Field Service Capacity and Reservations Management components

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Field Service Capacity and Reservations Management components

    The Field Service Capacity and Reservations Management feature in ServiceNow Yokohama release enables efficient allocation, reservation, and tracking of work capacity for internal and external field service groups and agents. Activation adds a dedicated Capacity Management menu with modules to define, reserve, assign, and monitor capacity, ensuring optimized work distribution based on dynamic scheduling.

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    Key Features

    • Capacity Reservations: Reserve a percentage of group or agent availability for specific work types (e.g., 60% for Break-Fix, 40% for Install).
    • Capacity Definitions: Define and allocate capacity based on hours, task counts, or schedules for varying time frames (day, week, month, year).
    • Capacity Assignments: Assign capacity and reservations to internal groups and external contractor groups, supporting comprehensive workforce management.
    • Capacity Usages: View records of capacity consumed by different groups and agents, facilitating capacity tracking and reporting.
    • Integration with Contractor Management: Installing the Field Service Contractor Management plugin allows inclusion of external groups in capacity planning.
    • Dynamic Scheduling Requirement: To enable automatic work distribution according to capacity rules, dynamic scheduling must be selected in task assignment configuration.

    Components Installed

    • Tables: Several tables store capacity definitions, reservations, assignments, usage, demand channels, and metrics to support comprehensive capacity management.
    • Business Rules: Enforce validation and consistency, such as preventing overlapping capacity assignments, updating capacity on task changes or deletions, and validating capacity values and dates.
    • Scheduled Jobs: A scheduled job computes capacity demand metrics that feed into the Field Service Territory Capacity Analytics dashboard for data-driven insights.
    • Script Includes: Utility scripts support querying and calculation tasks required for capacity analytics and management functions.
    • Roles: Dedicated roles provide controlled read and write access to capacity-related tables and the Capacity console workspace, ensuring proper authorization.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    By leveraging these components, customers can precisely allocate and reserve capacity across internal and contractor teams, avoid overbooking or conflicts, and gain visibility into capacity usage. This leads to improved field service efficiency, better workload balancing, and enhanced ability to meet demand through data-informed capacity planning.

    Several types of components are installed with the Field Service Capacity and Reservations Management feature, including tables, business rules, scheduled jobs, and script includes.

    Install the Field Service Contractor Management plugin (com.snc.fsm_contractor_management) to take the external groups into account while reserving, defining, and assigning the work capacity. For more information, see Activate Field Service Contractor Management.

    Activation of Field Service Capacity and Reservations Management adds the Capacity Management menu to the application navigator and the following modules:
    • Capacity Reservations: Reserve a capacity percentage of a group or agents availability to meet specific demands. For example, 60% for Break-Fix Work types and 40% for Install work types.
    • Capacity Definitions: Allocate the correct amount of work to internal or external work groups based on defined hours, task count, or agent work schedules. You can define capacity for a day, week, month, or year.
    • Capacity Assignments: Assign the capacity and capacity reservations to internal work groups and external groups of contractor companies.
    • Capacity Usages: View the record of capacity used by different groups and agents.
    Note:
    You must select using dynamic scheduling in the Assignment method for tasks configuration option to enable your application to distribute work based on the capacity management rules.

    Tables

    Capacity management adds the following tables.
    Table 1. Tables installed with the Capacity and Reservations Management feature
    Table Description
    Capacity Definition

    [wm_capacity_definition]

    Stores the capacity of a group or internal field service agent and the reservation rules to be used while assigning tasks.
    Demand Channel

    [wm_demand_channel]

    Stores daily capacity and demand data for each assignment, used for the capacity dashboard.
    Capacity Demand Metrics

    [wm_capacity_for_demand]

    Stores the metrics data for all capacity assignments
    Capacity Reservation

    [wm_capacity_reservation]

    Stores the reservation definition and exclusion conditions.
    Capacity Reservation Rule

    [wm_capacity_reservation_rule]

    Stores the reservation rules and the conditions for which the reservations should be used.
    Capacity Assignment

    [wm_capacity_assignment]

    Stores capacity definition assignments to groups within a specific time period to help avoid conflicts in capacity in a given time period by validating the effective from and effective to dates.
    Capacity Usage

    [wm_capacity_usage]

    Stores the capacity used by an internal field service agent or a group within a specific time period.

    Business rules

    Capacity management adds the following business rules.
    Table 2. Business rules installed with the Capacity and Reservations Management feature
    Business rule Table Description
    Avoid Conflict in Capacity Time Period Capacity Assignment

    [wm_capacity_assignment]

    Monitor the time period defined for the Capacity Assignment to ensure that any group does not have multiple capacity assignments in the same time period or overlapping intervals.
    Update Capacity on task change Work Order Task

    [wm_task]

    Add or update capacity whenever a task is assigned or unassigned. You can update capacity whenever the estimated work or travel duration changes.
    Update Capacity on task delete Work Order Task

    [wm_task]

    Update the capacity used whenever an open task is deleted within the given window.
    Validate Capacity Value Capacity Definition

    [wm_capacity_definition]

    Validates the value of the provided capacity for the capacity definition. Capacity should be a non-zero positive integer value.
    Validate Effective to and Effective from Capacity Assignment

    [wm_capacity_assignment]

    Validates the dates entered in the Effective to and Effective from fields in the capacity assignment table. The system calculates the Effective to date based on the value entered in the Repeat for field if the Capacity by value is not selected as for the agent schedule. The Effective from value should always be on or after the current date, and before or equal to the Effective to date. While updating the capacity assignment, the Effective to value cannot be set to a date before capacity usage exists.
    Validate Percent Allocated value Capacity Reservation Rule

    [wm_capacity_reservation_rule]

    Validates the allocated percentage value in the Capacity Reservation Rule table. This value should be a non-zero positive integer less than or equal to 100.
    Update Domain for capacity assignment Capacity Assignment

    [wm_capacity_assignment]

    The system assigns domains to records based on information in the Type field. If the Type is 'Territory internal agents' or 'Territory contractor group', the domain is set using the Territory field. For any other type, the domain is determined by the Group field.
    Note:
    You must select using dynamic scheduling in the Assignment method for tasks configuration option to enable your application to distribute work based on the capacity management rules.

    Scheduled Jobs

    The Capacity and Reservations Management adds the following scheduled jobs. To find them, navigate to All > sn_schedulejobs.do.
    Table 3. Scheduled job installed with the Capacity and Reservations Management feature
    Scheduled job Description
    Compute Capacity Demand Metrics Data Calculates and generates data for the Field Service Territory Capacity Analytics dashboard.

    Script Includes

    The Capacity and Reservations Management adds the following scheduled jobs. To find them, navigate to All > Script Includes.
    Table 4. Script includes installed with the Capacity and Reservations Management feature
    Script include Description
    FSMDemandManagementQueryUtil Contains all queries for generating data for the Field Service Territory Capacity Analytics dashboard.
    FSMDemandManagementUtil Calculates and generates data for the Compute Capacity Demand Metrics Data scheduled job.

    Roles

    The Capacity and Reservations Management adds the following roles. To find them, navigate to All > Roles.
    Table 5. Roles installed with the Capacity and Reservations Management feature
    Script include Description
    sn_fsm_capacity_mg.wm_capacity_write Allows CRUD access to all the capacity related tables
    sn_fsm_capacity_mg.wm_capacity_read Allows read access to all the capacity related tables and Capacity console workspace