In today’s fast-paced digital era, many organizations are still relying on paper to capture inspection results. This method not only creates a lack of digital footprint but also demands significant effort to digitize the data. As organizations strive to transition to a digital world, the need for efficient data management becomes paramount. We are excited to introduce a preview for the inspection builder feature in Dynamics 365 Field Service.

The inspection builder addresses these challenges head-on, enabling organizations to seamlessly move from paper-based processes to a digital experience. It uses the power of Copilot to streamline inspection template creation, saving you time and effort in your journey to digitalize inspection workflows.

Meet the inspection builder

We’ve designed the inspection builder preview to take the hassle out of the process to digitize inspections. Whether you have images or PDF documents of the existing inspection forms – you don’t need to manually recreate each question in the Field Service inspection designer anymore. Simply upload the forms and let Copilot in Field Service do the heavy lifting. In no time, you will get the first draft that you can quickly tweak and publish for your technicians in the field.

It’s fast and context aware.

Inspection builder accounts for the context and uses the question types most appropriate for the content. For example, in the conversion example below, it added a date picker for date question from the form. It also recognizes other questions formats. For example, it created radio box options for each of the yes and no questions. With mobile data entry in mind, it also broke the table down into individual questions for easier data entry.

Inspection builder generates templates using the default “comfort” layout. However, you can change the layout to “compact” to better suit mobile devices.

Use the inspection builder

An administrator can enable this feature in Field Service Settings. Turn the Create inspection templates option on.

Explore the Create with Copilot option in the command bar on Inspection Templates in the Field Service app.

If it’s not immediately visible, check the overflow menu.

Upload the file and let Copilot give you a first draft of the template in the inspection designer.

Get ready for the future of inspections

We are excited to have you try this feature and look forward to your feedback. For more information, have a look at the inspection builder documentation. This is just the first of the updates we are expecting for inspections in Field Service in 2025. Stay tuned for more news and let us know how we can make this tool even better for your needs.

The post Inspection builder preview: digital transformation made easy with AI appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We are excited to announce that summary configuration for work order recap with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service is now available in public preview. It builds on the work order recap feature released last year, which provides an AI-generated summary of the work order for service managers and technicians.

What is summary configuration?

Customers loved our work order recap feature and wanted to configure the summary to reflect their business-critical information. With summary configuration, admins can now specify the data used by Copilot in Field Service, whether in web or mobile. They can select specific columns from the base or related tables based on their organization’s business needs. You can also preview the summary using real data from Dataverse to ensure that it contains the right information.

Enable the summary configuration

To use the summary configuration, you need to be an administrator of the environment, and have the Work Order Summary feature enabled in your Dynamics 365 Field Service settings. Go to Field Service > Settings > Field Service Settings > Features. Find the Copilot in Field Service section, then turn on Copilot for work order.

Then, navigate to Summary Configuration on the site map. In public preview, you can choose between Work Order summary and Bookable Resource Booking summary. After selecting the table, turn on the Configure summary toggle to start configuring the table and columns to include in the summary.

Add columns to the summary

Now we are ready to start adding columns. For example, you want to add Primary Incident to the Work Order summary.

1. Open the Table list.
2. Select the Work Order table.
3. Go to the Column list and select Primary Incident Description.

You can also add a field from a related table. For example, in the Work Order summary, you want to include the Account Name column from the Billing Account associated with the Work Order.

1. Select + Add data to add a new row.
2. Open the Table list. Related tables are marked with chevrons (>).
   • Either type in the search box or scroll down to find the Billing Account table and select it.
   • Once it becomes the current table (first item in the list), select it.
3. Then go to the Column list and select Account Name.

Preview the summary

When you are done configuring, you can test your configuration using any record from Dataverse and preview the summary that Copilot would generate for that record. You can be confident that your service managers and technicians will have the relevant information in the summary to perform their job.

Once you have finished testing, select Save to publish this summary configuration.

Enable this feature today and learn more about it through the feature documentation and FAQ. We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback.

The post Announcing configurable Copilot summaries in Field Service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Earlier this year, we’ve introduced the public preview of Field Service Mobile’s refreshed user experience. As this year comes to a close, we are excited to announce a new set of updates to further enhance this new user experience. 

Agenda View Update 

The Agenda View is the main landing experience for frontline workers using Field Service Mobile. In this wave, we are continuing to add to this experience to make it easier for your technicians to see and manage their bookings. In this wave, enhancements to the Agenda view include: 

• Bi-directional scroll of up to 90 days of bookings in the past or future. 
• Date separators that help your technicians better see the bookings of each day. 
• Makers can configure the data that gets shown in each row through existing view configuration experience. 

These improvements will give your technicians more visibility and control over their schedule, and help them plan their work more effectively. To learn more about this feature, go here.  

Configurable List View 

Another heavily used part of Field Service Mobile is the list view. To improve the item browsing experience for your technicians, the team has built from the ground up a new mobile-first list view for the new Field Service Mobile experience: 

• Makers can choose up to five columns per table to display in the mobile list view. 
• The icon in the list view is removed, saving limited mobile screen real estate. 
• List view has smoother scrolling and is more performant with in-built lazy load. 

These new capabilities will improve the productivity of your technicians by enabling them to see more data and at higher density on their mobile devices. To learn more about this feature, go here. 

Copilot Work Order Summary and Update 

To empower frontline workers with the latest AI advances, we’ve brought the power of Copilot to Field Service Mobile! With these new features, your technicians can both quickly get up to speed on a Work Order or update it using a speech-first Copilot experience.  

To learn more about this groundbreaking experience, see Experience the power of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service in the mobile application – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog. 

How to try this? 

These are some of the features that we have delivered in the latest wave of the Field Service Mobile app. We hope that you will try them out and share your feedback with us. To enable these features, log in with an admin account and turn them on in the settings section in Field Service Mobile. Enable the “New Mobile Experience” and “Copilot for New Mobile Experience” options. For more information, please visit our documentation page here.   

Thank you for choosing Dynamics 365 Field Service Mobile app. We are committed to delivering the best mobile service experience for you and your customers. Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements in the future. 

We hope that these new enhancements in Field Service mobile will make your work even more productive. We would love to hear your feedback and suggestions on how to improve the product. Please feel free to leave comments in the Dynamics 365 Community Forum or Ideas portal. Thank you for using Field Service Mobile! 

The post What’s new in Dynamics 365 Field Service Mobile app in 2023 Wave 2  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Inspections is a versatile capability in Dynamics 365 Field service which allows field technicians and inspectors to follow a template list of steps, answer questions and capture data for audits, assessments and certifications. The inspections feature is used in diverse scenarios, on both mobile phones, tablets and laptops. We would like to share our top tips on how to get the most out of this feature! 

Tip #1: Upload multiple images in multiple batches

We’re excited to share some fantastic news for Android users using Inspections: starting in FS 8.8.83.23, you can easily select multiple pictures to upload during inspections! This is especially useful where users are capturing photos during work execution, and it works even in offline scenarios. 

Previously, only iOS could select and upload multiple photos at once, but now, Android users can do the same. This new feature is designed to speed up the inspection process by allowing users to select multiple images at once, making it possible to upload all pictures in one go.  

Here’s how to use the feature:

1. Navigate to an Inspection in Field Service Mobile, find a question that accepts files and hit “Choose file(s)”
2. In your Android device’s file viewer, tap to highlight multiple files, then hit “Select”
3. Watch as the files that you’ve selected get uploaded and appear in the question.

That’s it! By eliminating the need to upload pictures one at a time, you’ll be able to spend less time fiddling with your phone and more time focusing on the Inspection itself.

Additionally, we recommend keeping each upload total to a max of 30MBs. This is especially true for customers who operate in remote areas where cellular signal is spotty. For example, if you have 20 images where each image is 3 Mb each, try to upload 10 images in two batches.  

We understand that mobile phones are taking larger images and record keeping with photos is increasingly common for technicians. We are actively making enhancements in this area.  

Tip #2: Inspections can be conducted on assets

What happens when your organization does not run on work orders but there are still Inspections to do? There is another entity on which you can conduct Inspections – Assets. This can be enabled in advanced settings. To find out how, check out this article:

Use Inspections without work orders in Dynamics 365 Field Service – Dynamics 365 Field Service | Microsoft Learn

Just keep in mind that some of the out-of-box functionalities such as ‘offline’ and ‘Export-to-PDF’ are not available yet for Inspections on Assests.

Tip #3: Use pages and branching logic

Inspections can be long or short. Most Inspections have less than 30 questions, but some of our customers have 100+ in a single Inspection. To keep things organized, they use pages to separate questions into smaller logical subset.

You can also add logic to jump between pages (from one question to another) based on answers of 1 or more questions. This will allow you to create custom question flows within your Inspection.

To learn more, see Add branching and conditional logic at Microsoft Learn.

Tip #4: We have a compact view designed for wide format mobile or tablet experience.

Did you know that you can change the layout density for the Inspection form to fit your device form factor?

By default, the layout is set to “Comfort”. This stacks the questions on top of the input, designed for narrow screens like mobile phones. When you have a tablet with plenty of horizontal screen space, you can change this to “Compact” so the questions and inputs appear side-by-side in two columns.

To try this, in Inspection Designer, select the header of the form, and then select ‘Advanced” on the right tool pane. Change between Comfort and Compact under “Layout Density”.

Inspection form with “Comfortable” layout density

Inspection form with “Compact” layout density

Tip #5: Lookup supports dependent lookups.

With Inspections you can specify not only fixed filter logic, but you can also link lookups together so that child records of one lookup can be selected by setting the optional “Depends on” field under the Advanced Tab.

For example, in the Inspection below, once users select an account in question 1, they can choose from a list of contacts in that account in question 2, because question 2’s entity lookup “Depends on” the question 1’s selected account.

Once again, we’re thrilled to add a new feature to Inspections and to provide these tips and tricks to help you get the most out of Dynamics 365 Inspection.

Thanks for reading!

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