Define resources
Resources include people, facilities, or pieces of equipment that are needed to perform a service. Depending on the organization, the resources will be used differently. For example, a hair salon might define resources for items like stations, tanning beds, stylists, and so on. A service center might define resources for technicians, lifts, docking bays, or other large pieces of equipment that they might have limited quantities of. Resources are key elements in the service scheduling solution because they represent the people and/or equipment that are assigned to perform a service.
Resource skills, roles, and proficiency models
Before you create resources, you need to consider how the system will identify which resources to suggest. Some items being scheduled may require the resource to have a certain role or that they possess a specific skill or certification to work on it. For example, to perform maintenance on specific models of vehicles, some auto manufactures may require technicians to have specific certifications. To help in these scenarios, Universal Resource Scheduling lets organizations define these options in the application:
Roles: Specifies a specific role(s) in an organization that can be associated with different resources. Roles can be added to specific recourses and schedulable items like collision repair to ensure that only resources with that role are suggested as people to work on an item.
Examples of common resource roles include Developer, Mechanic, technician, and functional consultant.
A single resource can have multiple roles assigned to them. For example, a resource may have a developer and technician role assigned to them.
To learn more about defining roles, see Setup resource categories.
Skills: Skills represent specific a skill or certification that can be associated with different resources. They're also referred to as characteristics in Field Service. Each characteristic needs to have a Characteristic Type defined. There are two options available:
Skill
Certification
You can also use Resource Skills to support specific scenarios where resources need specific access to something, like a building, or need a specific level of security clearance.
Examples of Resource Skills include:
A certification like A+, MSCE, etc.
A skill set like C#, Azure, Exchange, etc.
Access or security clearance like Building 12 access, or level 1 security clearance.
It's likely that a single resource might have multiple skills assigned to them.
To learn more about creating skills and certifications, see Define skills and proficiencies.
Because Universal Resource Scheduling handles scheduling across all potential applications, any defined resource would be used in other applications, such as Dynamics 365 Field Service. Due to the nature of service scheduling, when you're defining service resources, you'll typically use the following resource types:
User - Specifies the resource as an internal user who is mapped to a Dynamics 365 user record. This type will likely be the most common type of resource that will be used with service scheduling.
Generic - Generally used as a placeholder to define a type of resource that is needed until a specific named resource can be used in its place.
Contact - Specifies that the resource is associated with a Dynamics 365 contact record.
Account - Specifies that the account is associated with a Dynamics 365 account record.
Equipment - Defines the resources as a specific piece of equipment.
Facility - Represents a facility that can be scheduled, such as a building or room.
Pool - Resource pools allow you to assemble groups of similar resources to manage capacity and give schedulers the option to assign specific resources at a later time.
Crew - Resource crews allow you to search and schedule multiple resources at once.
Depending on the type of resource that you create and the different solutions that you have deployed to your environment, different fields will appear in the resource record. This feature allows you to associate the resource with records, such as an account, user, or contact record.
Each resource that you define will have two tabs that you can use for configuration: General and Scheduling. After you save a resource for the first time, more items will be available that you can associate with the resource. For Customer Service scheduling, you can use resource categories to define roles that are associated with a resource. Other tabs might be present for organizations that use other Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions, such as Field Service or Omnichannel for Customer Service.
Scheduling tab
On the Scheduling tab, you can define scheduling details that will control how resources are presented in the schedule board, including what scheduling options are available.
An important item to define is the location information that will be used by the schedule board for the resource.
Make sure that you define the following items:
Start Location - Defines where the resource begins their day.
End Location - Defines where the resource ends their day.
Organizational Unit - Defines the specific organizational unit that the resource belongs to and will be scheduled from.
When you define a starting and ending location, you can define three components:
Organizational Unit Address - Uses the latitude and longitude that is associated with the organizational unit that the resource belongs to.
Resource Address - Uses the latitude and longitude that is associated with the corresponding record based on the resource type.
Location Agnostic - Doesn't have a specific location defined. This definition can be useful when resources don't have a clearly defined starting and ending location.
Unless your organization's resources are performing services in the field, most human resources will have their starting and ending locations set to Organizational Unit Address. Facility resources must have their starting and ending locations set to Organizational Unit Address.
Working hours
When scheduling resources to work on service activities, you'll want to verify that you're selecting available resources. Each resource will have specific working hours when they're available to be scheduled for service. These working hours can vary, depending on multiple factors, such as the type of resource, how shifts are structured, and so on. For example, a service center that runs 16-hour working days might have people who work specific morning or evening hours. Also, they might have facilities and equipment that are available for the entire 16-hour working day.
On the Work Hours tab, you can define the working hours for individual resources. This information is used by the schedule board and the schedule assistant when locating resources to schedule for service activities.
Within the Work Hours tab, you can view the work hours for a resource by year and month. Additionally, you can switch the year and month as needed to ensure that you're defining work hours correctly based on the time frame. This feature is important for an organization with resources that might work in shifts that rotate regularly.
You can define a resource's working hours by selecting the New button and then selecting one of the following options:
Working hours - Defines set working hours for a resource.
Non-working - Defines specific nonworking time for a resource.
Time off - Specifies that a resource has time off, such as vacation or paid time off.
After you have specified the type of entry that you're creating, you'll need to define the specific details that are related to the work hours record.
Based on which type of record that you selected, the following options will be available:
All Day - Toggle switch that specifies that it's an all-day event. Typically, you would use this option when setting up time-off entries for items like vacation.
Capacity - Turns on capacity scheduling for a resource. This toggle is only available when you're setting up working hours. When the toggle is enabled, you can specify a resource's capacity in increments of one.
Date - Defines the first day that the item should start.
Start and End Times - Sets the time range for the item. For example, if you select 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM for working hours, you can schedule the resource during that time.
Repeat - Defines the time frame for the item. Items can be defined as follows:
Never - Specifies that this event is a one-time occurrence.
Every day - Allows you to define which day that the item should apply to, such and Monday through Friday.
Every Week - Allows you to define which days on a weekly basis.
Observe Business Closure - Specifies that business closures should be considered.
If you planned to create a working hour record for a resource who works Monday through Friday, from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with an hour for lunch, then the record might resemble the following image.
Spend the necessary time making sure that each resource has the correct working hours defined. Otherwise, it will result in issues when you attempt to schedule items.
Define facility resources
Facility resources are helpful when you need to reserve a physical space, such as a room for an event or party or a repair bay at a mechanic shop. Facilities are also useful when you might need to schedule an appointment with a person at a facility, such as an appointment for someone to fix a laptop at a Microsoft retail store or a wealth management consultation at a bank.
Because facilities represent a physical location, such as a conference room or meeting space, you're required to associate them with an organizational unit that contains a valid latitude and longitude address. Make sure that you set the starting and ending locations for a facility to the organizational unit address.
