Unrelated Pickup Orders

When field work crews are out performing field work, it’s possible that they will encounter other work unrelated to their current task that needs to be done. This type of work can be as simple as trimming a tree whose branches are too close to power lines, or the replacement of a meter for a different customer or service point. These types of task are referred to as "unrelated pickup activities." Crews can either work the field activity or leave it to be assigned to another crew at a later date.

When the crew creates an unrelated pickup activity in the field work system, it is sent to Service Order Management, and a corresponding service order field activity is created in the system.

Unrelated pickup activities can be created via one of the following Inbound Web Services:

  • Field Activity Asynchronous Req Inbound (D1-FARequestAsynchronous)

  • Field Activity Synchronous Req Inbound (D1-FARequestSynchronous)

Once created, they are processed like any other service order field activity. If the pickup activity was completed in the field before being sent to Service Order Management, it will quickly move through its lifecycle (as now further action is needed) until it reaches the "Completed" state.

Retrieving Service Point Information

If the unrelated pickup activity is customer-related it will require service point information to be created. This information can be queried by the field work crew via the "Field Work Service Point Query" (D1-FieldWorkSPQuery) Inbound web service.

This service uses a set of criteria to allow the field crew to search for a service point based upon either service point or device information. The service returns a list of service points that is configurable in length. If the number of results is larger than the configured maximum length the service indicates that additional records exist and the crew can request another set of results allowing them to identify the proper service point to associate to the activity.

There are times when an unrelated pick-up activity is identified but the field crew is out-of-coverage (i.e. no network connection) and they will not be able to immediately verify service point information. In this type of situation, the crew can input the service point criteria fields and create the activity, which, when imported into Service Order Management, will attempt to identify the service point based upon the information provided. If the service point can be uniquely identified everything should operate as normal. If the service point cannot be uniquely identified then the service order field activity is set to the error state.