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About Appointment Booking for Siebel Field Service Integration to Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0

In a typical scenario for appointment booking, a customer contacts your company and requests service of some kind. Commonly, the customer contacts your company on the telephone. Alternatively, the customer might send email, use chat, or visit a sales or service counter in a store.

A customer service representative uses the Siebel application to create a service request to capture information about the customer issue. If the representative cannot resolve the issue by consulting a knowledge base or a product specialist, then a customer visit (on-site service call) from a field service engineer might be necessary.

The customer service representative enters additional information in an activity for the service request, then books a specific appointment time or appointment window (slot) for the customer, and confirms the appointment with the customer. For more information, see Booking Appointments Using Siebel Field Service Integration to Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0.

You book appointments for the particular service region that matches the zip code or equivalent postal code for the customer. Appointment booking uses the scheduling product associated with the service region. This scheduling product is Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0 or Siebel Scheduler. For more information about appointment booking using Siebel Scheduler, see About Appointment Booking for Siebel Scheduler.

Using Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0, a customer service representative can book an appointment for a service region if the service region was successfully migrated to Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0, and if the Engine field on the service region is Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0.

The Engine field value determines whether the slot request is routed to Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0 or Siebel Scheduler as follows:

• If the Engine value is ORS, then the request is routed to Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0.
• If the Engine value is iLog, then the request is routed to Siebel Scheduler.

You book appointments for activities from the Service screen or the Activities screen. For more information about working with service regions, see Administering Service Regions.