Universal Resource Scheduling (URS) Schedule Board is the most advanced single page application of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE). In upcoming articles, I will walk you through some of the great extensibility features of the Schedule Board. Before we deep dive into the extensibility features, let’s have a look at the components of the Schedule Board.
Search/Filter
Select the filter criteria and click Search button. Out of the box, Characteristics, Roles, Territories, Organizational Units, Resource Types, and Business Units are included. Filter panel can be extended to include additional fields. XML based Filter Layout and Schedule Assistant Filter Layout can be used to customise Filter panel.
Map
May view can display locations of unscheduled resource requirements, locations of resources, route of the scheduled bookings, live tracking of resources.
Resources
Resources can be Users, Contacts, Accounts, Equipment, Crew, Pool, or Facility. Resources can be searched from the search area. The information displayed on the Resource Cell (Image, Name, Capacity etc.) can be extended using Resource Cell Template and Schedule Assistant Resource Cell Template.
For more details about resources, please see this link – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/field-service/set-up-bookable-resources
Calendar
Calendar area displays scheduled bookings against resources. The view can be changed to hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly view. Resources can be displayed vertically or horizontally.
Booking
A booking is created to assign a resource requirement to a resource. Booking Cell can be configured to include different information based on your requirements. Booking Template feature can be used for this. We can configure different Booking Templates for different types of schedulable entities.
Resource Requirements
Resource Requirements are created for Work Orders, Projects, or any other schedulable entity to be able to schedule to a resource. It indicates that there’s a “Requirement” for a “Resource”. Multiple panels can be added to this section. To add a new panel, first, create a view for the Resource Requirements entity and configure the required filter criteria. Then from Requirement Panels section of the Scheduler Settings, select the view from View drop down list, enter a Title and click + button to add the new panel.
Tabs
Tabs are useful when we are required to create pre-configured/filtered Schedule Boards for different personas or user groups. For example, the Melbourne based schedulers are only interested in resources and bookings in Melbourne area. They can always select Melbourne as the territory from the Filter panel but to make it easier, we can create a personalised, pre-filtered Tab for them. New Tabs can be added by simply clicking on the + button next to Tabs. Configuration for the Tab can be done by opening the Scheduler Settings. Retrieve Resources Query and Schedule Assistant Retrieve Resources Query can be customised to achieve this.
In future articles, I will discuss a number of common scenarios where URS extensibility features can be used to extend the Schedule Board.
References
D365 CE Team Blog – https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/it/2017/10/16/blog-post-july-2017-update-for-field-service-and-project-service-automation-universal-resource-scheduling-part-1/
D365 CE Team Blog – https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/it/2017/10/16/july-2017-update-for-field-service-and-project-service-automation-universal-resource-scheduling-part-2
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About the Author
Nadeeja Bomiriya is a Microsoft MVP, Chapter Lead – Dynamics 365 Saturday – Australia, Sri Lanka, Committee Member – Melbourne Dynamics 365 User Group, Technical Architect, and Dynamics 365 Practice Lead who lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Disclaimer: This blog post contains opinions of my own and not the views of my employer.