Schedule “anything” with Universal Scheduling in Dynamics 365
The Dynamics 365 Universal Scheduling concept allows you to schedule virtually anything. This includes scheduling equipments, personnelle.
Scheduling does not have to be for Field Service technicians or for Sales Reps. on the field, it can be done to track the utilisation rate of certain equipment. For instance, your company uses five mobile service trucks and you want to make sure you don’t over, or under-book your trucks to go out to client sites. You can use the Universal Scheduling solution to do that. This way you can see how many bookings each truck has done and which truck is available next. This might even help you decide to auto-schedule maintainence service for trucks after each set number of service calls.
Universal Scheduling is not just about “The Schedule Board” !
Many users and business manager think of the Field Service Schedule Board when Scheduling comes to their mind in Dynamics 365. This thought cannot be further from what Universal Scheduling is all about. The Schedule board is just one way of looking at universal scheduling. For example, sales representatives may never see a schedule board because all they have to do is say that they have visited or atteneded to a client and mark the task as complete (maybe you don’t need to create a work order for that situation).
Reverse Scheduling?!
The way forward for Universal Scheduling in Dynamics 365 (October 2018 Release) will mean that there is the possibility of what they call reverse scheduling. Which means, instead of going in as a dispatcher and checking how many technicians, reps or equipment are available, the reps or technicians can present themselves to the system and say “I am available for work (I finish my work early for instance), what jobs are outstanding for me to take?” etc.