Bookshelf v7.5: Introduction to Siebel Scheduling

Siebel Field Service Guide > Scheduling and Dispatch >

Introduction to Siebel Scheduling

This chapter describes how customer service representatives assign and schedule personnel to carry out field service activities.

The process of scheduling field service engineers must take into account a wide range of factors, including availability of personnel, proximity to the customer site, skills, availability of parts, efficiency of scheduling, and optimizing costs to the service provider.

Siebel Field Service provides these tools for assigning and scheduling activities:

Assignment Manager. This function provides a list of personnel who are qualified to carry out a service activity or service request. The list, based on a set of rules, is ranked by a score that indicates the engineer's suitability. The dispatcher or customer service representative chooses a field service engineer from this list. For more information, see Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide.

Appointment Booking System (ABS). Using the ABS, a customer service representative can schedule future appointments, with a choice of time periods from which a customer can select, and book appointments. The output of the ABS is the assignment of specific field service engineers to service activities on specific dates and times.

Optimization Engine. The main purpose of the Optimization Engine, or Optimizer, is to reorganize and reassign a schedule to reduce the cost of the schedule (see Cost Function). The optimizer uses a flexible set of constraints, availabilities, and cost considerations.

The Optimizer can reorganize schedules to meet contractual commitments for service, accommodate emergency service calls, and meet unforeseen events in the service organization (for example, sick days for field service engineers). These functions of the Optimizer are known as Contract Scheduling.

Contract Scheduling inserts high-priority service activities into a schedule with minimal disruption of the schedule and without significant increase in the cost of the schedule. Contract scheduling requires an immediate response. For contract commitments, the Optimizer can either fit the service activity into a free spot in a schedule or reschedule and re-optimize an entire schedule to accommodate a new activity.

Dispatch Board. This screen lets a dispatcher or customer service representative manually assign and schedule individual activities by drag-and-drop onto a Gantt chart.

Manual assignment. Manual assignment is available in any Activities view, where a dispatcher or customer service representative can fill in the Employees field. For procedures, see Assigning and Scheduling Field Service Activities Manually.

After an activity is assigned and scheduled, the Workflow Manager can notify a field service engineer by sending, for example, an email or a notification to a wireless device. The engineer can then synchronize a mobile PC or handheld computer to obtain details about an activity.