Managing work orders
Summarize
Summary of Managing Work Orders Using Field Service Management
Work orders in Field Service Management are essential for managing off-site work requests. Users with the appropriate roles can create and qualify work orders, which then lead to the development of necessary tasks for completion. This process supports efficient task dispatching, especially when integrating geolocation tools like Google Maps.
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Key Features
- Creation of Work Orders: Users with the wminitiator or wminitiatorqualifier role can create new work orders or generate them from existing records such as incidents, problems, changes, cases, or project tasks.
- Scope Changes: If the scope of an existing work order changes, a new work order can be created from it, but consider adding tasks to the current work order first.
- Field Synchronization: Certain fields are automatically copied from the original record to the new work order, ensuring necessary information is retained.
- Filtering Capabilities: Work orders can be filtered by various attributes, allowing users to group similar work orders effectively.
- Qualification Process: Work orders must be qualified to generate and assign tasks, which can be done either automatically or manually.
- Closure and Cancellation: Work orders close automatically based on task statuses. Users can cancel or close work orders that are no longer needed, minimizing clutter in work order lists.
Key Outcomes
By effectively managing work orders, ServiceNow customers can streamline off-site work processes, enhance the assignment of tasks, and maintain better tracking of work requests. The ability to create, qualify, and manage work orders efficiently leads to improved service delivery and customer satisfaction.
Work orders are requests for off-site work. Users with the appropriate roles create the work orders and provide the necessary information needed for the work order tasks. Then other users qualify those work orders and create the tasks necessary to complete the work order.
For instructions on how to dispatch tasks using geolocation with Google Maps, see Using dispatch map.
Creating work orders
If you have the wm_initiator or wm_initiator_qualifier role, you can create work orders. You can create entirely new work orders, or you can create a work order from another record.
Work orders can be created from these other record types: case, incident, change, problem, or project task. They can also be created from another existing work order. For each record, you can create only one work order.
- Work orders created from another existing work order
If the scope of an existing work order changes during the execution phase, you can create another work order from it. Analyze whether the scope change can be managed by adding additional tasks instead of creating another work order.
When you create a work order from an existing work order, the following information is copied from the original work order:
- Work order record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Affected CI
- Caller
- Location
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Because some information is copied from the original record, an existing work order can be used as a template to create new work orders.
- Work orders created from an incident, problem, change, or project task record
If an incident, problem, change record, or project task must be assigned to an off-site agent and tracked, you can create a work order from it. Some information from the original record is copied automatically into the new work order.
Record type Fields copied to the work order Incident - Incident record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Caller
- Location
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Case - Account
- Contact
- Affected CI
- Location
- Asset
Problem - Problem record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Affected CI
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Change - Change record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Affected CI
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Project task Note:Before work orders can be created from project tasks, Field Service Management must be integrated with Project Portfolio Management- Short Description
- Location
These work order fields are synchronized with the project task- State
- Scheduled start
- Estimated end
For more information about the synchronized fields, see Integration with Project Portfolio Management.
Work orders can be filtered based on different attributes, such as qualification group, location, initiated from, priority, state, and so on. This help to create a group of similar work orders.