Setting Up Automatic Service Order Assignments
This section provides an overview of automatic service order assignments and discusses how to enable automatic service order assignment.
In PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService, each service order activity is associated with at least one provider group and at least one technician, who goes out to the customer's site and performs service requests. When you create a service order and select a service or agreement on the page, the system automatically populates the service order with the provider group and technician that are defined for the associated service or agreement (values from the agreement take precedence).
But because these values are optional for services and agreements, the provider group and group member will not be prepopulated on the service order if they are not specified in the selected service or agreement. Alternatively, you can perform the assignment either by selecting the provider group and technician from the prompt lists, or as a more effective solution, by clicking the Suggest a Provider Group and Suggest Group Member buttons and letting the assignment engine determine the best recommendations for the tasks. These are, however, manual processes in which you need to click the buttons on the service order. Otherwise, no provider group or technician assignment is made when you save the page.
The system enables you to turn service order assignment into an automated process. By activating the automatic service order assignment feature at the business unit level, the system performs automatic provider group and technician assignments whenever a new service order is saved.
Note: Regardless of how assignments for the provider group and technician are made, you can modify the values in the Technician Assignment group box on the Activities page as long as the corresponding overall service order or service order activity status remains open.
How Does Automatic Assignment Work
Automatic assignment uses the same assignment engine that is used by the Suggest a Provider Group and Suggest Group Member buttons. When a service order is saved, the assignment engine identifies the best suited provider group and group member for the service order and populates the values in the Provider Group Name and Technician Name fields in the Technician Assignment group box for each activity.
Automatic assignment is available only when the provider group name and technician name are left blank when the page is saved. In other words, automatic assignment will not be done for activities in which a provider group or technician already exist. For example, you may choose to assign the values manually in the service order, or the values were populated from the associated agreement or service. These values will not be altered by the automatic assignment functionality when you save the service order.
Note: Auto assignment only assigns the activities on the service order. The activity actions available at the header level on the Service Order - Activities page are used only if you want to apply status changes, planned date actions, and technician assignments to all lines. It has nothing to do with auto assignment.
Whether a technician assignment can be made successfully depends on several factors, such as the availability of technicians, the presence of an assigned provider group, and so on. The assignment engine observes the these rules when it automatically assigns service orders:
No provider group is automatically assigned if the assignment engine returns no matches for provider group.
No group member (technician) is automatically assigned if there is no assigned provider group at the same level.
In the case when an assigned provider group is available, there is still no technician assignment if the assignment engine returns no matches for technician.
Note: If the Candidate must be available check box is selected at the business unit level, the assignment engine considers only provider groups and group members that are available during the time the service is performed. Assignments are also based on work schedule. No automatic assignment is made if this check box is selected and no provider group or technician is available. In this case, you must uses the technician's calendar to determine availability.
You can assign a technician to a service order, regardless of the committed start and end dates.
The service order, however, is written only to the technician's calendar when planned start and end times are specified. Also, if you configured the system to search for assignment candidates based on availability, the planned start and end dates and times must be specified to determine the availability of the provider groups and group members.
For any service activity that requires multiple technicians, the same number of technicians with the highest fit scores in the search results are selected and assigned to the corresponding activity.
However, if the service activity requires only one technician and more than one candidate is qualified for the assignment, the one with the best fit score is assigned to the activity. Also, if there are not enough qualified technicians, the service order activity is saved with fewer technicians than are required. If the number of technicians for the line's specific activity is zero, then no automatic assignment is made for that line.
After a technician has been automatically assigned to a service order activity, the system changes its status to Assigned.
To enable the automatic assignment of provider groups and group members on service orders:
Activate the automatic assignment feature in the system.
Make sure the Automatic Assignment at save check box is selected at the business unit level for all business units in which the functionality will be used.
(Optional) Decide whether candidates need to be available for the task when the assignment engine suggests eligible candidates to assign to a service order.
Select the Candidate must be available check box if you want the assignment engine to consider only provider groups and technicians that are available at the time requested on the service order.