In 2018, Field Service Lightning became the fastest-growing product in Salesforce’s history. The following year during Dreamforce 2019, Salesforce uncovered its FSL roadmap for 2020. This included future capabilities such as preventative maintenance, asset management, shift management, and more.
Let’s take a look at the latest Spring ‘20 Release, and more specifically at the benefits of Timesheets, a real game changer for timesheet automation, expense tracking and holiday and vacation management.
Capture the Reporting of Field Engineers and Field Agents
You may be used to using Service Appointments, a fully-functional application that allows businesses to schedule, dispatch and manage the status of any assigned task. However, for some field engineers or agents, making all tasks Service Appointments can be time-consuming or difficult. They may prefer to add activities to Service Appointment in phases, or only certain elements of a project. In this situation, Timesheets can be very valuable.
One good example is where a field agent completes a survey on a customer site, and then works from home later that day to fill in a detailed report on the visit. In this case, the Timesheet activity will be directly linked to the Service Appointment activity. However, this is not always the case; it can also be a standalone task or activity.
Fast Facts about Timesheets
Timesheets is currently in Beta. Here’s what you need to know to start using it.
Timesheets are opened per each Service Resource, and can either be created manually, or using automation via a Timesheets template. This template will be assigned to Profiles.
Each Timesheet will hold the timeframe for reporting, whether that’s daily, weekly, bi-weekly or other, and then the actual reports sent in by the engineer are called Timesheet Entries. You can use Timesheet either from the Field Service Lightning mobile app, or directly from desktop.
Timesheets can also be created automatically, removing the need for manual and repetitive work for the engineer, enabling each agent to simply update the work done once it’s complete. Timesheets can either be logged as they are sent, or can be submitted for approval to a manager, which freezes the record as it is sent, so that no more updates can be made.
What We Would Love to See in Future Updates
As Timesheets is still in Beta, we’re expecting feature updates and bug fixes on both desktop and mobile. One update that would really add value would be automation between Service Appointments and Timesheets and Timesheet Entries. This could support businesses in having a full report on all work done by the engineer in question, as well as provide more holistic reporting for management purposes.
We’ve included the complete Salesforce FSL roadmap below, to allow you a peek at more capabilities expected this year.
AllCloud has already seen customers leveraging a lot of value out of Timesheets, so if you have any further questions, get in touch to connect with one of our Field Service Lightning experts to learn more.
The Complete Salesforce FSL Roadmap to Lookout for:
Asset
- Preventative Maintenance
- Maintenance plan notification
- Usage and condition-based maintenance
- Asset uptime tracking
- Asset timeline UI
- Inventory Cycle counting
- Inventory – Lot/Batch Support
Resource Centric
- Shift management
- Designated shifts
- Shifts template
Timesheets
- Timesheet automation
- Expense tracking
- Holiday management
Schedule & Optimization
- Extended Match Rule
- Consecutive work
- Truck Capacity
- Enhanced Optimization GA
Dispatch
- Enhanced Report Layers
- Consecutive Work
- Scheduling Recipes GA
- Guided Experience