Harmonization of behaviors when reassigning or unassigning service calls or activities

Dear customers and partners,

We hope you are doing well and taking care of yourself.

As you are aware, we have released new behaviors for service calls and activities that are reassigned to other technicians or that are unassigned. The new behaviors are generally available to all customers.

With the 2302 release (scheduled for February 18, 2023, 09:00 a.m. CET) the new behaviors will automatically become effective for all customers and the current behaviors for released service calls and activities that are reassigned or unassigned will not be available anymore.

Initial communication( EV15807021.) in this regard was sent on October 21, 2022 and we are now following-up on the same.

What benefits will this bring?

• When reassigning a released service call or activity to another technician, the activity will directly be assigned to the new technician and no copy of the activity will be created.
• When unassigning a released service call or activity, the activity will again be available in the planning list and no copy of the activity will be created.

How to activate and validate the new behaviors in your test or productive system?

We encourage you to validate the end-to-end flows and adjust non-standard integrations, business rules or further customizations to support the new behaviors. For more information about the harmonization, see Planning and Dispatching Behavior Change Notice (21 October 2022).

What do you need to consider for the mobile application and the auto-scheduling solution?

As communicated on August 2, 2022, for the new behaviors to work in the SAP Field Service Management mobile application, it is important that either no sync rule or one of the supported sync rules are used for the “Activity” object in the user group that the technician is assigned to. For more information, see Reflection in Mobile Application.

The updated timeline will also be reflected in the auto-scheduling solution. This means that the new behaviors will become effective with the 2302 release as opposed to what was initially communicated (see related communication).

What else did we work on?

Furthermore, we are happy to announce that we were able to close the following functional gaps:

• Previously, when you had a standard integration with C4C and a modified or released activity got unassigned, the technician assignment of the activity was not updated in C4C. Now, the assignment is updated in C4C.
• Previously, when you had a standard integration with SAP Business One, you were not able to manage draft activities meaning activities that are not yet planned or assigned. Because of this, certain activity information was not synched back to SAP Business One when a modified or released activity got unassigned. Now, you are able to manage draft activities in SAP Business One. Note that the management of draft activities is only available with the latest connector version, therefore we ask all customers who are using SAP Business One to upgrade to the latest connector version.
• Previously, the approval functionality was not supported. Now, this functionality is also supported.