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Can Customer Assets be used to track history?

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Posted on by Graeme 65

We are looking at bringing our products into the Field Service module of Dynamics 365. Our products can move between customers and they have unique serial numbers to identify them. 

Eventually we would like to go down the IoT route and get readings from our products. We are considering using the Customer Asset entity of the Field Service app. It looks like we would need to add in a new serial number field to the entity but everything else should be ok for us.

We want to be able to look at an asset and be able to see the history of that asset, e.g. it was installed at customer X between 1st June 1999 and 25th September 2006. 

Not sure how we keep this history so one idea we had was instead of having one asset which we move around between customers, could we put an end date on and then deactivate any deinstalled asset and create a new asset with the same details but at the new customer? We would then know any asset which is active is the one in the field and the inactive ones are the historic products.

We are also considering using the parent asset field to structure the subcomponents of each product. We would need to make a copy of all items under the master asset then deactivate the original assets. 

Dpes this sound feasible? Is there an alternative way we could do this?

  • Dan Gittler - Dynamics Field Service Profile Picture
    Dan Gittler - Dynam... on at
    RE: Can Customer Assets be used to track history?

    Inventory is a whole big topic, probably better suited for a call. Do you move assets from customer to customer directly? Or do you take it from a customer, put it in a warehouse, and then later send it out to a new customer. Either way, when you perform the pickup from the customer, you can auto assign the account on the asset to an internal account. Then, when you are adding a work order product, you can filter the asset selection to only show assets for the internal account. That can help with errors. Of course you can also use barcode scanning if you are setup for that. 10 months, I was saying that it for sure will not come for 10 months. If it makes it into the April 2021 wave it would show up for early access around 10 months but we do not have a set roadmap for April 2021 yet so could make it or could be much later. I would design for it to not be there but feel free to check back with me in a few months.

  • Graeme Profile Picture
    Graeme 65 on at
    RE: Can Customer Assets be used to track history?

    Hi Dan,

    Thanks very much for adding your reply to my question, really appreciate hearing from you directly.

    We would likely use Customer Asset to track our top level item and also all modules which make up that asset. In theory, each of these could have a install/deinstall date regardless of if they are a top level item or not.

    So Asset History would be entity with

    Customer Asset (lookup)

    Account (lookup)

    Install Date (datetime)

    Deinstall Date (datetime) - only using date time here so we can order them if something is installed then deinstalled on the same day)

    Good question about the inventory side of things. We currently use Dynamics GP as our ERP system and manage inventory/RMAs etc through that. Since we're just at the design stages of D365 FS currently, we're open to any way of working. We need to establish a way for Field Service engineers to replace modules at a customer and return an existing module. We need to look further into the RMA functionality of D365 - not sure if you should use that when you have RMAs in your ERP system too?

    I see what you're saying about picking an existing customer asset when installing a device? As long as that customer asset exists, it can be selected. My concern would be user error where someone picks a customer asset which is installed at another customer!

    I like the idea of using Power Automate to keep the data correct. This has given us some ideas.

    Finally, when you say 10 months, I assume you mean at least 10 months but potentially a lot longer too? If we could use out of the box functionality for history, it would be really good and 10 months would possibly fit in more with our timeframe too!

  • Dan Gittler - Dynamics Field Service Profile Picture
    Dan Gittler - Dynam... on at
    RE: Can Customer Assets be used to track history?

    Great question Graeme. We are looking to add this natively but not coming in the short term (next 10 months). I think you are on the right track to add a serial number to the asset record, but if you deactivate the old asset and then add a new one, you lose all the history. Perhaps create an entity under the asset called "asset history" which has a date, a history type (installed/removed), and the account. You can structure processes in a few ways from there. You can simply update the account field on the asset and use power automate to generate a record to the aforementioned table. You can also Add the record which updates the account. The issue is that it does not go back into your system as a inventory when you take it away from a customer. How important is it to tie this to inventory and use the work order product auto convert to asset feature? If it isn't important to auto convert to asset, you can save the corresponding product without the option to "Convert to asset", then when you add a work order product, you can add a lookup field to assets related to that product, pick the right one, and then kick off a power automate to update the account on the asset and create that tracking record.

  • Graeme Profile Picture
    Graeme 65 on at
    RE: Can Customer Assets be used to track history?

    Hi, thanks for responding to my query.

    I assume the work order product would need modified to have a serial number also so the customer asset can be created properly?

    What about the hierarchy of items within our product? Not sure how that could be created via work order products but then I’m fairly new to the field service app!

  • Thomas David Dayman Profile Picture
    Thomas David Dayman 11,323 on at
    RE: Can Customer Assets be used to track history?

    This above post is mine. Either these records can be automatically created when the Work Order Product is marked as 'used' or manually created by the person who installed them.

  • Suggested answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    RE: Can Customer Assets be used to track history?

    In the past I have created a new 'Asset Installations' entity to record each time the asset was installed.

    The record would be linked to the Work Order Product and Asset entity

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