Contact us What’s new in SAP Field Service Management 2005
This weekend, the SAP Field Service Management system was upgraded to the latest version 2005. (May 16)
Thanks to the Preview Program function, it was possible to try out some of these innovations before this official release and provide developers with feedback. The developers reacted to the requests of the users. Therefore, if you have any of your own, do not hesitate to write them on the portal, and you may see solutions for them included in the next release. 
UI changes
To unify the user environment, UI is based on SAP Fiori style also in SAP FSM as they promised us. So the transition, for example, between SAP Service Cloud and SAP FSM will no longer be as noticeable for the user. As part of this change, we receive a new login and home screen. Now you will find the navigation panel on the left side of the screen, not on the right, as in prior versions.
New login screen
New home screen
The more attentive of you might be missing the shortcut into the Administration. Don’t worry you’ll find it after opening Settings and Configuration.
Customer self-service portal
Request details
In our opinion, you might also appreciate partial design changes here. Like the assistant in the 2002 edition, the requirements also received a new detailed view. The customer will thus get a better overview of the condition of his request. This change also created space for a more intuitive placement of the buttons for changing the time of an appointment and canceling the request.
Translation keys
The second change in the Customer self-service portal is the possibility to display translation keys from the language selection drop-down menu, which enables us to translate also this part of SAP FSM in the Administration.
Planning and dispatching portal
Bank holidays
Now we can define holiday dates by time zones. It allows us to create holiday calendars, which we can assign to a specific technician. As a result, they will appear on the Planning and dispatching board, so the system/dispatcher won’t book the technician on those days.
Technician sorting
In the most frequently used part of Field Service Management, it is possible now to sort the displayed technicians. You can do it even if you use multiple scenarios because you can assign this sorting to them. The system offers the following sorting options:
- Last name, First surname
- First name, Last name
- User name
- Custom
You can get to the menu by right-clicking the list of the technicians situated in the left part of the Dispatching Board.
Master Data Management
The ability to create generic and serialized tools has been added to the Master Data Management. When creating a serialized tool, we have the option to assign a generic tool to it.
Key differences between generic and serialized tools:
- Equipment records correspond to serialized tools.
- Item records correspond to generic tools.
News in SAP Field Service Mobile
Use Custom objects in a selection list in Smartforms
(Android 7.24.0, iOS 7.22.0 and Windows 8.6.0)
Ability to create picker lists using custom objects. In this way, we can include information specific to our workflow in the report. Thus, the technician can directly record, e.g. configuration of the repaired device.
When creating a Smartform, we can also assign a Text input to the selected Custom object and set it to show the value of one of its attributes. It allows us, for example, to display more information about the selected component from the picker list in the report.
Offline reports
(Windows 10.0.0, iOS. 8.0.0)
Added support for offline HTML reports is a handy feature, especially in remote or isolated places. The technician is now able to create a customized record of the work performed in his mobile application and record the customer’s signature, the same way as he did until now, even without the internet connection. The data is synchronized afterward.
Background sync
(Android 8.0.0 / iOS 8.1.0)
In connection with the previous improvement, this one complements it and further simplifies the work of the technician. He will no longer have to wait for the synchronization to complete before working with the app. It can run in the background.
Other changes:
Performance, scalability, stability
Despite its invisibility, significant improvements in the functioning of the system. This step will be appreciated especially by larger companies or companies working with larger amounts of data (equipment, tools, etc.). Master data management is generally faster and can now handle up to 10 million objects of the same type, increasing the performance of the authorization system of up to 100 times for large volumes of data. The APIs and reporting are also faster by 5-15%.
Platform and Administration
You can use business or user settings in the Business Rules now. So we can for example, set a rule for displaying notifications in the language, that the user has chosen to work with, in FSM.
- The change of elementId will now affect all translation files.
Crowd workforce
The Crowd Workforce owner can now select a status for the partner. It has the following options to choose from:
New, Reviewing, Approved, and Blacklisted. The team gains control over the partner’s approval process.
Crowd Branding
It is possible to set the logo on the partner’s registration page and their portal. The Crowd name and description are also configurable on the registration page. In the portal, you can add the contact person of the owner of the Crowd. And to wrap it up you can set your URL in the invitation email.
Partner portal enhancements
As part of these improvements, developers focused on greater transparency in communication between the Crowd owner and Partners, expressly, by adding the ability to view decision remarks after document, certificate, or skill approval. The partner immediately sees why e.g. it has not been approved. For partners, the opportunity to modify the service area in the partner portal was added, which can also be displayed in the registration form.
Automatic Scheduling and Optimization
When optimizing, the system can take into account information from already released tasks, e.g. from ECC. Therefore, it is possible to schedule the tasks in the most efficient way for the technician. Warning: Although this feature is supported in this update, a customized plugin is required to use it.
Possibility of parallel planning according to customer needs:
Some activities can be performed by the technician simultaneously or in the same time frame. For example, repair and maintenance, because why would the technician waste the opportunity of the machine already being taken apart. In order to represent this kind of workflow, the automatic scheduler is now able to assign two tasks at the same time according to the set criteria.
- Task scheduling even if it ends after working hours.
Want to know what the next release 2005 brought to Cloud for Customer but also to Cloud Marketing? You can read about it here:
If you are interested in the news in SAP Sales Cloud and would like to know more, contact us or subscribe. Anodius provides first-class certified services and consulting in all areas of SAP CX. Because Experience Matters.
Tomáš Potzy, CRM Consultant
