Fieldcode Manual

Tip: You can use filters for better results

Dispatch groups are used to define workforce areas for engineers, where the service can be provided. They are helpful in better organizing the work on the field. In the dispatch groups tab, you can assemble a team of engineers for a specific geographic area. The purpose is to focus the workforce on one area because having a dedicated group for your location is essential in the dispatch organizing process. You also have the option to customize the optimization behavior per dispatch group in this menu.

  • You need at least one created and active dispatch group to use the optimizer with success
  • If there is no active dispatch group set, the Ticket Pool in the Work Place (Dispatch tab) won’t display tickets and won’t display any engineers in the Timeline
  • It is necessary to have at least one engineer assigned, otherwise, group creation will not work
  • It is necessary to have at least one area generally defined, otherwise, group creation will not work
  • Please avoid creating groups with more than 30 engineers as it can negatively impact overall performance, rather try to create more groups in this case
  • An engineer can be used for multiple dispatch groups, Admin panel therefore also offers the possibility to assign one engineer for multiple dispatch groups
You will see engineer home bases with different colors inside the zone when defining or editing dispatch group zones. Red: Engineers home base is far from the defined zone (calculated outgoing from the border of the selected zone). Yellow: Engineer is some what close to the defined group zone (calculated outgoing from the border of the selected zone). Green: Engineer is inside the defined group zone (calculated outgoing from the center of the selected zone).

If you change dispatch group settings, this message may appear. This message indicates that this is a change that also affects tied tickets. As there may be a large number of tickets involved, this change may take some time. To avoid problems during regular business operations, such fundamental changes should be made outside of normal operations if possible. However, edits won’t break anything, they just may impact current performance as these changes occur.

  1. Inside the Admin panel go to  Dispatch → Groups
  2. Click on the plus button to open the New group form.
  3. Fill in the Basic, Area Definition, Filters, Engineers, Dispatch, and Optimization tabs.
Business/Enterprise Feature

Some specific options inside the Basic tab are only available for customers with a Business or Enterprise plan. If you are subscribed for Enterprise by default both the "Activate fully automated dispatching" and the "Activate just-in-time publishing" are activated by default. These two additional options are not visible to non-subscribers.

Learn more about how to upgrade your plan
How the group timezone differs from the tickets' timezone

The group timezone you set doesn't change the tickets' timezone. It just displays the group's timezone on the Timeline so tickets can be scheduled by the dispatcher accordingly to the group's timezone.

  1. Toggle the Active toggle to the right to mark the user as active (that means the group is displayed inside Fieldcode Work Place).
  2. (Optional) – Turn your dispatch group into a test dispatch group by flipping the Test dispatch group toggle to the right.
    Test dispatch groups do not share data with the Analytics component and therefore have no impact on your reporting, analytics, or forecasting.
  3. Insert the name of your new or existing group.
  4. (Optional) – Insert a description of your new or existing group for better recognition.
  5. Select the timezone your new or existing group operates within.
  6. (Optional) –  Select a master group from the dropdown.
    Learn how to create master groups here.
  7. (Enterprise only) – Activate or deactivate fully automated dispatching
  8. (Enterprise only) – Activate or deactivate just-in-time publishing
  9. Click Save.
Dispatch Group Basic tab

The next step is to define the operational zone of your new dispatch group.
You have the option to define the area either manually or automatically.

You will see engineer houses with different colors inside the zone when defining or editing dispatch group zones.

Red: The engineer's home base is far from the defined zone (calculated outgoing from the border of the selected zone).
Yellow: The engineer is approximately close to the defined group zone (calculated outgoing from the border of the selected zone).
Green: The engineer is inside the defined group zone (calculated outgoing from the center of the selected zone).

  1. Select the country and city where your group operates to make the map zoom to the area you want to select manually.
  2. Delete the preselected area by clicking on the top-right trash button inside the map to deselect the automatically inserted area.
  3. Confirm the deletion of the automatically inserted area by clicking the YES, DELETE button when prompted.
  4. Click inside the map to start selecting an area manually and to make a point appear.
  5. Connect the points.
  6. Close the area by clicking on the start point again from the last point.
  7. Confirm the area by clicking Save.
Workaround for crossing the the International Date Line (IDL)

If you draw an area crossing the International Date Line (IDL) you might run into troubles when creating the area. If you face this rare problem, please feel free to contact Fieldcode Support, so they can quickly help you work around this problem.

Manually drawing an operational area

Tips for manual area definition

You can delete individual points by clicking on a point and clicking on the trash button or go back to the last step at any time by clicking the revert button in the top-right corner of the map. Check out Example 1 (GIF).

You can delete individual points by clicking on a point and clicking on the trash button or go back to the last step at any time by clicking the revert button in the top-right corner of the map. Check out Example 1 (GIF).

You can easily add another point to the area by clicking the point in the middle of two points and dragging it to your desired spot. This will automatically add another point. Check out Example 2 (GIF).

Example 1

Deleting individual points + reverting to last step

Example 2

Defining the operational area more precise with the use of additional points
  1. Select the country where your group operates within.
  2. (Optional) – Select the state where your group operates within.
  3. Select the city where your group operates within.
  4. Click on the orange SHOW LOCATION button.
  5. (Optional) – Click on one area if you are prompted to select between areas.
    Important: Your group can only operate within one area.
  6. Confirm the area by clicking SAVE.
Defining the operational area automatically

Fill in the filters tab to the specify tickets that are displayed for this specific dispatch group.
You can add filters (eg. status, project, country, etc.) or even grouped filters to further customize which tickets are displayed for the dispatch group.

Filter terms explained:

Filters: Allows fine-tuning criteria for dispatch groups with the use of comparison and logical operators. Click on the plus button to add a filter.
Condition: Defines a condition for your filter criteria.
Operator: Compares the condition with the comparison (IS EQUAL TO, IS NOT EQUAL TO, IS LIKE, IS NOT LIKE, IN).
Comparison Value: Defines with which value the condition is compared.
Connector: Allows you to combine a monitored field with another monitored field (AND, OR)

  1. Click on the Plus button to add a new filter or group filter.

Filters:

  1. Select a condition from the first condition dropdown.
  2. Select an operator from the first operator dropdown.
  3. Enter a Comparison Value from the Comparison Value dropdown.
  4. (Optional) – Add additional filters by clicking on the plus button in the first row and connect them with either AND or OR connectors.
Two active filters connected with the AND connector.

Group Filters:

  1. Select a condition from the first condition dropdown.
  2. Select an operator from the first operator dropdown.
  3. Enter a Comparison Value from the Comparison Value dropdown.
  4. Add additional filters by clicking on the plus button in the first row and connect them with either AND or OR connectors.
  5. Check the checkboxes inside the filters which you want to connect to a group. 
  6. Click on the Group button. A line left next to the filters indicates you which filters are connected to a group. Inside groups you can also create subgroups by checking filters inside a group and connecting them to a group by clicking on the group button.
Selecting filters which should be connected to a group
Grouping the filters. The x inside the line lets you ungroup a group.

Filter UX explained:

  • You can add more filters with the Plus button.

  • The group button lets you group filters together.
    You have to check the filters, that you want to connect to a group for the button to be displayed.

  • You can select conditions from the condition drop-down.
    You can learn what conditions are in the Filter Terms Explained section.

  • You can select operators from the condition drop-down.
    You can learn what operators are in the Filter Terms Explained section.

  • You can enter Comparison Values in the Comparison Value field.
    You can learn what Comparison Values are in the Filter Terms Explained section.

  • You can add more filters with the Plus button.

  • You can delete individual filters with the Delete button.

  • You can decide which relation a filter should have with another filter.
    It can either be an AND or an OR relation.

  • The Ungroup button lets you ungroup connected filters.
    The filters will remain inside the list without a group after ungrouping.

  • This row displays the date that has been entered in the system before any changes were made.

  • Dates marked in gray are not available for booking. This can be due to Custom Customer Portal configurations or these days are bank holidays or weekends.

  • Dates marked with a yellow triangle indicate limited engineer availability. Your ticket could might get moved by dispatchers to another spot if you select this date.

  • Dates marked with green triangles indicate the earliest and latest part availability dates. If a ticket needs special replacement parts in order to be resolved, the date should ideally be selected between the earliest and latest part availability date.

  • Your new date (and checked) selection is displayed with a border around the date.

  • This row displays bookable time slots.

  • You need to check this checkbox for confirming your appointment booking.

Example: Dispatch group for Germany

You want to have one dispatch group for complete Germany, but you can't draw complete Germany with the draw-points-button inside the map, so you have decided to draw a wider area, where Germany is within. You can add a Country filter for Germany in this case, so only Germany is defined for your dispatch group, so you give the system more precise input. The IS EQUAL comparison is case-sensitive.
Your filter would be: affectedCountry is equal to Germany

Example: Company-specific dispatch group

You want to display tickets in a dispatch group company-specific, let's say for example the BetterClimate Corp. Instead of giving it the IS EQUAL operator you could also give it the IS LIKE operator. The IS LIKE operator considers values that aren't necessarily case-sensitive. This means a ticket that would contain the name betterclimate would also be taken into consideration because it contains something from the original value.
Your filter would be: affectedCompany is like BetterClimate Corp

The next step in the group configuration is to assign some engineers for your dispatch group. You will see all available resources in a list view with a kilometer sign next to their name on the left side.

The number of kilometers displays how far a technician is from the defined zone. This should simplify the selection of matching technicians for you.

RED: The engineer is far away from the defined zone (calculated outgoing from the border of the selected zone).
YELLOW: The engineer is approximately close to the defined group zone (calculated outgoing from the border of the selected zone).
GREEN: The engineer is inside the defined group zone (calculated outgoing from the center of the selected zone).

Assigning matching engineers to a Dispatch group
  1. Click on the engineer you want to assign to your group to transfer the engineer over to Selected engineers.
  2. Repeat step 1 for every other engineer you want to assign to your group.
  3. (Optional) You have the possibility to quickly move all resources from one side to another. 
    Click on ADD ALL on the left side or REMOVE ALL on the right side to do so.
  4. Click Save.

The next step in the group configuration is to assign some dispatchers for your dispatch group. You will see all available dispatchers in a list view on the left side. 

Assigning dispatchers for a Dispatch group
  1. Click on the user you want to assign to your group to transfer the dispatcher over to Selected Dispatchers.
  2. Repeat step 1 for every other dispatcher you want to assign to your group.
  3. (Optional) – You have the possibility to quickly move all resources from one side to another. 
    Click on ADD ALL on the left side or REMOVE ALL on the right side to do so.
  4. Click Save.

The optimizer configuration is covered in the corresponding topic.

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