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[This article is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]
The Scheduling Operations Agent in Dynamics 365 Field Service suggests optimized schedules by evaluating your resources, resource requirements, and existing bookings. The quality of those suggestions depends on how consistently you configure that data and on which bookings the agent can move.
Use the practices in this article to set up resource and requirement properties, manage existing bookings, and avoid eligibility problems that cause the agent to return incomplete or unexpected results. The guidance applies to both interactive and batch optimizations.
Important
- This is a preview feature.
- Preview features aren't meant for production use and may have restricted functionality. These features are available before an official release so that customers can get early access and provide feedback.
Define resource and requirement properties
The agent evaluates properties of resources and requirements when it optimizes a schedule. To get the best results, use the following properties consistently:
Resource properties:
Resource requirements:
Test and refine optimization goals
A good goal balances objectives so that the agent produces the schedule you expect. Because objectives trade off against one another, building one is an iterative process: you create a goal, see what it produces, and adjust it. The safest way to test a new goal is to use a plan with the Apply method set to Review before apply. This setting lets you generate and inspect a suggested schedule without changing any bookings.
Create a goal with the objectives and weights you want to try. Learn more in Create a goal.
Create a narrow scope: a small set of resources, a short time range, and a focused requirement query, so that the results are easy to interpret.
Create a plan that uses the goal and scope, and set Apply method to Review before apply.
Run the plan, review the suggested schedule, and adjust the goal's weights. Repeat until the results match your expectations.
Gradually widen the scope, with more resources and a longer time range, as you gain confidence in the results.
Keep the objectives balanced. Some objectives affect the schedule more than others, so balance is about how they interact, not just the individual weights. An objective weighted far above the rest can overpower the result and cause unexpected schedules. For example, weighting Schedule High Priority Requirements First at 10 while everything else is 1–3 might prioritize high-priority work at the cost of long travel and idle gaps. Start with weights that are close together, change one objective at a time, and compare runs.
Your booking priority values and which booking statuses you can optimize also influence your results.
Don't enable objectives that rely on fields or data your organization doesn't use. For example, don't enable the Prefer preferred resources objective if your organization doesn't use resource preferences, or Schedule High Priority Requirements First if you use only a single priority for work.
Keep optimizations focused
Smaller, focused optimizations generally produce better results than large, broad ones. Limit each optimization to the resources, requirements, and bookings that belong together:
Don't include thousands of open requirements when fewer would do. Use a requirement query or view that returns only the work that you want to schedule.
Don't optimize unrelated sets of resources and requirements in the same batch. Group resources and requirements that are related, such as those in the same territory or that share skills, instead of mixing distant locations or unrelated work.
Large or mixed optimizations are slower, harder to interpret, and more likely to hit the size limits, which truncate the records that are included. Scope each plan to a focused set, and for interactive optimizations, choose a requirement view that's narrow enough for the resources you select.
Manage existing bookings
The agent treats existing bookings the same as unfulfilled requirements, which might lead to unexpected results. For example, if a dispatcher asks the agent for a suggested schedule at 10:00 AM, the agent might suggest replacing the 10:20 AM booking with higher-priority work. The following suggestions can help you avoid these issues:
Use a custom time range and set it to start an hour or two from the current time.
For bookings that you want to persist, apply a booking status that has an optimization method of Do Not Move. Learn more in Select an optimization method for booking statuses.
Create a requirement view that contains no requirements and choose that view in the agent settings. The agent suggests a schedule that only optimizes the order of existing bookings. This approach is especially helpful if you want to optimize only the travel route for the day. However, keep in mind that the agent can still remove bookings that don't match other settings or for which the promised time window is expired.
Eligible bookings
The agent needs eligible bookable resource bookings and unfulfilled resource requirements to suggest a schedule. It also needs requirements with locations that aren't too far apart. For example, it doesn't return results if the resource is based in New York but bookings and requirements are in Miami.
Bookings that have an optimization method of Do Not Move and occur outside of working hours or require travel outside of working hours are ineligible to be included in a suggested schedule.
Bookings with optimization method set to Do Not Move
Bookings that have an optimization method of Do Not Move, or that don't have an optimization method set can present a challenge for the agent. If an optimization method isn't set for booking statuses, the agent treats the bookings as Do Not Move by default. In either case, the agent can't move these bookings, which can lead to the following issues:
If the schedule includes overlapping bookings, the agent can't suggest a better schedule.
If one or more bookings overlap the resource's breaks or off-work periods, the agent can't suggest a better schedule. It always tries to accommodate all travel and booking-related work within the resource's working hours. It also tries to allow time for the resource to drive from the location of the last booking of the day back to the resource's end location.
To avoid these issues, select an optimization method for all booking statuses. Learn more in Select an optimization method for booking statuses and Time range.
Set priority values and optimization method
If the agent doesn't pick up requirements or bookings at all, make sure that priorities have a priority value set and booking statuses have an optimization method set. Learn more in Set priority values and Select an optimization method for booking statuses.