Introduction

This chapter covers the following topics:

Oracle Field Service Suite Overview

The Oracle Field Service suite supports an automated process used by service organizations to manage their field service operations. It assists in the entire service process from taking the customer call to fixing and reporting on the problem at a customer site.

The Oracle Field Service suite offers a range of products to meet your organizations business needs. The following table lists all the products in the suite.

Suite Product Description
Advanced Scheduler Advanced Scheduler enables optimization of scheduling capabilities of tasks to qualified resources. It takes into account driving time, distance, part availability, and creates part reservations.
Complex Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (CMRO) CMRO functionality is used to support the Preventive Maintenance module. It enables you to create PM programs and activities to be used in a preventive maintenance operation. For the purposes of Preventive Maintenance, a profile option setting in CMRO enables it to run in a Preventive Maintenance mode, whereby PM-specific functionality is available to the user.

Important: It is not necessary to purchase a CMRO Application license. When you define Preventive Maintenance programs a few setup steps are required in the CMRO application. That CMRO functionality is delivered with Field Service.

CRM Gateway for Mobile Devices The CRM Gateway for Mobile Devices consists of a mobile client and a central application. It provides data transport between the Oracle CRM enterprise database and the Oracle mobile client database.
Customer Care Not really a product of the Field Service suite but the Service Request window is delivered along with the Field Service application to take the customers call for service and create a service request.
Field Service The Field Service application assists in assigning tasks to service representatives, creating and dispatching daily schedules, monitoring progress, and reporting on material, expense, and labor transactions.
Field Service Administrator Portal The HTML-based field service portal module enables administrators to track and close field service tasks assigned to technicians in their territories. Their activities include reviewing debrief and billing.
Field Service/Laptop This is a remote application typically installed on a service representatives laptop to receive his daily schedule and report on progress, material, expense, and labor.
Field Service/Palm Devices This is a remote application for a handheld device so a service representative can receive his daily schedule and report on progress, material, expense, and labor.
Field Service Technicians Portal The HTML-based field service portal module enables your technicians to manage and report on their task-based customer calls from any computer with an internet connection. Third party technicians can also use this portal to manage and report on their tasks.
Field Service Third Party Administrator Portal The HTML-based field service portal module enables third party administrators to track field service tasks assigned to technicians belonging to their third party organization. Their activities include manually managing third party technician schedules, assigned tasks, and third party technician trunk stock.
Oracle Common Application Components The products in Oracle Common Application Components are essential to use Field Service. They are used to create tasks, territories, define resources, and help in the assignment of tasks to resources. Oracle Common Application Components is delivered with Field Service.
Preventive Maintenance This module enables a Field Service operation to address service needs in a proactive manner, as well as reactively. The Preventive Maintenance solution provides the capability to log service requests and allocate tasks to the appropriate resources with the right parts and schedule them in anticipation of the service need.
Spares Management Spares Management is a module of Field Service and is used to provide additional logistics and planning features to manage a service parts inventory in a multi-location environment.
Wireless Option for Service This is a remote application for a WAP enabled device so a service representative can receive his daily schedule and report on progress, expense, and labor.

Oracle Contracts Family Suite for Preventive Maintenance

To enable the Preventive Maintenance module in Oracle Field Service, you must also install the Oracle Contracts Family Suite. The following product is used for Preventive Maintenance:

Field Service Suite of Products
Suite Product Description
Service Contracts Service Contracts is used to author service contracts with coverages associated to a PM program, which can be sold against serviceable products. In Service Contracts, you can define coverage templates for PM programs and author and maintain service contracts with PM coverage.

Oracle Field Service Overview

Oracle Field Service is an essential part of the Field Service application suite. At the core of Field Service is the Dispatch Center, which enables the Field Service dispatcher to plan, dispatch, and monitor all field service activities, ultimately ensuring that the right person is in the right place at the right time with the right parts. Field Service Debrief functionality enables you to report all activities performed out in the field.

Review the following to learn more about the Field Service application:

Field Service Debrief Features

Field Service Dispatch Center Features

Field Service Portal Application Features

Based on role, Field Service provides separate portals for the administrator to track, manage, and close service requests and manage the technicians that work on these service requests, and for the technicians to track, manage, and close their tasks. Because some tasks may be outsourced to third party service providers, the Field Service Administrator Portal is customized for third party administrators to use the Third Party Administrator Portal to manage these tasks and their technicians. In the case of third party technicians, the Field Service Technician Portal is customized to provide the Third Party Technician Portal for their use.

Field Service Administrator Portal

Field Service Third Party Administrator Portal

Field Service Technician Portal

Note: Although third party technicians can use this technician portal, can neither view service request details nor create new service requests. In addition, they cannot update the Installed Base.

Field Service Third Party Technician Portal

Preventive Maintenance Features

Spares Management Features