How Are Field Activities Created?

Field activities are created as follows:

  • Starting or stopping service indirectly causes field activities to be created to perform the fieldwork necessary to connect or disconnect service. Refer to Starting Service & Field Activities for more information about how field activities are created to start and stop service. Note, if you use the Order transaction to start service, field activities will also be created in the same manner described under the Starting Service & Field Activities discussion.
  • The activation of a severance event with fieldwork causes field activities to be generated to disconnect or reconnect service. For more information about severance events and field activities, refer to The Big Picture Of Severance Events.
  • When an operator indicates that a reread should be done for a meter read that fails high/low, a field activity is created. For more information about this process, refer to Review High / Low for more information.
  • An algorithm may be designed to generate a field activity. For example, perhaps the activation algorithm for a workflow event creates a field activity. Or perhaps a field activity is created as a result of a meter read remark algorithm.
  • An operator may create a field activity at their discretion. This is done for ad hoc service investigation orders. For more information about creating an ad hoc field activity, refer to Field Activity Maintenance.

In the above diagram, the event that takes place on 13-Dec-98 shows two field activities created to start service for a customer on 15-Dec-98. Notice that the activities are not linked to a field order when they're first created. Why? Because field activities exist in a state of limbo awaiting dispatch. At dispatch time, a field order is created and one or more field activities are linked to it.

Creating a field activity before a field order may seem counter-intuitive to you. If so, consider that a field activity is created to perform work at a service point ON SOME FUTURE DATE. Close to the date, a dispatcher will look at all field activities to be performed by a given dispatch group at a premise and group them together under a field order.