Work with incidents
Incidents are templates that can be used to populate items like tasks, products, and service definitions on issues that are commonly worked on by field agents. When an incident is selected for a work order, it will automatically populate any products, services, and tasks that have been defined for it. For example, let's say that a company services MRI equipment, and technicians are regularly dispatched to conduct MRI inspections.
An inspection might contain the following products, services, and tasks:
Products
One lithium battery
Two gradient coils
Services
- MRI sanitation
Tasks
Measure energy usage: 30 minutes
Replace battery: 15 minutes
Replace gradient coils: 30 minutes
Collect customer signature: 15 minutes
If 90 percent of the MRI inspections in your organization contain this information, you might create an incident type called MRI inspections. This would simplify the process by automatically adding this set of items to a work order, so you don't have to manually add each item every time.
When you select Define a primary incident type for a work order, the following information is populated automatically:
Default Work Order Type: Specifies the type of work order to be executed, like inspection, break fix, preventative maintenance, etc.
Skill/Characteristics: Defines any skills or certifications required of a resource to work on this type of item.
Tasks to be performed: Provides the field agent with a list of tasks to perform for the work order, and the duration of each task. The total time for all tasks added is rolled-up to the work order and will populate the Estimated Duration field on the work order.
Required Products: Defines each product, including the quantity needed for a work order.
Required Services: Defines each service that is conducted as part of the work order.
Incidents are a great way of autopopulating the information listed above, but any of those items can be manually added at any time. Also, additional incidents can be added to existing work orders. When additional incidents are added, all the items defined for the incident are added as well.
To learn more about creating and using incidents in Dynamics 365 Field Service, see: Incident types in Dynamics 365 Field Service.