Field Service Management release notes

Field Service Management highlights for the Australia release

Increase productivity by Field Service Managers, who can do their work from anywhere on their mobile device with Field Service Manager Mobile.
Allow overbooking in priority cases, consider holidays at the territory level, enable flexible sourcing for work and travel times, and consider task dependencies when scheduling or rescheduling appointments through advanced lead-time management.
Determine appointment availability without specific contact or location information by using territory and demand channel mapping through APIs.
View run summaries in Schedule Optimization to understand what was evaluated during scheduling, including objectives, constraints, travel mode, and assignment outcomes.
Review the Field Service Management features and activation plugins now available through the ServiceNow Store application. For more details, see the "Changed in the Release" section.

See Field Service Management for more information.

New in the Australia release

Dispatcher Workspace

Dispatcher Workspace now enables you to perform the following tasks:

Show multiple time zones on the map in Dispatcher Workspace with a segmented time indicator to see which time zone each Field Service technician is in. For more information, see Time zones in Dispatcher Workspace.
Quickly see a work order task in the task panel and find it on the calendar rather than having to search through multiple days. For more information, see Open tasks from the task list.
See live traffic on the map in Dispatcher Workspace. For more information, see Show map overlays in Dispatcher Workspace.
Flag multiple tasks at once. For more information, see Flag or unflag tasks from the list.
Quickly find tasks in the calendar from the task list. For more information, see Flag or unflag tasks from the list.
View analytics, including the number of technicians without a work schedule or valid location. For more information, see Scheduling Health dashboard.
Show an overtime indicator on the calendar to visually see which technicians have overtime tasks. For more information, see Show overtime indicator.
Control the size of the cells on the calendar to see shorter tasks more easily. For more information, see Zoom in or out on the calendar.

Field Service Manager Mobile

Field Service Managers can do their work from anywhere on their mobile device, including the following tasks:

Locations on personal events

See locations for personal events regardless of where they’re created in Field Service Management applications including Dispatcher Workspace and Field Service Manager Mobile.

Completing work on the ServiceNow Agent mobile application

Generate work summary reports and capture signatures in them at the work order task level along with the existing work order level. Additionally, you can view responses and score information for the smart assessment questionnaires in the work summary report.
Perform asset audits for the technician's personal stockroom to verify and reconcile assets between a physical stockroom and the data on the ServiceNow instance.

Respond to a reviewed work order task

View and resubmit smart assessment questionnaire responses that need additional information, enabling more informed and timely corrections of responses from job sites.

Schedule Optimization

Enhance scheduling accuracy and performance with Schedule Optimization

View comprehensive details for all optimization runs to quickly identify issues. Access standardized information about run status, included tasks and qualifiers, unassigned tasks with explanations, and the objectives and constraints applied during each optimization.
Manage integrations more easily by configuring options to enable or disable third-party map providers beyond the default provider.
Leverage all available trainers to reduce processing time and accelerate end-to-end scheduling for high-volume scenarios by splitting qualifiers into non-overlapping sets and running multiple optimization jobs in parallel.
Improve scheduling accuracy by introducing a Window End Buffer Duration field on the Work Order task record that enables you to configure a buffer duration that extends optimization beyond the defined window end so tasks are retained in the schedule.
Ensure that only specified technicians can be assigned to the task, overriding all other assignment preferences, by marking technicians as Required when creating work order tasks.
Maintain consistency by removing intraday events that do not meet the defined condition for both scheduled and prioritized optimization runs. When an event is removed from prioritized optimization, it's also removed from the scheduled intraday run.
Improve optimization control by applying matching rules to intraday events by accessing them in the Table field on Matching Rules.
View how qualifiers are grouped for efficient creation of multiple ML jobs using the Job Distribution column in both batch and intraday runs.

Appointment Booking

Use Appointment Booking to perform the following tasks:

Ensure better alignment with your operations by defining advanced lead time and cut-off logic through APIs or extension points. You can implement a custom script through an extension point based on job type, time of day, and day of week.
Accommodate emergencies or priorities even if the capacity or appointment slots are full by enabling overbooking of appointments.
Configure appointment slots to consider the holiday settings for a territory and display the available slots accordingly.
Ensure guaranteed appointment slots by configuring availability checks to be performed at the time of slot retrieval so that any slot displayed is assured to be bookable without needing further capacity validation during the appointment booking.
Ensure an accurate calculation of the duration for a task while booking an appointment by defining work and travel duration either in the appointment schedule configuration or in the schedule override configuration.
Determine appointment availability using territory and demand channel mapping when contact or location details are not provided.
Consider task dependencies while booking or rescheduling appointments and display the slots for the successor tasks after the estimated completion time including the defined lag time for the predecessor task.

UI changes

Configure resources to load: Collapse mode on Dispatcher Workspace is now controlled by a system property that determines the number of resources loaded.

Changed in this release

ServiceNow Store

The following plugins are planned for deprecation in the C release. Beginning with the Australia release this plugin will be migrated to a store application. Upgrade your instance to Australia or later release versions and the store applications will be automatically installed.

Beginning with the Australia release, the following applications have been moved to the ServiceNow Store. Any application enhancements will be delivered through the related store app.

Advanced Appointment Booking (com.snc.advanced_appointment_booking)
Field Service Contractor Management (com.snc.fsm_contractor_management)
Field Service Marketplace (com.snc.fsm_marketplace)
Field Service Territory Planning (com.snc.fsm_territory_planning)
Field Service Advanced Capacity and Reservations management (com.snc.fsm_advanced_capacity_management)
Field Service Capacity and Reservations Management (com.snc.fsm_capacity_management)
Field Service with Service Locations Support (com.snc.fsm_service_locations)
Technician driven sales with Field Service (com.snc.fsm_technician_sales)
Schedule Optimization (com.snc_schedule_optimization)
Field Service Quality Management
Field Service Mobile Agent
Map Integrations for Field Service (com.snc.app_fsm_map_integr)
Beans.ai plugin (com.sn_beans_ai_spoke)
Intelligent Task Recommendations (sn_fsm_task_rec)
Field Service Management Scheduling Automations (sn_fsm_sched_flws)
Application Common Configuration (sn_app_cmn_config): This is a component of Dispatcher Workspace.
Intelligent Task Recommendations (sn_task_recommend): This is a component of Intelligent Task Recommendations.

Google maps ID

The google.maps.map_id system property enables Field Service Management to use Google Maps for cloud-based map styling, vector mapping, and advanced markers. You must obtain your own map ID.

Deprecated features

Starting with the Australia release, the sn_fsm_disp_wrkspc.calendarCollapsedBehavior property has been removed and its behavior is now controlled by the sn_fsm_disp_wrkspc.dispatcher_workspace.calendar_resources_page_size property, which determines the number of resources loaded on the page.

Activation information

Field Service Management is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that is active by default.

Plugin information

New plugins

The following plugins are new in Australia:

Field Service Manager Mobile (com.snc.fsm_manager_mobile). For details, see Activate Field Service Manager Mobile . Mangers can manage their technicians and tasks using their mobile device.
Field Service Manager Workforce (com.snc.fsm_manager_workforce). For details, see Activate Field Service Manager Workforce . Oversee agent schedules, manage resources, optimize territory coverage, and handle crew tasks and assignments to ensure efficient and effective coverage.

Plugins planned for deprecation

The following plugins are planned for deprecation in a future release.

The following plugins are planned for deprecation in the C release. Beginning with the Australia release, this plugin will be migrated to a store application. When you upgrade your instance to at least the Australia release, the store applications will be automatically installed.

Advanced Appointment Booking (com.snc.advanced_appointment_booking)
Field Service Marketplace (com.snc.fsm_marketplace)
Marketplace Core (com.snc.marketplace_core)
Field Service Management Intelligent Task Recommendations (com.snc.fsm_task_recommendations)
Field Service Management Scheduling Flows (com.snc.sn_app_fsm_scheduling_flows)
Intelligent Task Recommendations (com.snc.task_recommendations)
Application Common Configuration (com.snc.app_cmn_config)
Field Service Capacity Management (com.snc.fsm_capacity_management)
Field Service Territory Planning (com.snc.fsm_territory_planning)
Field Service with Service Locations support (com.snc.fsm_service_locations)
Sales Mobile Common (com.snc.sales_mobile_cmn)
Technician driven sales with Field Service (com.snc.fsm_technician_sales)
Territory Planning (com.snc.territory_planning)
Field Service Mobile (com.sn_fsm_mobile)
Field Service Quality Management (com.sn_fsm_quality)
Quality Management (com.sn_quality)
Field Service Contractor Management (com.snc.fsm_contractor_management)
Beans.AI Spoke (com.sn_beans_ai_spoke)
Map Integrations for Field Service (com.snc.app_fsm_map_integr)
Schedule Optimization (com.snc_schedule_optimization)