PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService 9.1 PeopleBook

Getting Started with PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService

This chapter discusses:

PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService overview.
PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService business processes.
PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService integrations.
PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService implementation.

PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService Overview

PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService ensures total life cycle management of service requests for customers and technicians. PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService is a flexible service order and dispatch management solution that provides complete management of agreements, parts, time, and expenses. It provides functionality to systematically manage preventive maintenance programs, generate reports, and automatically schedule preventive maintenance service orders.

PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService Business Processes

This diagram lists the PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService business processes. We discuss these business processes in the business process chapters in this PeopleBook.

PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService business processes

Using PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService, you can:

Create service orders to help field service technicians track their progress on each customer's service request and manage material, time, and expenses spent on performing the work.
Automatically create service orders for preventive maintenance services.
Automatically assign technicians to newly created service orders based on skills and availability.
Automatically calculate the contractual start and end dates and times for newly created service orders and their associated activities.
Obtain troubleshooting tips through Solution Advisor.
Select and review agreement and entitlement information for customers from service orders.
Manage task assignment for technicians and resolve schedule conflicts using the Dispatch Board.
Analyze and monitor your field operations using standard and interactive reports.
Send billing information to the Transaction Billing Processor.

Note. The Transaction Billing Processor enables PeopleSoft FieldService, PeopleSoft Support, and PeopleSoft Order Capture to integrate with PeopleSoft Billing and PeopleSoft General Ledger through the use of the PeopleSoft Contracts architecture.

PeopleSoft FieldService Integrations

PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService integrates with applications in the these PeopleSoft product lines:

PeopleSoft Human Capital Management

By integrating with PeopleSoft Human Capital Management, you can collect information such as employee profiles, employee competencies, competency proficiency ratings, and holiday schedules to be used when the application assigns service tickets to best fit field service staff.
PeopleSoft Supply Chain Management

If you want to perform material management and real-time item balance and availability checks in PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService, you must integrate the application with PeopleSoft Inventory and PeopleSoft Purchasing in the PeopleSoft Supply Chain Management product line (or third-party inventory and purchasing systems). An integration with PeopleSoft Inventory (or third-party inventory system) is required if you want to automatically update installed product statuses upon the receipt of shipping notices.
PeopleSoft Contracts and PeopleSoft Billing (Transaction Billing Processor)

With PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService, you can bill for agreement fees, which can be on a recurring basis, and service order fees, which can be based on agreements and demand or warranty. From the Service Order page in PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService, the system can send agreement fee information and service order fees (including service, material, time, and expense fees) to the Transaction Billing Processor for billing and invoicing. You can also use the functionality within PeopleSoft Contracts to apply revenue to the appropriate accounts and use the rate-based contract line and as-incurred billing and revenue plan functionality in PeopleSoft Contract to generate agreement-based transactions.

If you purchased licenses for both PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService and PeopleSoft Support, a call center agent can create a service order from a case. Because the PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService and PeopleSoft Support applications reside in the same database, process flows can move smoothly from one application to another without the need for any integration-specific configuration. Using component interfaces for this type of cross-component flow ensures that all necessary data validation and other PeopleCode processes are triggered properly.

We discuss integration considerations in the implementation chapters in this PeopleBook. Supplemental information about third-party application integrations is on the My Oracle Support website.

The following diagram shows the way in which the various PeopleSoft applications integrate with PeopleSoft Integrated Field Service.

PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService integrations

PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService Implementation

PeopleSoft Setup Manager enables you to review a list of setup tasks for the organization for the products that you are implementing. The setup tasks include the components that you must set up, listed in the order in which you must enter data into the component tables, as well as links to the corresponding PeopleBook documentation.

PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService also provides component interfaces to help you load data from your existing system into PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService tables. Use the Excel to Component Interface utility with the component interfaces to populate the tables.

This table lists all of the components that have component interfaces:

Component	Component Interface	Reference
Service Type RF_SERVICE_TYPE	RF_SERVICE_TYPE_SCI	See Defining Service Types.
Service Activity Type RF_SVC_ACT_TYPE	RF_SVC_ACT_TYPE_SCI	See Defining Service Activity Types.
Activity Code RF_ACT_CODE	RF_ACT_CODE_SCI	See Defining Service Activities.
Failure Code RF_FAILURE_CD	RF_FAILURE_CD_SCI	See Defining Failure Codes.
Provider Group RF_PROVIDER_GRP	RF_PROVIDER_GRP_SCI	See Defining Provider Groups.
Provider Group Member RF_GRP_MEMBER	RF_GRP_MEMBER_SCI	See Defining Provider Group Members.
Tax Parameters RF_TAX_PARAM	RF_TAX_PARAM	See Setting Up Sales and Use Tax for Third-Party Tax Vendors.

Other Sources of Information

In the implementation planning phase, take advantage of all PeopleSoft sources of information, including the installation guides, data models, business process maps, and troubleshooting guidelines. A complete list of these resources is in the prefaces of the PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 Application Fundamentals PeopleBook, PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 Automation and Configuration Tools PeopleBook, PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 Business Object Management PeopleBook, and PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 Product and Item Management PeopleBook, with information on where to find the most up-to-date version of each.