Siebel Field Service Guide > Scheduling and Dispatch > Appointment Booking System >

What Happens During Appointment Booking?

The following steps illustrate a typical process for the ABS:

1. A request for service arrives from a customer.
2. The customer service representative opens a service request and selects an activity plan to generate activities for this request.
3. The agent clicks the Book Appt button in the Service screen or the Activities screen to obtain a list of appointment choices from the ABS, for the selected activity.
4. The ABS searches for available time slots using the Earliest Start field and Latest Start field (if a value is supplied) to limit the search.
5. If the earliest and latest start are not specified, the ABS chooses from all of the time slots within the ABS horizon.

   The ABS returns time slots and reserves these with a timed lock.

   NOTE:  The ABS returns possible time slots for the earliest start time only.

6. The customer service representative, who sees these choices in a dialog box, selects a time slot and clicks Confirm.
7. The ABS marks the selected slot as permanently used. The ABS then frees the other reserved time slots, writes the details of the selected slot to the activity record, and returns control to the client.
8. If none of the time slots work for the customer, the customer service representative clicks Cancel. If these slots are not cancelled, the time-out releases the slots.
9. The ABS frees all of the time slots reserved for this activity and returns control to the client.