How do I configure business rules?

When you set up Oracle Field Service you can use the Business Rules page to configure the way your business processes are handled by the application. You can configure the settings for marking en route for activities, activity priority, countries available in the application, activity markers, retention period, and overnight work among others.

The Business Rules visibility profile permission controls the access to the Business Rules page. You must set this permission for each user type that manages Business Rules. If the action is not configured for a user type, or if no visibility is defined, the users don’t see the Business Rules page. If you select ReadOnly, Business Rules is placed into a view-only mode. If you select Read/Write for this setting, the user can manage Business Rules in Oracle Field Service.

Click Configuration.
In the General section, click Business Rules.
The Business Rules page appears.

Complete these fields:

Field	Description
General
Work Skills Support Work Zones support	If a feature is disabled (deselected) the settings defined for it are retained in the application, but no restrictions are applied. Work skills and work zones are critical settings greatly affecting performance, particularly, activity assignment to resources. Select these check boxes to impose these constraints on the process of activities assignment and reassignment: Routing considers work skills and work zones and assigns activities only to resources matching the work skill and work zone requirements of the activities. All newly-created activities have work skills and work zones calculated for them and, therefore, will be correctly assigned afterwards Self-assignment, Quota management, manual activities move or assignment are subjected to work skills and work zones check All these factors contribute to higher application performance and help improve the use of the workforce. Disabling work skills support and/or work zones support may result in Routing results below optimum and, therefore, must be used with care.
Service Window Support	Select this check box to select the Service Window field by default when you add an activity or teamwork.
En Route Support	Select the check box to let mobile workers change the activity status to 'En route'. This status is then shown to your customers on the Where is My Technician page. After you enable the En route Support option, the ‘En route’ status is available only for the activity types that have the Calculate travel option enabled.
Periodic update of ETA for En Route activities	Select this check box to provide periodic auto-adjustments to the estimated time of arrival (ETA) to an activity site when an activity is in the En Route status. You can see these adjustments in updated ETA values across the product. You can also see them on the activity History page. Upon selecting this check box, the changes take effect in one hour and doesn't affect the activities that are currently in the "En route" status. Note: You can see this check box, only if you've a license for Oracle Field Service Enterprise edition. Further, you must select the Use real-time traffic data setting for the user type of a user for which you want to assign an activity that receives periodic updates of ETA.
Points Support	Select the box if you use points. When points are used, each shift and corresponding work schedule is assigned some points, which are a relative expression of the required work to be performed within such work schedule. Similarly, each activity may be also assigned some points. As the resource completes activities in their route, their points are added and compared to the total number required for the work schedule. Points may be used by Routing in activities assignment.
Overnight Work	Select this check box to define number of hours for overnight work since midnight. Use only if you've overnight work activities. Select the time zone that is used to define when your work-day closes. If the value is greater than 0, it's possible to create activities for the previous day’s route and perform other route modifications based on the time zone setting value. Working time ____ hours since midnight <…..> When you define the overnight work hours, you can't update activities if any of these conditions is met: Current time is greater than the end of the day of the day of route +overnight setting in the resource's time zone. Current time is greater than the end of the day of the day of route +overnight setting selected in this field. This setting affects the logic of data saving by the Daily Extract functionality. If the company doesn't support overnight shifts, the extraction period covers time since the previous extraction till the end of the previous day. If the company supports overnight shifts, the Daily Extract data for the previous day is available for extraction after the overnight setting expires, that is, at 00:00 AM + overnight. If the data is extracted before that time, the resulting files contain data from two days before. It is recommended to schedule the Daily Extract process several minutes after the overnight setting expires to guarantee that only the relevant data is extracted. If you use the Overnight Work feature, your mobile workers must deactivate their routes and sign out of the application. If they don't do these, they will see the previous day's date when they sign in the next day.
Allow update activities and offline sync after overnight within the following number of hours	Enter the number of hours after the overnight end time within which users can update the past activities and inventories. Users can update activities and inventories through the user interface and the 'Update Activity' and 'Update Inventory' REST API methods, as well as sync offline. Updates aren't allowed after this period. Outbound messages for actions in the past are blocked, except for scenarios that use the 'Service request is created' launch condition.
Full-time Equivalent	Enter a value to convert the calendar to a Full-time Equivalent resource. The value is used in the Planning section of Calendars and is a company wide setting. For example: If the resource works from 08:00-16:00 (8 hours) and the Full-time Equivalent value = 8 this resource will be shown as 1 Full-time Equivalent.
Expose mass and repeating activities for these number of days	Enter the number of days in advance in which the template activities are created in mobile workers’ routes automatically. The default value is '0', which means that such activities are not instantiated automatically, but are created only when a route is created. When you modify the value and save it, Oracle Field Service scans all the mobile worker routes and instantiates the templates for the dates that match the configured period. If you increase the value, then the application includes more dates into consideration for automatic instantiations. If you decrease the value, then the application does not remove the existing instantiated activities, instead processes fewer dates from then on. When you add a new resource or change the templates and schedules, the application changes the activities accordingly. Note: Instantiating activities may require significant time, especially if you increase the value and there are many mobile workers in the application. It also generates a significant amount of transactions such as events (routeCreated, activityCreated) and outbound messages for the "Activity is created" launch conditions.
Activity Priority	Select the property that defines the priority of an activity. Activity priority is used by Routing to assign urgent activities, immediate activities, and to prioritize activities for self-assignment on the map. You can use any custom property of activity with type string, enumeration, or integer, but not fields. The configuration consists of these parameters: Property to define priority: Defines the activity property that will be used to identify urgent, immediate, and self assignment activities. Urgent activities have these values of the property: Defines the specific values of the property, which make the activity urgent or immediate. Several values of the same property can be used as criteria. In this case the values must be separated by commas in the field. The order of property values defines the priority level. The value listed first will have the highest priority, with other values following in the descending order. For example, if you have a privileged customer, you may specify it as a specific value (such as "PC") in an activity property, so it qualifies the activity as urgent. For enumeration properties, you must specify the enumeration values. Normal activities have these values of the property: Defines the specific values of the property, which make the activity normal. For example, in-house activity selected as "IN" in an activity property may qualify the activity as normal. When activities are routed using the immediate routing run option or the urgent routing option, the priority specified in the field that you select here are considered. For example, a company must always perform repairs as soon as possible to reduce service disruptions. In this case, the company may have a custom property which indicates that the activity is "Repair" to consider an activity as urgent. The preferred ETA for Urgent activities is the earliest possible time. SLA start time does not have any impact on Urgent activities, which means, SLA violation is expected behavior. Further, even if you select Immediate routing, SLA start time does not have an impact on the Urgent activities ETA.
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Maps and Geocoding
Available Countries	Select the + symbol to select an additional country from the drop-down list for geocoding purposes. Select the pencil icon to edit the country name for localization purposes. Geocoding is the process of finding associated geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) from other geographic data, such as street addresses, or zip codes (postal codes). Geocoding data is required for Routing and is critical for Map/driving directions. Proper geocoding information is necessary for every country that this instance of the application is operating within. The Available Countries field allows adding additional countries for geocoding purposes.
Default Country for Geocoding	Select the country that is used as the default country for geocoding. The country you select here must be within the Available Country list selected earlier.
Zip Code Format	Select the format of ZIP (postal) code and state code values. Both fields are used in the activity coordinates resolution from its geographic address. The ZIP value is validated by the Inbound API, therefore, its format is important. When the ZIP value sent by the Inbound API does not correspond to the format set in the Business Rule, the API returns an error. However, when the Free Post code option is selected, the ZIP value is not validated and will always be accepted.
State Format	Select the State format. This field includes Free format and US. Select US for addresses in the USA having a strict 2-letter state code format. For all other countries with different civil entity systems, select Free.
GPS	Identify mobile worker by – Determines how a unique mobile worker is identified within the context of GPS plotting. These items are applicable with Oracle Field Service Smart Location Cloud Service: Resource is considered idle if moved less than __ meters within _- minutes Resource is considered to be at the activity location if the distance is less than __ meters -
Map Parameters	Define the items related to the Map page: Distance Measurement Units: Specify whether the distance is measured in miles or kilometers. Ignore coordinates with accuracy less than: Set the minimum sufficient accuracy level for geocoding. The minimum sufficient accuracy level is the coordinate’s accuracy which is considered acceptable for usage. The coordinates below the specified level will not be used as insufficiently accurate. Note: Driving directions for Here map and geocoding are only shown in these languages: (English (default), French, German, Italian, and Spanish). The default maps and geocoding provider is Here. Google can be used, if it is part of your subscription. To use Google maps, contact Oracle Sales. Further, you can have only one provider (Here) configured in the application. Information about the geocoding provider is displayed at the bottom of the map.
Map Layers	Configure the map layers you want to use on top of the map: Work Zone layer (work zone shapes) and/or custom map layers (for example, places of interest such as gas stations or gas pipelines). You can add a Work Zone layer or a new map layer, modify or delete an existing layer, and change the permissions for an existing layer. When you click Add new, the Add Map Layer dialog box appears. You can either upload shape files through the interface or through an API, or you can provide the path to MapViewer from where the custom layer is obtained. You can add a maximum of 10 map layers per instance. You also see these sections: Status: Indicates the status of the layer. If the shape file is uploaded successfully and is ready for use, the status displays a green check mark. If the shape file isn't uploaded properly or has any errors, the status displays a red cross mark. Map layers: Provides the name of the map layer and the date on which it was last updated. If the map layer isn't available, this column provides the reason such as: Shape loading failed. Permissions: User types to which the layer is assigned. If there are multiple user types, they are displayed as, ‘<user type> and <number> more’. For example, ‘Mobile Worker and 3 more’. This column is empty for the Work Zone layer. Note: The Permissions option isn't available for a Work Zone layer. Properties of Work Zone layers: Each Work Zone can have only one map layer, and if it doesn't exist, the message, No configured layers appears. You can create only one Work Zone layer. After a Work Zone layer is created, the Create Work Zone layer option is grayed out on the Add map layer dialog box and the message "Only one layer for work zone shapes can be created" is displayed. When you delete a Work Zone layer through the metadata API, only the layer is deleted. The shape files aren't deleted from the database. However, when you delete a Work Zone layer from the Business Rules page by selecting the Delete associated shapes option, the layer and its associated shapes are deleted.
Company Boundaries	Provide the latitude and longitude coordinates of the company’s geographical work area. Activities can be performed only within these boundaries that are a set of squares. To identify a square, its top left and bottom right corners are defined. If no boundaries are defined the company can perform work anywhere. Additional boundaries can be added by clicking the + symbol.
Retention period
Activity, Inventory, Service Request and History information	Enter the retention period for the activities in the past, customer related inventory, service requests, and the associated activity history. It also includes the service requests, messages, logs such as activity history, quota history, configuration log, changes to resources and users. The default value is 90 days. You can set a value between 1 and 90 days. Activities are retained for these number of days regardless of their status. The background data purge process considers the updated value whenever the process runs the next time. If the difference between the changed numbers is huge (for example, you change from, 90 to 3 days), the purge process may take up to 24 hours. Caution: Do not set the value to 1 (one), if you have set the 'Overnight work' setting on Business Rules to a number greater than 0 (zero). If you do so, your data may be purged before the Daily Extract process runs.
Collaboration History	Enter the retention period for Collaboration chat history. The default value is 90 days. You can set a value between 1 and 90 days. The background data purge process takes into account the updated value whenever the process runs the next time. If the difference between the changed numbers is huge (for example, you change from, 90 to 3 days), the purge process may take up to 24 hours.
Resource Position History	Enter the retention period for the resource's GPS coordinates. Resources locations are extracted as part of the Daily Extract process. You can retrieve them through the 'Get last known positions of resources' and 'Get position history for resource for certain date' Core API requests. The default value is 90 days. You can set a value between 1 and 90 days. The background data purge process takes into account the updated value whenever the process runs the next time. If the difference between the changed numbers is huge (for example, you change from, 90 to 3 days), the purge process may take up to 24 hours. Note: The value for this field must be less than the value for 'Customer, resource and user information'. As part of the background data purge process for 'Customer, resource and user information', information about queues are also removed. Resource locations are gathered at the queue level, so they cannot be shown on the page when the queue is removed.
Daily Extract files	Enter the retention period for files that are generated by the Daily Extract process and retrieved through the 'Download daily extract file' Core API method. The default value is 90 days. You can set a value between 1 and 90 days. Updated value is taken into account for when the Daily Extract files are generated the next time. The retention period for existing Daily Extract files is the period that was defined when files were created.
Quota Management
Quota Management	These items are applicable with Oracle Field Service Capacity Cloud Service: Measurement units for Quota and Available Capacity Defines the general settings affecting Quota Management functionality. Particularly, the user can choose the units of measurement to display Quota and Used values by setting the Quota and available capacity are defined in parameter. The available values are hours, man-days and minutes. Internally, all values are calculated in minutes anyway, and are converted to the selected unit when the corresponding value is displayed in the Quota View. When man-days is selected as the unit of measurement, the Number of hours per man day is field appears where the correlation between man-days and hours can be defined. Ultimately, this parameter is used to convert man-hours into minutes. When the Quota is defined as percentage of the capacity available by calendar, sometimes it requires adjustment. To adjust the value, the system estimates the capacity available by calendar, processes the already booked activities (to calculate the Other activities value), and, finally, recalculates the Quota in minutes using the defined percentage value. Recalculation period You can set a predefined time interval for Quota and Capacity recalculation using the every [ ] minutesfield. Valid values: 1 to 1,440 minutes Default value: 10 minutes Also, you can recalculate quota and capacity for a predefined future period (defined as days or calendar weeks). For example, if you enter 10 minutes and set 3 calendar weeks for Quota and Capacity recalculation, then the recalculation occurs after every 10 minutes for 3 calendar weeks. The Calendar Week (duringdrop-down list) option is processed based on the value selected from the First Day of the Weekdrop-down list in the Display page. When you use the Calendar Week option, all remaining days of the current week (unless the start day is the week start day selected using the First Day of the Week drop-down list) plus all days of these weeks are considered. However, if the recalculation period is set to 7 days, the recalculation is performed for 7 days only. The maximum value for the Calendar Week option is set to 99 days or 15 calendar weeks. You can select the recalculation start day (current day, tomorrow, or day after tomorrow) from theThe Corresponding quota values are automatically adjusted starting from drop-down list. The Quota and Capacity is recalculated for the Available Capacity, Booking Status, and Quota pages. Note: When an activity is booked during the predefined recalculation period, then irrespective of the routing schedule and the specified recalculation period, the values in the Available Capacity, Booking Status, and Quota pages are recalculated immediately.
Capacity Intervals	See Define Time Intervals section in the Oracle Field Service Capacity Cloud Service Guide.
Recalculate data on a daily basis	Select this check box if you want to recalculate the Forecasting data on the current instance every day. The data is updated overnight. This check box is selected by default for production instances and deselected for test instances.
Search Fields	How do I define the activity search fields? and How do I define the inventory search fields? Note: Search uses the first 40 characters of the search string. Inventory search does not support enumeration type fields. You cannot configure the Search field to accept a keyword that is fewer than three characters or symbols.