Service Dispatching in SAP Business ByDesign - we'd like your feedback

[SandeepJanardan]

Dear Reader

In the past couple of releases, we have looked at facilitating the planning of service orders and their assignment to employees based on their availability - using the Dispatching board in the Service Orders work center.

This blogpost on the Dispatching Board is a PREVIEW of what we hope to deliver with the 2208 release of SAP Business ByDesign, and through which we would like to get your feedback regarding this functionality - and what you feel is important for you to use this in your planning, or that of your customer's.

A breezy video (under 4 minutes) to explain the Dispatching Board Functionality -



3 highlights of the video -

Quick and easy assignment of the service order item to the employee, by clicking on the Assign action in corresponding Day-cell of the employee in the calendar.

Speedy assignment of service order items

View existing assignments by clicking on the number in each cell.

View work assignments of the employee for that day

Spread workload across multiple days using the Adjust action

Spread workload across multiple days

We would like to hear your feedback - let me know in the comments if you can spare half an hour to talk to us, and we would be very happy to schedule a call with you.

Thank you very much !

[Larzilliere]

Hi Sandeep,

I would like a confirmation. Can we assign resources to both Service orders and project work packages?

[SandeepJanardan]

Hello christian.larzilliere

The dispatching board UI is currently available only in the service order work center, and can be used to assign service order items only, to a service performer.

But project tasks assignments that would have been done by the project manager in the Projects work center are visible here - as you can see in the picture "View work assignments of the employee for that day".

This is exactly what we want to understand from our customers - what are their urgent needs - one could be having a similar feature for the project manager as well.

Regards,
Sandy

[CESAR_LOPEZ]

Sandeep, thanks for the great blog and video. This functionality will fit the requirement of several use cases in the professional service arena!

The first thing that comes to my mind is: are there any plans to extend this capability to SCM and include equipment resources involved on production orders at some point? Every time we need to implement SAP ByD for discrete manufacturing companies, this is a basic need.

Regards,

[SandeepJanardan]

Hello cesarlopez

Thank you for the question.

We do not have production orders in our roadmap for the resource availability calendar. This is something that we would encourage a partner to build, using Add Custom Business Objects to the Employee Resource Calendar | SAP Blogs as guidance.

The dispatching board uses exactly the same mechanism for populating the resource calendar - one can look at this as reference and extend the resource calendar for production orders.

Could you let us know the types of professional services companies that you would pitch this dispatching board, as part of the presales activities ? This would help us get a better understanding on the types of customers that can be targeted, within professional services.

Thanks again,
Sandy

[CESAR_LOPEZ]

Thanks for the answer Sandeep and for clarifying production orders is not part of the roadmap.

Could you let us know the types of professional services companies that you would pitch this dispatching board, as part of the presales activities ?

A: I see this working well for technicians/engineers providing services to the Oil and Gas industry, HVAC industry, telecommunications industry...

 

[SandeepJanardan]

Thank you cesarlopez

[former_member813289]

Hello Sandeep,

thank you for the short and informative overview on this new feature.

I have the following question regarding the calculation of the available time: what's going to happen with service items assigned in the past but are not fulfilled up to the present? Are these items somehow included in the calculation?

If not, would it be possible to have a query for these items to reassign them before the new items?

 

kind regards, Regina

[SandeepJanardan]

Hello regina.crepaz

Thank you for the question.

The previously assigned service order items that have not yet been fulfilled can be found using the query selection attributes under the "All items" drop down. You can then navigate to the service order UI itself, and delete the service performer assignment. In this way, it would appear back in the Dispatching board as items that are yet to be assigned.

Regards,
Sandy