Field Service Incident Types — A Time Saver!
Let’s be honest, nobody wants to repeatedly fill in the same fields on a form or follow the same steps again and again when it can all be automated. So that is exactly where Field Service Incident Types come into play.
What are Incident types?
We can think of Incident Types as a template which contains a bunch of different bits of information about typically how the work order should be completed. When an incident type is added to a work order, it then automatically applies all the information from the incident type to the work order itself.
So, let’s imagine you are a service desk member of staff and you repeatedly create a particular type of work order. Instead of having to update several different fields on the form and then manually having to add information such as products and tasks to the work order, you can simply add the incident type. By adding the incident type this will in turn automatically add everything to the work order, and in the process save a lot of time!
What makes up an Incident Type?
Let’s imagine a scenario where an organisation every quarter has to perform a routine maintenance service to their elevators. As part of the standard routine maintenance the field technician is always required to carry out certain steps in a particular order and they must always replace certain parts on the elevator to ensure it remains in good working order. A typical incident type might look like the below:
Name
This will be the name of the Incident Type, in our example below this incident type is called “Lift Routine Maintenance”
Description
A free text description to give you more context of the Incident Type.
Default Work Order
The work order that is selected here will be the work order type that is populated on the work order when this incident type is entered as the primary incident type. In our example, the default work order for this incident type will be “Preventative maintenance”
Estimated Duration
This is the estimated time it takes to complete the incident type. If the incident type has incident service tasks (explained below) with durations, then the estimated duration will simply be the sum of the service tasks.
Products
Here you can add any products that may be used by the field technician. This saves the field technician from always having to manually add products they will use to the work order. In the example below, the technician will always need to replace the bulbs and therefore we add a quantity of 2 bulbs to the incident type.
Products that have been used on the work order can then be billed to the customer.
Services
Here you can add any services that may be performed by the field technician that would normally be billed to the customer. In our example below we have one service called ‘Standard Lift Maintenance Labour’ and this is what will be billed to the customer.
Service Tasks
This acts as a checklist of tasks that the field technician must perform; it almost serves as a “To Do” list. The service tasks can be sequenced in order and will serve as prompts to the field technician so that they don’t miss a key step. As can be seen below, the field technician has 4 tasks that they need to complete, each task is given a number to determine the sequence it is to be performed in.
Characteristics
Here you can add any skills/characteristics that maybe needed to perform this type of work. In our example the field technician must have the characteristic called “Lift Basics Level 1” and therefore we add it to the incident type.
Applying Incident Types to Work Orders
Now that we have created our incident type, we want to apply that incident type to work orders to help create them as quickly as possible.
Below I have created a new work order and set the Primary Incident Type = Lift Routine Maintenance, by selecting this as the primary incident type it has correctly set the work order to Preventative Maintenance.
When we save the work order we are then presented with the following message to let us know that in the background the incident type products, services and service task are all being added to the work order.
If we now check the work order, we can see that everything we configured on our Incident Type previously has been copied across automatically to the work order e.g. products, service, service tasks and characteristics 😊
One thing worth noting is that multiple incident types can be applied to a work order. The estimated duration will therefore update accordingly based on all the incident types applied.
Hopefully the above provides a good idea of what incident types are, how they can be used efficiently on work orders, and as a result save you some time 😊
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