Long-term planning of service agreements can be complicated due to constantly changing assignments, customer requests, and resource requirements. Companies that provide support, service, inspection, repair, or installation services can save both time and money by automating the service calendar and thereby extending the planning horizon. In this webinar, we take a closer look at how companies can gain better control by automating agreements in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service.

You can watch the presentation and demo directly on our YouTube channel. Watch the recording below:

Here you can read the transcript of the webinar held on October 16, 2024:

How to automatically create service jobs in the Service Calendar in D365

Frode Stenstrøm: Hi, would you like to make better use of your field workers and service staff? Avoid peaks and troughs in your service calendar and automate the scheduling of service jobs? With Dynamics 365 Field Service, you can create smart agreements that generate service jobs and give you an overview of all your future resource needs. In today's episode, you will see how to create these service jobs automatically, set flexible schedules and recurrence patterns for both work orders and associated invoices, and link the agreements to equipment located at the customer's premises.

Imagine no longer having to follow up on agreements manually or deal with unexpected bottlenecks in your service calendar. By automating service scheduling in Dynamics, you can focus on delivering the right service to the right customer at the right time and place, while the system ensures that nothing falls through the cracks. So stay tuned for today's broadcast, where Stine and I will show you how to automate your service calendar and save time and money.

Yes, and I hope we have sound and that everything is working. Welcome, Stine.

Stine Hansen: Thank you very much

Frode Stenstrøm: And now you're back in the studio to talk even more about your passion in life.

Stine Hansen: “Passion in life,” yes, that's right. Dynamics 365 Field Service.

Frode Stenstrøm: Plus—a marathon. You'd done a bit of running since last time, hadn't you? –

Stine Hansen: I've been out for a little run.

That was a long way!

Frode Stenstrøm: It’s been a short run, yes. Stine, you’re part of ProsessPilotene and one of our subject-matter experts in what we call field service, which is actually quite a broad field.

Stine Hansen: Very much so. I also work as a functional consultant on a broader range of topics, and as a team leader.

Frode Stenstrøm: And team leader. And my name is Frode Stenstrøm, and I am the host of today's broadcast.

As usual, we are broadcasting live on YouTube, so you are welcome to ask questions during the broadcast or in the comments section afterwards. Please tell us who you are and where you are from, so we can be a little more precise in the answers we give you. We also add subtitles to the broadcast. It takes YouTube about a day to generate the subtitles, and then we add chapters so that you can skip back and forth to the part of the broadcast that is most relevant to you.

And as always, like and share the broadcast. If you enjoy it, share it with your colleagues. We hope you have a good and useful day today. And Stine, could you tell us a little about the agenda?

Agenda and demo overview

Stine Hansen: Yes, we're going to look at the flexibility of it. First, we'll look at how the agreement is set up, and then we'll see which roles are involved.

We’re going to have a longer demo of agreements and how to configure flexible—oops, there are some flexible ordering setups here—and how they can be configured both with and without automatic booking. Then we’ll look at how these are linked to equipment, since an agreement can have multiple events, which, as we’ve shown previously, can be included in a work order.

You can also configure a very wide range of flexible options. You can set intervals ranging from daily to every three years, which we will demonstrate. You can also set a recurring invoicing schedule. It will be very exciting.

Flexibility in service agreements

Frode Stenstrøm: I think, Stine, that the issue we're trying to address arises because you work on assignments at customers' premises, and they have entered into agreements.

It could be a recurring agreement stipulating that a certain number of inspection assignments must be carried out, or that a certain amount of time must be spent in the field.

And then it’s not so easy to know what resources you actually need once you’ve entered into these agreements and made a lot of sales involving commitments. So that’s part of the challenge you’re solving.

Stine Hansen: Right. So it’s about extending the planning horizon as much as you want, because you can decide in the system how far in advance these work orders should be generated. So if you want, if you have a system today where you may not have such a long planning horizon, or where these aren’t generated regularly and you have to do it manually, you can set it so that all the jobs you know you’ll be carrying out over the next three months, six months, or a year, or...

Even further ahead than that, the system will generate these for you on demand.

Frode Stenstrøm: And I think this is great, because if you want to become more data-driven, and perhaps avoid having to book lots of temporary staff during peak periods and having underutilized resources during quieter periods, you get that automation.

Stine Hansen: Right? And if you have some flexibility, you can set that. You might have a date, and then perhaps a week either way.

So, when you have that flexibility across all your assignments, you can see that some assignments can be handled when things are quieter, while others need to be handled when things are busy, and prioritize accordingly.

Frode Stenstrøm: At the same time, you may have contractual obligations stipulating that the work must be completed within a certain time frame.

Stine Hansen: Right? Yes.

Frode Stenstrøm: So I think the solution Stine is going to show you today is perfect for all of you who have any kind of staff working in the field, whether they are carrying out inspections or food safety checks, or need to monitor something. It can really be anything, as long as someone is out and about.

Stine Hansen: Yes, exactly. As long as it’s something you need to do more than once—and usually you’ll return to it—instead of waiting until something has happened, you can schedule regular visits to a customer every six months or every year, so that... So that you can prevent any damage by dealing with it before it occurs.

How to set up automatic service agreements

Frode Stenstrøm: And you've prepared a short presentation that gives us an idea of the workflow. It's quite a large diagram, so I just wanted to make it clear that what you're about to see isn't complicated; it's simply meant to illustrate the flow of the agreement structure. I'll switch over to it now and start using the slides as a guide, and then you can tell me where to begin.

Stine Hansen: We start with the service agreement. So that is at the top, in other words, the overall level. It indicates which customers are involved. It also specifies the start date—that is, when the agreement takes effect and when it applies. And then there is a status. That should not be changed, so possible sub-statuses have been added to allow it to be adapted to the customers' processes.

Frode Stenstrøm: And that's really another way of saying that the contract you've entered into describes the frequency interval and how the service agreement should be structured.

Stine Hansen: Right? So we'll come back to that in the ordering setup. And what Pia showed was contract management.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, she did

Stine Hansen: About the service agreement.

Frode Stenstrøm: That was last week's webinar, so stay tuned. It was a very popular broadcast, both when she demonstrated contract management in the CRM and the use of DocuSign to get these things signed, and we think she will help sell more of them.

Stine Hansen: Right?

Frode Stenstrøm: So I just follow along.

Stine Hansen: So it could be linked to the service agreement, with the service agreement becoming active once it was signed, for example.

Exactly. So everything here can be interconnected. The service agreement really just provides an overview of who it applies to and when. And then it is the order setup that specifies what type of assignment or work order this is. For example, whether it is an installation, a check, or an inspection—whatever types the customer has decided to use.

What priority does this have? You can also specify whether it is at the customer's premises, at a location, or whether it is—Sometimes you may have some software that needs to be checked, and then you do not need to assign it by location; you can simply have a resource who lives anywhere in the country.

Frode Stenstrøm: But as inspiration for those of you watching, it can also be used, for example, if you provide cleaning services and need a checklist of what should be done at the customer's home.

That's a perfect use case. You get all those templates, and Stine also demonstrated some of this in the first webinars about field service as a product. This gives you a more concrete idea of what it's all about.

Order setup and invoicing

Stine Hansen: And in the order setup, you also specify how many days in advance the work order should be generated.

So you can configure that differently. For example, if you have something that needs to happen annually, you might generate it one year in advance. If something needs to happen every week, it might be generated three months in advance. This can be configured for each order setup.

Frode Stenstrøm: And if you combine what Stine is saying with what is also available on the platform—namely customer communication—then when that work order is created, your customer can also be notified.

Stine Hansen: And

Frode Stenstrøm: That way, you avoid wasted trips by sending a technician to a location where no one is actually present.

Stine Hansen: That's right. You can then decide whether you want to book resources. You can specify a preferred resource in the setup itself. This can simplify the booking task for the planner later on. And as Frode mentioned, it is also possible to add products and a checklist of service tasks to be performed.

And the thing is, once you enter this in the order setup, it is inherited by every single work order generated from that setup. So it saves a great deal of time.

Frode Stenstrøm: It saves a lot of time, and it also provides predictability not only in resource management, but also in material consumption and what you need to order in advance to have enough supplies to carry out the inspection assignment.

Right. I’m thinking of all of you who work with heat pump maintenance, or who are going to work on that type of equipment, or balanced ventilation. There are so many examples where consumables are needed as well—not just personnel. For example, the filter may need to be replaced. But then there was the service task, Stine?

Stine Hansen: Yes, so it's more like a list of tasks to be done. But you also add the next item, which is called events for appointment booking. You then create an event, for example, that you need to... Yes, check the heat pump again, and if the customer has two heat pumps, you would create two events, one for each heat pump, and link them to it.

And, well, the first item probably shouldn't be included here, but we should at least include the event type. That's where we start. So, for example, it could be a heat pump inspection or heat pump installation. You then link it to the equipment, set a duration, and here you can also specify which products are used. You can now have a checklist that applies to that event. So you can have an overall checklist for the entire work order, or one for each event to be carried out.

Frode Stenstrøm: The work order can be as simple as cleaning a bathroom. But it could also involve cleaning five additional rooms, with multiple checklists for each room.

Stine Hansen: Correct.

Frode Stenstrøm: Just to give an example.

Stine Hansen: So it can be structured in... Many ways

Frode Stenstrøm: Exactly. But then you've gone through the event and appointment booking

Stine Hansen: Right, and in parallel, we can set up the order configuration. Then you can also set up an invoicing schedule. For example, let's say you visit a customer once a week, but perhaps only invoice them once a month.

Then you can set it up so that it is generated on an invoice

Frode Stenstrøm: But what if, for example, you had entered into a service agreement stating that you pay a fixed amount per year, and then the supplier simply has to do whatever is needed? You can also invoice a fixed price, can't you?

Stine Hansen: Right, yes, so this is how...

Frode Stenstrøm: So if it's a fixed price, can you add all the different predefined invoicing methods?

Stine Hansen: Yes, so you add products and services to the invoice, and those are what appear on the invoice for it.

Frode Stenstrøm: Exactly.

Stine Hansen: So this is, in a way, what lies behind it all.

And then, when you activate the agreement, you set its status to active, and something called order dates is generated. For the order date, you have set a degree of flexibility in the configuration—plus or minus 30 days or plus or minus one week—so the work order is given an earliest and a latest date.

If booking has been enabled, it is assigned to a resource, and you then get a link to the work order that has been created. At the same time, you can receive an invoice and a date specifying which products are included. So the two are essentially separate processes.

Frode Stenstrøm: But it’s quite natural to have one process for completing a job at set times, and another process for getting paid for it.

Yes

Stine Hansen: Yes, that's correct. And there's no need to use invoice setup. You can still use work orders as the basis for invoicing.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, because it is an order in itself. Right?

Stine Hansen: But if it isn't one-to-one, you can configure the invoice setup to combine multiple work orders on the same invoice.

Right. And there are some settings, because you may not want all these work orders to be created during working hours. You can actually specify in the system what time of day they should be created. You will often want to create them outside working hours. That way, you do not have to worry about the system using a lot of capacity.

Frode Stenstrøm: Oh, I see—how it actually creates orders.

Stine Hansen: Yes, it generates the work orders. And then you get a work order that inherits the work order types from the order setup. It also inherits the priority and work location. If a district has been specified in the agreement, that can now be inherited as well. And the preferred resource may have been booked.

Right. And you will get an approximate start and end time for when the work order is to be carried out, along with the products, services, and tasks presented in a checklist format.

Frode Stenstrøm: I think that in the webinar, we focused a lot on work orders and the associated checklists.

Stine Hansen: Correct

Frode Stenstrøm: What we're showing now is essentially what we did back then, but we created them manually at the time. Now we're actually showing the process for creating them automatically, or a proposal for creating them automatically.

Stine Hansen: Yes, that's right. And if you have previously added multiple events for appointment booking, you will then have multiple events on that work order. So, for example, if you need to inspect electrical panels in a housing cooperative, there may be several electrical panels, with one event per panel, and then an overall work order for that customer.

Frode Stenstrøm: Absolutely. But as I understand it, the agreement includes some configuration that allows you to use rules to determine when and where these service assignments should be scheduled,

The system generates them, and then you get paid either a fixed price or based on the hours worked afterward.

Yes, that was good.

Roles involved: Who uses the service calendar?

Stine Hansen: That's the setup, so it's a matter of who uses this and who's involved before we... Erik in customer service usually creates a number of agreements and enters how often this customer should have an inspection or check, or how often this equipment should be checked.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, you're quicker than technician Frode today. Because Erik is the one who creates the service agreement, and then we have the planner.

Stine Hansen: Right. So when the assignments are generated, because they do come from him, it is probably the people who create the actual agreements who are most involved in what we are showing now. But Thomas still receives a great many assignments that he has to schedule, and Ingrid gets a complete overview of all the work orders she has to carry out, which she will typically receive.

Preferably three months in advance, so she knows which assignments she’ll be doing. That way, she can plan and review them.

Frode Stenstrøm: And I would say, Stine, that the practical aspect of what we’re talking about now is that a contract is often sold by a salesperson. And the service agreement is entered as a standard sales process, giving you a very smooth transition from sales to delivery.

But what everyone asks and wonders about is what resources will be needed going forward, and with this kind of setup, it is easier to calculate how many people I will need at work in the future.

Stine Hansen: Yes, that's right.

Frode Stenstrøm: So that provides very useful insight into how the money will flow through the company.

So, we've now gone through the cast of characters, and I know that we're going to—I'm actually pretty sure that we're going to start looking at a demonstration of sorts, or am I remembering that wrong? No, we're just going to talk a little about the company we're demonstrating in.

Stine Hansen: Right. We have our demo company, Miljøpilotene, which works with environmentally friendly innovation and sustainable technology and does quite a bit of monitoring, installs sensors—yes, a lot of measuring equipment for environmental footprints and emissions at customer sites. So there are some water quality meters here and there, we have some particulate matter meters here and there, and then we have twelve technicians who do all the jobs.

So there are very... Yes, different tasks, events, and competency requirements associated with these types. And as we mentioned last time, if you create an event of the inspection type, then when it is generated and you have added a template specifying who can take on these assignments, all of that will be generated when the assignment comes from an agreement.

So you don't have to think about the competency requirements and all that, because they will be included automatically.

Frode Stenstrøm: And we only use Miljøpilotene as an example company from us at ProsessPilotene, so we have something we can use for all those demonstrations. We are also building the Miljøpilotene.no website, where it will be possible to view and integrate live, because even when we are not broadcasting, people will be able to go in and submit requests for quotations.

The company obviously doesn't exist; FS is a fictional company, but that's simply how it is. So I think we'll get started with these demos, Stine, and switch over to your PC.

Stine Hansen: Yes, let's see.

Frode Stenstrøm: Now we're live.

Where am I supposed to lie again? Maybe I should lie down here?

Stine Hansen: Yes, I think that's fine. Then we're already into... I

Frode Stenstrøm: I think you can enlarge it a little. Zoom in a bit—Ctrl +—and just make it a little bigger... Lenovo to Dell, then there'll be another one, I think. Yes, it's 100% at least.

Stine Hansen: Now we can see clearly. New PC, so it's a bit like, how does everything work?

Frode Stenstrøm: Lenovo and Dell have of course swapped the Control and Function keys around, so it takes a little getting used to.

Stine Hansen: It takes a little time, but now we're here.

Demo: Setting up a service agreement

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, and now we can see that we're looking at these active agreements.

Stine Hansen: Correct.

So I think I can go in and show an active agreement for Nordic Data Center here.

As we can see, there isn't actually that much information in the agreement itself, but you can also have different customers for invoicing. The customer receiving the service isn't necessarily the one who will be paying, so the system supports distinguishing between them.

Frode Stenstrøm: That's very common; it could be a parent company and a subsidiary, or whatever the case may be.

All these companies and the data you're seeing now are synthetic data. These are companies that don't exist; their names and so on were generated by AI, but it's... Just to make it a little more realistic.

Stine Hansen: Right. So you can see here that it is set to active, and there are four options. When you create an agreement, you start by setting the estimate until you have finished entering how often things should happen.

Because this is the default setting—you can change it, of course—but out of the box, it is set to generate a daily job. So if you activate it too early, you risk generating a large number of jobs. Wait to activate it until you are completely sure that you are finished.

And if those statuses aren't enough, you can create your own sub-statuses, which you can also customize in the process bar here. For example, you might have two different phases, one of which could involve contracts and signing, and you can add that here.

Frode Stenstrøm: And when Pia demonstrated this in our webinar last week on contract management, we focused on the major contracts, such as framework agreements and similar types of contracts.

Now we'll look at an example of a contract aimed at service assignments.

Stine Hansen: Correct

Frode Stenstrøm: What she showed was contract management for general agreements, and the two are actually somewhat related. We can see that she showed us a different process, because her process covered everything related to negotiating and finalizing the agreement, whereas this is actually about complying with the terms of the agreement.

Stine Hansen: Right? So you can see that there is a weekly IT network check here. If we go in and look at it, this is where it gets a little more interesting. Here you can specify the work order type, and that is something that... Here are the ones for the environmental pilots, the groupings of work that we do and have done.

So that could be an option; we've just set it to inspection here. Network check, yes, we can leave it like that. And here it has been set... to generate them 60 days in advance.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes.

Stine Hansen: And I can change that to 120 or 360.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, however many days you want, really.

Stine Hansen: Right? And I haven't set any priorities, but here are the...

So you can set your own priorities, but by default they can't be set there. And then you can choose where it should be done.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, exactly.

Stine Hansen: And that comes into play when booking a resource. If it’s on-site, you’ll want to find a resource who lives nearby.

Frode Stenstrøm: Have you made any kind of adjustments to the system now, beyond simply entering your parameters?

Stine Hansen: I haven't made any customizations, so this is completely standard. The first thing we would do is remove the fields that aren't needed or rename them, because this is entirely standard. We haven't made any customizations, just entered basic data such as types and priorities and added resources, but otherwise it's...

Frode Stenstrøm: And that's exactly the point. The system is now running on Norwegian soil. That's what I mean when I say it's a very complete system. You can remove things, but there is very little you need to add to get started.

Stine Hansen: Right? So this is set up so that I want to create a booking when the work orders are created.

And I have selected Lars Pedersen as the preferred resource, and I also have a preferred start time. Here, I can specify the number of days, plus or minus seven days. So once you have all your assignments and these scheduling windows, you can later set up something called resource optimization, which allows you to achieve the most even allocation possible.

Planning and resource utilization

Stine Hansen: So that’s something we can show at a later stage, but this is very useful because it gives you a complete overview and shows you what options are available for booking.

Frode Stenstrøm: I think what you're saying now is relevant to the introduction. We said that we're trying to avoid having a lot of things to do one week and then nothing the next.

This allows you to schedule the orders a little further out, making better use of the installers you actually have.

Stine Hansen: Yes, exactly. And then, you know, when you see that you have—okay, you know you have all your jobs scheduled six months ahead—and then you get an order for something you haven't planned for, you can say, well, we don't have that much to do this week. Since you know about it very early, you can suggest next week instead, when it suits us much better.

That way, you can plan even better.

Events and equipment register

Stine Hansen: Then there were these events, and, well, here we are, we're going to Nordic Data Center, wasn't that where we were, and then we're going to—here you can specify which equipment we need to go out and check. So you can create one event per piece of equipment, and that also gives you the history.

For the equipment, and then you know whether or not this equipment is covered by an agreement.

Frode Stenstrøm: And we should remind you of what we have shown in previous broadcasts: the product has a very good database and underlying structure covering what equipment the customer has, where it is installed, its serial number, how long it has been in operation, and we can even monitor it and collect the monitoring data in the database here.

And for many, that will be enough to get an overview of the equipment, so they know there is something to sell or maintain.

Stine Hansen: Yes, you can set up your entire equipment register and potentially start using these service agreements at a later stage. But once the equipment register is in place, the equipment is available to be added to the agreement straight away.

Frode Stenstrøm: And if your company has sold and installed equipment at the customer's premises, and the supplier you used says there are certain maintenance obligations, you can enter them into the database, so you don't have to think, oh darn, I need to keep an eye on that pump or that fan, or...

Stine Hansen: Right, I can just add it here.

Frode Stenstrøm: Or whatever it might be. And auto repair shops could also do the same for their fleet management, so it’s incredible what you can actually use it for.

Stine Hansen: Right. That frees up time and capacity for us to think about ...

Frode Stenstrøm: Marathon.

Stine Hansen: Or sales or ...

Frode Stenstrøm: Maybe even better.

Stine Hansen: Let's see.

So here you can add ... More events, and if I add an event now, then if a work order has been created, it will not be included by default with the existing ones that have been published. But if you want a customization for that, then that is a straightforward

Frode Stenstrøm: You can handle that.

Stine Hansen: We'll take care of it.

So, as we can see here, this is now active, and when you set it to active, the system starts calculating when we actually need to visit this customer.

Order frequency and flexibility

Stine Hansen: Because if I go into the ordering frequency at the top here, I've specified that it should be

Frode Stenstrøm: weekly, every Wednesday.

Stine Hansen: And you can see how much you can specify here, right?

Now I'll set it to Sunday.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, it’s Sunday, weekly, monthly—those are the usual scheduling options you see.

Stine Hansen: So...

Frode Stenstrøm: Every weekday, yes.

Stine Hansen: So it’s... Yes, here I can choose every fourth week, every fourth Thursday. I can set it to monthly. So that’s how it is... Yes, it should be the 20th of every month. Every other month.

Frode Stenstrøm: In many ways, it’s like adding an appointment to your calendar, where you can set it to recur, but now you’re actually doing it for an entire service job.

Stine Hansen: Yes, that's right. It's every 12 months. And then you can also add some custom dates. And this comes from the agreement. And if you feel that this involves quite a few clicks—if, for example, you have fixed monthly intervals—you can extract it as a text file and paste it in so that you have a default. It's not standard, but it is possible, so you don't have to select weekly and every fourth each time you go in here. You can edit that, you see, and make it more seamless, but then

Frode Stenstrøm: So now all you have to do is call you and order this

Stine Hansen: That's basically it; I can come tomorrow and set it up, yes.

But it really shows how flexible it is, and I haven't seen any limitations... Here we are. Maybe we shouldn't be at someone's place on January 1 every year.

Frode Stenstrøm: I think January 1 is a rather bad day to be there.

Stine Hansen: We'll skip that. It's possible to specify when the company is closed so that the assignment can take that into account.

But you know, there are lots of possibilities here, so...

Frode Stenstrøm: But what you're saying is relevant, because as we also showed in the previous broadcast, when it comes to the service calendars, or the calendars for those resources, if they're not at work, then you can't—well, you can still overbook them, but generally they won't be assigned to a job on a day when they're not at work.

Stine Hansen: No, they won't.

Frode Stenstrøm: So it takes holidays and that sort of thing into account.

Stine Hansen: Right. And since you usually allow for a few days either way, the system will take into account that this resource is on vacation that week, so you can suggest that it comes back then, or on a day when you don't have a dentist's appointment or anything like that.

So this is very flexible and can be managed by the user. We don't need to add anything else unless you want a default setting, so this is...

Frode Stenstrøm: So, we've been through that, and looking at the ordering, service setup, and things like that, I can see that you've added several order dates further down.

I see it weekly; it's 10.15.8.1.79, so these order dates are in the past.

Stine Hansen: Right. And before I click on it, I just want to show that you can add the relevant products here. Then, when you generate the job, that product will be included. And some—well, you set up a product, but some of the products are service products.

And then they are added here. And then you can get the service tasks here, where you add them. We showed this in great detail in How this is done on a work order. But now we're just adding it somewhere else, so that it becomes...

Frode Stenstrøm: Copied into the work order?

Stine Hansen: Yes, that's right.

Frode Stenstrøm: And that is perhaps the biggest difference: there is now a contractual framework governing the work orders, which stipulates that the work orders are created at earlier locations.

Stine Hansen: Right. So if we go into...

Frode Stenstrøm: A specific order date, yes.

Stine Hansen: Correct.

Frode Stenstrøm: Now it says that a preferred resource has been set.

Stine Hansen: Right? And I hadn't put any plus or minus on this one.

Frode Stenstrøm: No

Stine Hansen: So there is no earliest or latest date

Frode Stenstrøm: No, this one set

just the order date.

Stine Hansen: Correct

But let's see, nothing was generated here without a work order.

And then say that you want to generate something.

How to generate work orders?

Stine Hansen: You can set it so that it is generated at midnight. But if you cannot wait until midnight, you can do it manually by clicking the button called “Generate work order”.

Frode Stenstrøm: Then you create that work order, yes.

Stine Hansen: Right, so it takes a minute or so now, but then you don't have to wait for that job. And if you want things to be generated faster than the default, say you create an agreement and then have a task that really should be generated immediately, that's now something we can customize.

So we can see that we've booked Lars. What date is it today, actually?

Frode Stenstrøm: Today is October 16.

Stine Hansen: This was poor demo data.

Frode Stenstrøm: But that was yesterday.

Stine Hansen: So we can change that. We can click Order again. And here, if you look at products and services, you can see that it has been inherited, and you can also see that a checklist has been included.

Now I'll just create an event. Let's see. And here we have it ... I didn't have any active customer activity associated with it, so we can ...

Frode Stenstrøm: No, but you do get the work order. The work order has now been created.

Stine Hansen: Right? So it has been generated.

And then, if I go to one, let's see, it was an agreement. So this was the first one we looked at. Let's see, here we have a little...

Frode Stenstrøm: I see there were several appointments?

Stine Hansen: There are a few agreements, let's see.

Frode Stenstrøm: If only we had made money from all these fictitious things, that would have been absolutely wonderful.

Stine Hansen: That would have been very, very, very

Frode Stenstrøm: a fictitious climate... I think there are some directory companies that have created fictitious things like that.

Stine Hansen: Right. But we did look at Fjordlaks Oppdrett last time. So I thought we could show one with a little more... Here we got quick setup, so you don't have to go in and click even more. Environmental analysis—let's use that for troubleshooting. And here you can see...

Frode Stenstrøm: The sensors, yes

Stine Hansen: Right? And this is filtered by customer. So then it shows up...

Frode Stenstrøm: The customer's equipment, and not just everything that is equipment.

Stine Hansen: Correct. If anyone missed the part about equipment registration, we can now see where this equipment is located. We can see that the functional location has been filled in, and this will also be inherited going forward.

Frode Stenstrøm: It includes travel time calculations and the like.

Stine Hansen: Right. And some have already been generated here, but when you generate a new assignment now, the new event will be included, or you can remove this and generate it again.

Frode Stenstrøm: So, we've gone through the process for agreements and such. Next, Stine.

Invoicing and integration

Stine Hansen: Now I'll briefly show you the invoicing setup I have.

So if we have quarterly...

Frode Stenstrøm: Quarterly invoicing?

Stine Hansen: Yes.

Then we can set the invoice rule with the set in exactly the same way

Frode Stenstrøm: Just as we set up the assignment rule with the set.

Stine Hansen: Right. So they want it around the 20th, then it will be every three months, won't it? So then you will create ...

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes

three months in a quarter. It's a good thing you've had five years of education so you can read the calendar.

Finally, I got an important education with something.

Stine Hansen: And here you can then set it, right, for example, you use that monitor once.

Frode Stenstrøm: And there you can see the price list coming in.

Stine Hansen: Yes, the quantity, right, you get the prices that are in the system, so.

Frode Stenstrøm: But we haven't actually discussed that in our webinars when it comes to the case-related aspect of this, because you can enter both cost price lists and case price lists.

Right. The cost price list contains the prices from your suppliers, plus the cost of having people on the job. Then you have the sales price list, which also tells you how much money you make on each job.

Stine Hansen: Yes, that's right. So here, we entered two events, so we'll just set it, and then we'll move over, and

then, when, some invoice dates have already appeared here. So, the first...

Frode Stenstrøm: It has now been posted and is ready for invoicing.

Stine Hansen: Yes, so...

Frode Stenstrøm: And what we at ProsessPilotene will often do with this type of data is that when the system generates these proposals, we create a small integration with their financial system, transfer them for invoicing, and then they are invoiced.

And then we feed the status back, because right now it says scheduled for invoicing.

Stine Hansen: Correct.

Frode Stenstrøm: But then you’ll change the status from scheduled to ready for invoicing to invoiced.

Stine Hansen: Yes, that's right. You don't have to use this invoice setup here. Very often, I would think that you use the work order as the basis for invoicing, because there may be some additional hours or products that aren't included. This gives you the option to include something you know needs to be done and check certain things more often, and you want it to appear on the invoice.

Frode Stenstrøm: That's very exciting, because you could say that you have a service agreement that covers what was included in the contract, but you can also use the work order as a change order for anything that wasn't included in the contract and invoice it separately.

Stine Hansen: That's right.

Frode Stenstrøm: That’s really cool to do, and it’s also possible to accept payment out in the field, right then and there.

Stine Hansen: Applies to all work orders.

Frode Stenstrøm: Now you've created a lot of work orders, I say.

Stine Hansen: Yes, so what I did last night when I was creating some demo data was to set jobs to be generated at seven o’clock. So CRM basically generated some jobs for me.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, okay.

Stine Hansen: And that's how it works. I currently have a number of agreements that I've set to active, while some are estimated, so if I set them all to active, I'll have even more generated by 7 a.m. tonight.

So then, you know, you don't have to create all those environmental data analyses on-site at Nordic Data Center, as we just showed.

Frode Stenstrøm: As we said at the outset, Stine, this is great for scheduling things in advance, but it also saves a lot of manual data entry. That's just what I can see. Instead of entering and ordering them, the work orders covered by your contracts will be scheduled automatically.

Stine Hansen: Correct.

Frode Stenstrøm: It’s a completely different way of working.

Stine Hansen: So, say you had all the work orders that this company is going to carry out over the next six months, because there were a lot of them—say there was a lot of equipment that needed to be checked regularly—and we entered them here, then we could get a visualization of which weeks we have a lot to do, which resources have a lot of scheduled assignments under those agreements, whether resources should be reassigned, and you have the opportunity to do all those things well in advance.

Frode Stenstrøm: I’ve seen that many customers today use Excel for these kinds of things.

But with what you're showing now, you'll never be able to do that in an Excel spreadsheet. No chance.

Stine Hansen: I have to admit, when you said Excel, I winced a little. I think this is something we’d be happy to help with. And what we’ve shown now is completely standard. So there’s quite a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to getting some of these agreements into the system.

Frode Stenstrøm: Before you start customizing anything at all.

Because we can customize that too, but it’s about starting somewhere and getting the system up and running with the basic data. Then comes the exciting part for us: we can automate even more. Yes, make it even more seamless. But moving from Excel and the Outlook calendar to this is a big step, and I know there are some updates coming regarding third-party licensing for this, starting now, really, which will make it a very affordable product for a great many people.

Yes, that's great.

Summary and conclusion

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, but to briefly summarize what we have looked at so far, we have gone through the contract section that generates the work orders and the invoicing setup.

Stine Hansen: Yes, so we have taken an overall look at the agreement, which contains very little information but ties everything together. And then we looked at the order setup, where you can add products and services and set the frequency, which we saw was very flexible. You can book a resource or leave it unbooked, and you can specify how many days in advance it should be generated—in other words, how many days of leeway, plus or minus, there are for completing the assignment.

And we have also looked at how you can create multiple events linked to different pieces of equipment. So if the customer is going out to inspect five electrical panels, you create five events. And every time you create a work order, all five electrical panels will have a record of what has been done.

Frode Stenstrøm: And that means that the next time the same technician comes out, they’ll be able to see what happened previously.

Stine Hansen: That's right. Because it has access to everything, and you can go in and click on the equipment and see that this is done then, that is done then, everything is carried out. And we've also shown how to set up an independent invoicing setup.

Frode Stenstrøm: And once these jobs have been completed and the data is on the work order, you can take photos and carry out an inspection, and then create reports for the customer.

What haven't you shown that you were going to show at the end? Or have we covered everything?

Stine Hansen: We've actually covered what I planned to show today. It's a bit... A bit more focused, allowing us to explore one topic in greater depth. So what we could have shown more of is additional demo data in Miljøpilotene, which we'll be getting.

Then we could have had more forecasting of what needs to be done, who has too much to do, and who has too little to do. But, you know, when the agreement is in place, you can see that, so that is what we have just demonstrated—the option to enter it.

Frode Stenstrøm: And I would say that the advantage of the entire system now is that you have a very robust infrastructure for keeping track of all your resources and all the installations out there. You have contract management for both the major contracts you have with the customer and the specific service and maintenance agreements, and everything is operationalized within the same system, with customer communication and document generation to come.

And we also have an internal project where we are now expanding our standard websites with a contract portal, which means that the agreements you enter here will also be visible to your customers' customers. This means that the communication about the agreement and the service calendar that you see when making bookings can also be made available to customers, so they know when they want a job to be carried out or when they want it.

Stine Hansen: When are you available, right?

Frode Stenstrøm: And then you can create these great experiences around what we as customers often want to know. When we book a service appointment for a car, when do you have an available slot? When can we have our house cleaned—when do you have an available slot?

Stine Hansen: And if you've booked cleaning, you can set up a notification saying: Two days in advance, remember that we're coming to clean your place.

Frode Stenstrøm: And the doors need to be open and so on. Let me take a quick look at ... right, yes, there aren't really any questions about that, and we've actually already gone through the summary. Stine, you've already done that, haven't you?

Stine Hansen: Yes.

Frode Stenstrøm: Process, agreements, fracture, and functionality—and with that, I think we've actually covered everything. So once again, Stine, thank you very much for your contribution to today's broadcast.

If you have any questions, just ask them in the comments section below on YouTube. If you found this useful, please give the video a like so we know we're doing the right things for you. And subscribe if you wish. The broadcast is available on YouTube and on the website prosesspilotene.no.

This broadcast is produced by PprosessPilotene, which increases the value of your customers through the use of Microsoft technology. Our analytics team can help you generate insights and analyses, artificial intelligence, and predictions for areas such as work orders and the amount of resources you will need going forward, based on the data Stine has just shown.

And our collaboration team can create effective websites and customer portals that allow your customers, employees, and suppliers to check the status of these work orders without having direct access to Dynamics. And your host for this episode has been me, Frode Stenstrøm, project manager at Oddby Berge, wishing everyone better work processes. See you again.

In this webinar, we cover:

This video is relevant for anyone working in service delivery, maintenance, or technical support who wants to improve their company’s efficiency, reduce costs, and increase customer satisfaction.