Configuring Appointment Booking

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Configuring Appointment Booking

    Configuring Appointment Booking in ServiceNow Yokohama enables customers and service providers to efficiently schedule and manage service appointments. Proper functionality requires configuration at both the application and service levels. This setup is essential for organizations using Field Service Management to streamline appointment scheduling and service delivery.

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    Key Features

    • Application-Level Configuration: Managed by system administrators, this includes global settings applicable to all services supporting appointment booking within Field Service Management. Predefined configurations like Field Service Order and Task Configuration are available for direct use or customization.
    • Service-Level Configuration: Appointment booking administrators can create, modify, and enable configurations specific to each service offering scheduled appointments, tailoring settings to service needs.
    • Activation and Setup Steps: Includes activating the Appointment Booking feature via plugins, enabling it at both application and service levels, creating or modifying configurations, and setting up variables for location and user contact in record producers.
    • Scheduling and Rules: Supports creating advanced schedules for precise time slots and defining rules to vary appointment durations per service.
    • Automation and UI Enhancements: Business rules can automate appointment record creation from catalog variables; optional use of the seismic calendar ensures a consistent scheduling UI.
    • Appointment Slot Recommendations: Optional feature to suggest optimal appointment times for customers, improving booking efficiency.
    • Notifications: Customizable email and SMS notifications for confirmations, cancellations, and reminders enhance communication.
    • Customization and Integration: Extension points allow further customization, and the Appointment API enables programmatic interaction for booking, rescheduling, slot checking, and configuration retrieval.

    Important Considerations

    Upgrading to Yokohama may increase maintenance time due to automatic re-parenting of appointment booking configuration tables within the system metadata structure. The duration depends on the size of your database tables.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Enables streamlined and flexible appointment scheduling aligned with organizational needs.
    • Allows tailored appointment settings per service, improving service delivery accuracy.
    • Provides automation capabilities to reduce manual effort and improve appointment visibility.
    • Offers enhanced customer experience through recommended time slots and timely notifications.
    • Supports integration and customization to fit complex business processes.

    Set up appointment booking to allow customers and service providers to schedule and manage service appointments efficiently.

    Appointment booking requires configuration at both the application level and the service level.
    Note:

    Both application-level and corresponding service-level configurations must be active for appointment booking to function properly.

    Application-Level configuration

    Appointment booking requires an active application-level configuration for Field Service Management. This configuration includes global settings that apply to all services supporting appointment booking within the application. Only a system administrator can create, modify, and enable an application-level configuration.

    The appointment booking feature provides predefined application-level configurations:
    • Field Service Order Configuration
    • Field Service Task Configuration

    Administrators can use these default configurations directly, modify them to meet specific business requirements, or use them as examples to create new application-level configurations.

    Service-Level configuration

    In addition to the application-level configuration, each service offering scheduled appointments must have its own active service-level configuration. A service-level configuration contains settings unique to that specific service.

    Appointment booking administrators (appointment_booking_admin) can:
    • Create new configurations for individual services.
    • Modify existing service configurations as needed.
    • Enable service configurations to activate appointment booking functionality.
    Important:

    Upgrading to Yokohama may extend the upgrade maintenance time of a customer because of Appointment Booking. The Appointment Booking configuration tables (sn_apptmnt_booking_config, sn_apptmnt_booking_service_config, sn_apptmnt_booking_config_rule) get extended to the Application File [sys_metadata] table as a part of the upgrade.

    After upgrading to Yokohama, re-parenting of the tables happens automatically, and the duration of the re-parenting depends on the number of records in various sys_metadata table and its dependent tables (sys_dictionary, sys_db_object, sys_documentation, sys_storage_alias).

    For example, if the sys_metadata table roughly has 29,000,000 records, the time taken to re-parent the tables is approximately estimated to be 36 minutes. If the sys_metadata table roughly has 5,000 records, the time taken to re-parent the tables is approximately estimated to be 3 minutes.

    Configuration overview

    The steps for configuring appointment booking are:
    1. Activate Appointment Booking

      Activate the Appointment Booking feature by installing the required plugins.

    2. Enable or disable appointment booking for an application

      Enable or disable the appointment booking feature for an application as well as for services within the application that are provided to customers.

    3. Create or modify an application configuration for Appointment Booking

      Create or modify an appointment booking configuration for an application. The information stored in this configuration applies to all the services within that application.

    4. Configure variables in a record producer for appointment booking

      Create variables for the catalog item attributes within the appointment booking service configuration. Configuring distinct variables for location and user contact, enables you to specify both the location and contact details when booking an appointment on the calendar.

    5. Configure an appointment booking record producer

      Configure an appointment booking record producer and enable the appointment booking variable set to display the correct fields in that record producer.

    6. Create or modify service configuration for Appointment Booking

      Create or modify an appointment booking configuration for a service within an application that is provided to customers.

    7. Create service configuration rules for a service configuration

      Configure appointment booking rules for a service configuration, for example, Point-of-Sale-Installation, to enable varying duration of appointments for this service.

    8. (Optional) Configure daily and advanced schedules

      Create advanced appointment schedules to provide customers with precise time slots, or adjust the beginning day of the week on your booking calendar to align with your organization's scheduling preferences.

    9. Create a business rule to automatically generate appointment records from catalog item variables

      Create a before insert business rule on the service table to automatically add a variable for service catalog in the appointment booking table. This ensures that the variable record is visible on the appointment calendar for users when booking an appointment.

    10. (Optional) Enable or disable seismic Appointment Booking calendar

      Use the seismic appointment booking calendar across all user interfaces to ensure a consistent and seamless scheduling experience.

    11. (Optional) Enable and configure appointment slot recommendation

      Appointment Booking slot recommendation rules assist in identifying the optimal appointment times for customers. These recommended slots enable customers to efficiently choose the most suitable available appointment times.

    12. (Optional) Customize Appointment Booking email and SMS notifications

      The system administrator can customize email and SMS notifications for appointment confirmation and cancellation notices and appointment reminders.

    13. (Optional) Extension points in Field Service Management

      Use extension points to customize appointment booking configurations.

    14. (Optional) Use Appointment API for interacting with the appointment booking application.

      Use this API to book and reschedule appointments, check available appointment slots, and fetch appointment booking configuration details.