Siebel Field Service Guide > Scheduling Using Oracle Real-Time Scheduler Version 1.0 >

About Activity Skills

In a typical Siebel Field Service scenario, a field service engineer arrives at a customer location to perform a job such as installation, upgrade, or repair. For Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0 to schedule the right person to perform a job, it must determine the necessary skills to perform the job, and it must schedule a person with the required skill set to complete the work. To facilitate this outcome, the Siebel application passes the required skills to Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0. For more information, see Managing Activity Skills for Skills-Based Assignments.

For example, a customer needs a plumber to fix a leak in a kitchen sink between 10:00 A.M. and 2:00 P.M. on November 15, 2011. Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0 must schedule a field service engineer with a skill value of Plumbing to visit the customer location during this time. As part of appointment booking, the request to Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0 includes the time and date range as well as the skill value of Plumbing. Consequently, a person with the required skill is scheduled at the appropriate time.

Evaluation of Activity Skill Rules

As part of the appointment booking process, activity skill rules are evaluated as follows:

1. The customer service representative navigates to the Activities screen, then the Schedule view.
2. The customer service representative creates an activity record, populates the necessary fields, and then clicks the Book Appointment, Insert Activity, or Update Activity button.
3. All active skill rules are evaluated.
4. For the rules with met criteria, the skills and category are sent to Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0.

   Categories include Must Have, Must Not Have, Pref Have, and Pref Not Have. For more information about these categories, see the documentation for Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0 in About Documentation for Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0.

5. The lowest-ranked rules are evaluated before evaluating the next higher-ranked rule. If the criteria for the lower-ranked rule is met, then the higher-ranked rule is not evaluated.
6. Any skills that you manually enter in the Activity Assignment Skills view are appended to the skills obtained from the rules evaluation and sent to Oracle Real-Time Scheduler 1.0.