Perform What-If Analysis by Applying Changes to Statistical Parameters

Oracle Field Service lets you check the impact of changes to statistical parameters by applying them on a Test instance before applying them to a Production instance. Let’s say you override travel and activity duration values using the Statistics APIs, or add an additional field under Activity travel stats fields, or increase the number of characters of the ZIP code to be considered. You can check the impact of these changes on a Test instance before applying them on a Production instance. However, for the overrides to take effect, you must run the stats agent on that instance. You can use the Apply Changes button on the Statistics page to apply the overrides and check the impact.

Since a Test instance typically doesn't have enough data to calculate statistics meaningfully, changing the configuration parameters and applying those changes on a Test instance isn't recommended. The reason is, the changes you apply may clear any statistical data that may have been copied when you re-created the instance.

1. Click Configuration > Statistics.
2. Change the values in the Duration parameters and Travel time parameters sections as required.
3. Click Apply Changes.
4. Choose one of these options:
   • Save configuration changes only: Select this option to just save the changes. This option is disabled, if there are no changes to the configuration.
   • Apply Statistics API overrides only: Select this option to apply the overrides that you've added using the Statistics API's 'Update activity duration statistics', 'Update activity travel statistics', or 'Update airline distance based travel' methods manually.
   • Apply configuration changes: Select this option to recalculate the travel duration statistics or the activity duration statistics (or both) depending on the fields you've modified. If you've modified the Activity duration stats fields or any field under Duration parameters, all activity durations are recalculated. Similarly, if you've modified the Activity travel stats fields, Resource travel stats fields or any field under Travel time parameters, all travel durations are recalculated. If you've modified the fields related to activity duration and travel duration, then both activity duration and travel durations are recalculated. If there are unsaved changes, the option reads as Save and apply configuration changes. In this case, all the change are first saved and then applied. If you've saved the changes, but haven't yet applied them, the option reads as Apply configuration changes. In addition, a message stating whether Activity duration, Travel duration, or both will be updated is displayed.
     Note: The functions of these options is the same on a Test instance. However, the description given below each option is different, because the daily recalculation of statistics doesn’t happen on Test instances. Therefore, the changes aren't applied automatically by the next day. You can use this feature to apply changes to statistics configurations manually on Test instances.
5. Click Apply.
   A message displays whether the changes were applied successfully or not. If you open the Statistics page after the changes are applied, a message shows the last operation and when the changes were applied.