Overview of En Route Status

Resources can indicate when they're ‘En Route’ to an activity. Indicating en route makes the Where is My Technician feature transparent and helps Routing prevent rescheduling 'En route' activities. Resources can perform the activities that don't require travel (non-travel activities) according to the order in the route. However, after a resource sets ‘En route’ for an activity, they can't perform a non-travel activity.

When a resource sets 'En route' for an activity, the application calculates the estimated time of arrival (ETA) according to the resource's location (with real-time traffic) if it's available. The travel visualization can be seen on the Time view from the time the status is set to En route, till the status is set to Started. This travel time isn't considered in travel estimation and statistics.

Real-time traffic is available only if you've a valid license for Oracle Field Service Enterprise edition. End customers are notified about that and the 'Where is My Resource Technician' page shows the actual 'On the way' status.

If there's an alert for the activity, the color of the alert takes precedence over en route in the Dispatch Console. For example, if a mobile worker sets an activity as 'En route' and the activity is likely to lose the SLA, Dispatch Console shows the color configured for the SLA alert.

When a user other an the activity owner sets an activity to En Route, then the assigned resource's position is obtained through the Location service. If the assigned resource's position is available and the position has been gathered within the past five minutes, then:

The map displays the route from the resource's position to the activity, if the activity coordinates are available.
Travel time is updated using Real Time Traffic, if the required conditions are met.

If the assigned resource's position isn't available, or the position has been gathered more than five minutes back then, the application displays the message 'Cannot identify resource location' on the map.

You can configure a filter on the Routing configuration page to exclude ‘En route' activities from optimization.

Note: When your organization has enabled the En route Support feature, you can't use the bundling activities feature. It is NOT a best practice to use the en route status when a resource doesn't go to a customer site.

Prerequisites to set the En route status for an activity:

You've a valid license for Oracle Field Service Enterprise edition.
En Route Support is selected on the Business Rules page.
Calculate travel is selected for the Activity type.
Activity is assigned to a mobile worker.
Mobile worker has an activated route.
There's no Started activity in the route.

Resources can set an ordered, a not-ordered, or a non-scheduled activity in the route as 'En route'. However, to set the ‘En route’ status for an activity that isn't the first activity in the route, the resource must have the permissions similar to the ‘Start’ activity. They must have the 'Allow activity reorder inside the route' and the 'Allow activity move from non-scheduled pool to scheduled one' permissions.

When you enable the ‘En route Support’ feature:

Resources can confirm that they're 'En route' to an appointment.
End customer is notified that the resource is on their way. The arrival time is updated.
End customer can see the actual 'On the way' status and the updated ETA on the 'Where is My Resource Technician' page.
Resources can stop their travel if they don't need to go to the customer (for example, the appointment is rescheduled).
While En route, a resource can change the direction and go to another urgent appointment.
Resources can take a break after the previous appointment and then set 'En route' when they're ready.
If the problem is resolved and the appointment isn't required any more, Dispatchers can cancel an appointment when the resource is on their way.

The 'En route' status launches the 'Call ahead' trigger, with which you can notify your customers. If you enable the "Enroute Support" feature, Oracle Fusion Field Service never considers a resource as on the way to an activity until the "En route" status is set for it. Further, if the ‘En route’ status isn't set, then:

Travel time isn't recalculated.
"Call ahead" message isn't set.
Where is My Technician page doesn't show the "On the way" status and the resource’s position and track.

You can configure these options for the ‘En route Support’ feature:

Configure a color for the 'En route' status on the Add activity type dialog box.
Add the 'En route' and 'Stop travel' buttons to the Activity details page and the activity hint. For non-scheduled activities, the 'En route' and 'Stop travel' buttons aren't displayed in the activity hint.
Use the New API events 'activityTravelStarted' and 'activityTravelStopped' for notifications. For more information about these APIs, see the REST API for Oracle Field Service Cloud Service guide.

Filter 'En route' Activities

You can filter activities with the ‘En route’ status. To do so, your administrator must create a filter on the Configuration > Filters page.

Troubleshoot 'En route' and 'Stop Travel' Operations

You can use the activity History to see when a resource changed the status to 'En route' or returned it to 'Pending'.

Prevent En Route Activities from Being Rescheduled

Routing considers the En route status, because you set the option at the Business Rules level. Both bulk and immediate routing don't change the activities in the En route status by any way. So un-scheduling, rescheduling, moving to a different provider, changing the ETA, or inserting another activity before one in the En route status never happens through bulk routing and immediate routing for activities that match the filter conditions.

Immediate routing for Urgent activities may insert an Urgent activity just before the activity in En route status, but it doesn't reschedule it. In this case, the status of the En route activity is automatically changed to pending and is retained on the same route.