1. Administering Oracle Field Service
  2. Capacity Categories

Capacity Categories

A Capacity Category is a predefined set of work skills and/or work skill groups and time slots visible to a user who is booking the activities for customers.

Based on the number of minutes available (Capacity = Initial Quota allocation minus used minutes), the user decides if enough time is available within a time slot to realistically promise a specific service window to the customer. This information is sent to the CSR via Capacity API. Capacity Categories are visible only if you are using the Oracle Field Service Capacity Service module.

Note: The Used Minutes value is calculated based on the exact time (in minutes) from start to end of a working day.
You must enable the Capacity Categories visibility profile permission for each user to access the Capacity Categories window:

  • Read-Only: Select this option to display capacity categories in a view only mode.

  • Read/Write: Select this option to let the user manage Capacity Categories in Oracle Field Service.

If the permissions are not configured for a user type, the activity types will not be visible to the users. Oracle Field Service maps the work skills to assign incoming activities to the resources. In general, many companies define quota for a work skill group rather than for an individual work skill. For example, separate skills are required for installation, un-installing and maintenance of modems, but from a scheduling perspective, quota is defined for all the modem-related works group.

A capacity category can also consist of a single work skill and the minimum required level of the skill level. For example, a category can be created for all the customer-oriented work and a separate group for VIP customers or for highly difficult tasks. The two categories would contain the same work skills but the minimal qualification level in the VIP group is higher. Because of the categories and the multi-skill functionality, the same activity can match several rows in the Quota table and can be added to the Used capacity several times. The duration of this activity will be taken into account for all the capacity categories it matches.