Work order architecture

Work order architecture explains how service jobs move through Field Service from creation to completion. Use this flow to understand dependencies and optimize operations. Work orders are:

1. Created
2. Scheduled to resources
3. Performed by field technicians
4. Completed and reviewed

The following diagram illustrates the entities, attributes, and relationships that make up the work order process.

👁 Screenshot of the work order architecture showing entities, attributes, and relationships across the process.

A work order is created

The Work Order entity contains the details of the job that needs to be completed, such as work order type, status, duration, and priority.

Work orders are related to an Account entity. Specifying a Service Account on the work order adds related account information like territory, address, and service and billing defaults.

Service Agreements automatically generate recurring work orders. A service agreement can be associated with one service account. That means that all work orders that are generated as part of a service agreement are associated with that service account location. The type of work to be done and assets involved can vary.

Customer Assets are pieces of equipment at the service account location. Work orders that are related to the maintenance, inspection, and repair of a customer asset should correlate to the asset's service account.

Beyond adding basic details and an account to a work order, you can add Revenue and Cost items that better define the specific work to be done. Work Order Incidents are a defined package of recommended service tasks, products, services, and characteristics, or skills, that makes creating a work order faster. Instead of manually adding them to a work order, you can add an incident that effectively serves as a template to populate service tasks, products, services, and characteristics.

Finally, you can define Time and Resource Preferences, which specify when a work order should be completed to meet a service agreement.

The work order is scheduled to resources

The system automatically creates a related entity called a Resource Requirement and passes all the important details that relate to scheduling a work order to this entity. Use resource requirements to assign the work order to the most appropriate resource or field technician. The resource requirement framework partly enables scheduling any entity, such as cases, opportunities, or custom entities.

Field Service keeps the Work Order and the primary resource requirement in sync. The system automatically synchronizes all the fields that affect scheduling. If you manually create multiple requirements against a work order, the system doesn't automatically synchronize them.

Before you can schedule a work order, you must add a Bookable Resource to the system. A bookable resource represents an employee, contractor, equipment, facility, or anything else that needs to be scheduled.

When it's time to schedule a work order, assign a requirement to a resource. This assignment creates a Booking, which is a scheduled time slot for a specific resource. To schedule a requirement, use one of the following options:

• Schedule board (manually)
• Schedule assistant
• Resource Scheduling Optimization

You can book a requirement multiple times, creating multiple booking records, so that you can schedule the same requirement to multiple resources or to the same resource at different times.

A field technician performs the work order

Field technicians can view their daily, weekly, and monthly bookings on their agenda in the Field Service mobile app. They can edit the status of their bookings to show when they're traveling, the work is in progress, they're on break, and the work is completed. They can use custom statuses. Each status change is recorded in the system as a Booking Timestamp and eventually Booking Journals, which are used to calculate the time and labor cost of a booking.

Field technicians might use products and services for the work order, indicating that a part or labor was needed. Though you previously added these products and services to the work order, they were originally listed in the Product Catalog. Products that represent physical parts and not labor are tracked in Inventory and are replenished by the Purchasing process that relies on submitting and receiving purchase orders.

The work order is reviewed and completed

Finally, a service manager reviews and closes the work order. They update Inventory Consumption and Financial Information. Inventory consumption is the quantity of a product that's deducted from a warehouse based on the work order activity. In cases where used products and services must be billed, closing a work order triggers the creation of an invoice for payments and actuals, which are a log of transactions.