ou've hit a common point of customization in Field Service. Out-of-the-box, the schedule board and its calculations are indeed centered around the resource's defined working hours as their "at work" window. What your customer wants is a shift in this logic to consider the customer-facing time as the core of the working hours.
Out-of-the-Box Limitations:
Directly configuring Field Service to treat the first arrival and last departure at a customer site as the boundaries of billable/working hours, while excluding travel to the first and from the last job, isn't a standard setting. The system is designed with the resource's workday as the primary frame of reference.
Possible Approaches and Workarounds (with varying levels of complexity):
While there isn't a simple toggle switch for this, here are a few potential approaches you could explore:
1. Adjusting Resource Working Hours (Manual/Semi-Automated):
- Concept: You could try to manually or semi-automatically adjust the resource's working hours to account for the estimated travel time to the first job and from the last job.
- How it would work:
- If a resource starts at 8:00 AM and their first job typically involves a 45-minute commute, you would manually set their working hours start time to 7:15 AM.
- Similarly, if their last job ends at 5:00 PM and the commute home is 30 minutes, you'd set their working hours end time to 5:30 PM.
- Limitations:
- Inaccurate Travel Estimates: Travel times can vary significantly based on location, traffic, and the actual first/last job assigned. This makes pre-calculating a fixed adjustment difficult.
- Multiple Jobs: On days with multiple jobs, the travel between jobs is correctly accounted for within the working hours. This approach only addresses the first and last trips.
- Maintenance Overhead: Manually adjusting working hours daily or even weekly would be a significant administrative burden.
- Reporting Issues: Reporting on actual working hours vs. scheduled working hours might become less accurate.
2. Utilizing Booking Start/End Time Adjustments (Potentially Complex):
- Concept: You might explore using workflows or plugins to automatically adjust the start time of the first booking and the end time of the last booking of the day for each resource.
- How it would work:
- When the first booking of the day is created for a resource, a workflow/plugin could trigger to shift the booking's start time earlier by the estimated travel duration from the resource's start location (likely their home if no other starting point is defined).
- Similarly, when the last booking of the day is completed, a workflow/plugin could potentially extend the booking's end time to encompass the travel time back to their home.
- Limitations:
- Determining First and Last Booking: Reliably identifying the absolute first and last booking of a resource's day programmatically can be complex, especially with cancellations or rescheduling.
- Travel Time Calculation: You'd need a way to accurately estimate travel time from the resource's start location to the first job and from the last job to their end location. This might involve geocoding and using the map service.
- Impact on Schedule Board Display: This might visually represent the "working time" on the schedule board differently than your customer expects, as the booking durations would include travel.
- Plugin/Workflow Development: This requires custom development and thorough testing.
3. Customizing the Schedule Board Display (Visual Adjustment Only):
- Concept: You could potentially customize the schedule board's visual display to appear as if the working hours are aligned with the first arrival and last departure, without actually changing the underlying data.
- How it would work: This would involve modifying the CSS and potentially some client-side scripting of the schedule board to visually offset the working hour blocks.
- Limitations:
- Visual Only: This would only change how it looks on the schedule board. The actual booking start and end times, as well as any time calculations for billing or resource utilization, would still be based on the defined working hours.
- Complexity and Supportability: Customizing the schedule board's UI can be complex and might be affected by future updates to Field Service.
4. Adjusting Billing and Reporting Logic (Separate Consideration):
- Concept: If the primary driver for this requirement is billing the customer only for the time the engineer is on-site, you might consider adjusting your billing and reporting logic instead of trying to redefine working hours.
- How it would work:
- Focus on capturing the actual arrival and departure times at the customer site (which Field Service does through booking statuses and audit logs).
- Customize your invoicing and reporting to calculate billable hours based on the time spent at the customer location, excluding the travel to the first and from the last job.
- Limitations: This doesn't directly address how the schedule board visually represents the resource's day, but it can satisfy the billing requirements.
Which Approach to Consider:
Given the limitations of the out-of-the-box functionality, achieving your customer's exact requirement will likely involve some level of customization.
- Start by discussing the primary goal: Is it purely visual on the schedule board, or does it impact billing and resource utilization calculations?
- For visual representation only (and if you have development resources): Exploring schedule board UI customization (Option 3) might be a possibility, but with caution regarding complexity and supportability.
- For potential impact on scheduling and if you have development resources: Carefully consider Option 2 (adjusting booking times), but be mindful of the complexity in identifying the first and last bookings and accurately calculating travel.
- For billing accuracy: Option 4 (adjusting billing and reporting) is often a more robust and less intrusive approach, as Field Service already captures the necessary time stamps for on-site work.
- Manual Adjustment (Option 1) is generally not scalable or accurate enough for a long-term solution.
Recommendation:
I would strongly recommend focusing on Option 4: Adjusting Billing and Reporting Logic. Field Service is well-equipped to track the actual arrival and departure times at customer locations. Customizing your billing and reporting to use these timestamps for invoicing will likely be more reliable and less prone to issues than trying to redefine the fundamental concept of resource working hours within the system.
If a visual representation on the schedule board is absolutely critical, then a very careful and well-tested implementation of Option 2 (adjusting booking times) might be considered, but with a full understanding of its complexities. Avoid Option 1 due to its manual nature and Option 3 due to its potential for maintenance issues.
It's crucial to thoroughly analyze the implications of any customization on other parts of your Field Service setup and to test any changes extensively in a non-production environment. You might also want to consult with a Field Service consultant who has experience with advanced customization scenarios.
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