage and assign work orders that are nearby, and the refreshed schedule board experience is available for all users. Service managers, dispatchers, and frontline workers find AI-powered experiences throughout the application.

Get ready for the power of Dynamics 365 Field Service and elevate your service operations to deliver world-class service – Dynamics 365 Field Service Release Updates Guidelines.

The Field Service application enables you to:

Improve first-time fix rate
Complete more service calls per technician per week
Manage follow-up work and take advantage of upselling and cross sell opportunities
Reduce travel time, mileage, and vehicle wear and tear
Organize and track resolution of customer issues
Communicate an accurate arrival time to customers
Provide accurate account and equipment history to the field technician
Keep customers updated with the status of their service call and when it’s resolved
Schedule onsite visits when it’s convenient for the customer
Avoid equipment downtime through preventative maintenance

Updates to Dynamics 365 Field Service 2023 release wave 2

Investment areas

Copilot in Field Service – Enable frontline workers and service managers to create, view, and manage work orders using the power of generative AI. Copilot capabilities within the Microsoft 365 integrations and the Field Service core application support users with assisted work order creation, management, and scheduling recommendations resulting in increased frontline productivity.

Optimise service operations – With our 2023 release wave 2 features, we’re taking productivity to new heights. Our brand-new work order user experience with embedded copilot capabilities and enhanced work order lifecycle management makes it easier than ever for service managers to manage work orders and ensure customer requirements are met on time. We’re also improving client management and location capabilities and enable a seamless quote to work order process, making it simple for service managers to manage clients and locations. Additionally, service managers can use enhanced characteristics to define skills of resources.

Get ready to experience the power of Field Service and take your service processes to the next level.

Empower frontline workers – Service technicians and frontline workers are the essence of any field service organization. They’re the vanguard of providing excellent customer service by fixing the customers’ issues. It’s critical that frontline workers have the best digital tools that enable them to engage with their peers, with the back office, and with customers while staying on top of their field duties. Empowering technicians and frontline workers to perform better service and achieve high first-time fix rates is a core objective of Field Service.

We’re transforming the core user experience within the Field Service Mobile application using new mobile-first experiences and controls. This includes a new booking and work order management experience, including navigation updates, improved touch targets, and familiar swipe gestures to accomplish tasks within the app. Makers decide if they want to enable this new user experience through an admin toggle.

In addition, Microsoft are adding new features to the mobile app:

Compress image uploads to reduce bandwidth and capacity consumption
Offline sync settings for frontline workers to control their sync experience

Resource scheduling – Resource management and scheduling optimization are at the heart of field service management. Resource scheduling enables service organizations to triage unscheduled work orders and cases efficiently and schedule the nearest matching technicians to deliver service to their customers. The schedule board offers scheduling capabilities for dispatchers, project managers, and resource managers in different views and extensibility capabilities for partners to tailor functionality to their needs.

In this release wave, the legacy schedule board will be fully retired, and the new schedule board will get another set of enhancements:

Easy ways to break down long-lasting or complex requirements with key improvements to specify patterns.
Enable scrolling shortcuts to quickly zoom in and out on the schedule board to adjust the date/time granularity.
Change bookings on the daily, weekly, and monthly views on the schedule board so that they are displayed proportional to their durations to quickly determine resource availability and utilization.

Additionally, the Resource Schedule Optimisation add-in received updates for schedule optimizations:

Include new bookings to improve resource utilization for single-resource optimisation.

Microsoft 365 integrations for Field Service
Frontline workers and managers can create, view, and manage work orders within Microsoft 365 applications, including Microsoft Teams and Outlook. A Viva Connections dashboard in Teams allows frontline workers to get an at-a-glance view of their workday and frontline managers to view and create work orders.

Additionally, an Outlook add-in allows frontline managers to view and create work orders in Outlook, so they can quickly respond to service requests and questions. Users can also initiate a Remote Assist call right within Teams mobile.

To learn more about the entire set of capabilities being delivered during this release wave, check out the release plan for Dynamics 365 Field Service below:

For application administrators

User-impacting features to the user experience enabled automatically – User-impacting features should be reviewed by application administrators. This facilitates release change management and enables successful onboarding of new capabilities released to market. For the complete list, look for all features tagged “Users, automatically” in the release plan.

Features that must be enabled by application administrators – This release wave contains features that must be enabled or configured by administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users. For the complete list, look for all features tagged “Users by admins, makers, or analysts” in the release plan.

Get the most out of Field Service – Dynamics 365 Field Service Release Updates Guidelines

Helpful links	Description
Release plan	View all capabilities included in the release.
Product updates	Stay up to date on latest product updates.
Release calendar	Know important release milestones.
Licensing	Improve your understanding of how to license Field Service.
Product documentation	Find documentation for Field Service.
User community	Engage with Field Service experts and peers in the community.
Upcoming events	Find and register for in-person and online events.
Product trials	Get started with Field Service.

In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including the date of release.

This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access and for public preview, early access, and general availability.

Copilot in Field Service

Introducing copilot capabilities in Dynamics 365 Field Service for frontline managers, dispatchers, and technicians.

Feature	Enabled for	Public preview	Early access*	General availability
AI-powered work order recap	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Aug 2023	–	Oct 2023
Create work orders in Outlook using AI	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Aug 2023	–	Nov 2023
Create work orders in Teams using AI	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Sep 2023	–	Dec 2023
Generate custom responses and summaries in Outlook with AI	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Sep 2023	–	Dec 2023
Leverage AI for resource scheduling in Outlook and Teams	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Sep 2023	–	Dec 2023

Empower frontline workers

Dynamics 365 Field Service empowers frontline workers with new features to boost productivity and new mobile experiences.

Feature	Enabled for	Public preview	Early access*	General availability
Compress image uploads from mobile devices	Users, automatically	Aug 2023	–	Oct 2023
Offline sync settings for frontline workers	Users, automatically	–	Jul 2023	Oct 2023
Embedded guides in Field Service Mobile	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Aug 2023	–	Mar 2024
New and intuitive user experience for Field Service Mobile	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Aug 2023	–	Mar 2024

Microsoft 365 integrations for Field Service

Manage work orders for front line workforce within Microsoft 365 apps.

Feature	Enabled for	Public preview	Early access*	General availability
Integrations with Microsoft 365 apps for existing Field Service customers	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Aug 2023	–	Nov 2023

Optimize service operations

Dynamics 365 Field Service features allow admins and service managers to get tasks done quickly with new simplified workflows.

Feature	Enabled for	Public preview	Early access*	General availability
Generate a work order from a quote	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	–	–	Oct 2023
Improved flexibility for booking status automation	Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically	–	–	Oct 2023
Complete bookings while preserving end time	Users, automatically	–	Jul 2023	Oct 2023
New and improved work order experience	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Aug 2023	–	Oct 2023
Expedite service delivery with extended customer details	Users, automatically	–	Jul 2023	Oct 2023
Maintain customer facilities with enhanced capabilities	Users, automatically	–	Jul 2023	Oct 2023
Manage frontline worker certifications	Users, automatically	–	Jul 2023	Oct 2023
Deploy IoT solutions with simpler experience	Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically	–	–	Dec 2023

Resource scheduling

Dynamics 365 Field Service resource scheduling features include key enhancements on manual and automated scheduling.

Feature	Enabled for	Public preview	Early access*	General availability
Retire the legacy schedule board	Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically	–	–	Oct 2023
Enable mouse scroll to change date-range granularity	Users, automatically	–	Jul 2023	Oct 2023
Show bookings proportional to duration on multiday views	Users, automatically	–	Jul 2023	Oct 2023
Work hours calendar supports multiple recurrences	Users, automatically	–	Jul 2023	Oct 2023

Description of Enabled for column values:

Users, automatically: These features include changes to the user experience and are enabled automatically.
Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by administrators, makers, marketers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.

Users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users