- SAP Managed Tags:
SAP Field Service Management 2408 advances our strategic investment in generative AI for field service organizations. In addition, we introduced several new features designed to simplify user workflows, strengthen integration, and increase functionality. In this blog, you can find an overview of the most notable features, along with a demo video showcasing key highlights. For a complete list of all the features in the 2408 release, click here. In this blog, I will highlight the key features that will significantly enhance how you manage field services, including:
- Generative AI: Activity Summary, Equipment Insights, and Natural Language Filtering.
- User Experience enhancements: Dispatching board, service contracts, filtering improvements, and more.
- Service Map: Enhanced filtering and object visualization improvements.
- Integration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: Business object replication across multiple companies.
- AI-based Scheduling improvements: New and enhanced rules/objectives; service regions; and supporting technicians.
Note: The Activity Summary, Equipment Insights, and Natural Language Filtering features require a customer to be licensed for SAP AI Units. For more information about licensing, please contact your SAP Account Executive.
Generative AI
In addition to simplifying workflows, generative AI in SAP Field Service Management makes it easier to unlock and benefit from valuable insights that were previously difficult to access. These enhanced workflows and actionable insights provide substantial value to field service organizations. According to SAP customer benchmarking, by utilizing these features, field service organizations can achieve (on average):
- 12.5% increase in dispatcher productivity.
- 5% improvement in first-time fix rates.
- 15% reduction in time to review and plan service requests.
Take a look at the demo video below showcasing our Generative AI highlights in 2408:
Activity Summary
Activity Summary is an advanced AI feature that generates a detailed summary of previously performed activities. This summary offers dispatchers and technicians essential information, such as used spare parts, activity duration, completed checklists, and their outcomes. By leveraging this enhanced intelligence, technicians can achieve faster resolution times and improve first-time fix rates. Additionally, dispatchers can use these insights to make more informed decisions when assigning new tasks. Upon activity close, field service staff can also utilize the information in the activity summary to expedite the time to resolution and closing of work orders. For more information, click here.
Natural Language Filtering: save and display used queries
Natural Language Filtering now offers prompts for suggesting previously used queries when a user begins typing related searches. This boosts dispatcher productivity by allowing them to search and retrieve relevant activities more quickly. Additionally, reusing these prompted queries does not consume AI units, helping reduce costs for customers. For more information, see here.
Equipment Insights: additional information with relevant links
With the latest enhancements to Equipment Insights, users can now quickly navigate to linked detail pages about activities, personnel, and spare parts involved. This improvement boosts efficiency by centralizing all relevant information, simplifying workflows, and making it easier to retrieve additional details. For more information, see here.
User Experience Enhancements
SAP Field Service Management also features several key user experience highlights which are summarized below and in the demo video:
Dispatching Board
Skill levels in best matching technician UI
Now, within the best matching technician UI, dispatchers can easily visualize skill levels for specific tasks. This enhancement enables dispatchers to make more informed decisions when assigning jobs that require varying levels of skill proficiency. See more here.
Automatic calculation of travel time on plan or replan
Travel time calculation is now automated when planning or replanning activities from the planning list to the board. Planners can also manually trigger travel time calculations for specific activities. This enhancement provides accurate travel time information based on the technician's or last activity location, improving planning accuracy and overall efficiency in managing a technician's day. Find out more here.
Ability to zoom in and out on the dispatching board
When working within specific timeframes, it can be difficult to view all the relevant details for certain activities on the schedule. To address this, we introduced the ability to zoom in and out on the planning board without losing sight of the broader schedule context. This enhancement provides planners with greater visibility to manage detailed information about specific activities, and increased flexibility when managing the planning horizon. More info here.
Unassign multiple activities at once
When there is a need to unassign multiple activities, especially those within a specific timeframe for a particular technician, planners currently must unassign each activity individually. To streamline workflows, we've implemented a bulk unassign feature. This enhancement simplifies the unassign process, and reduces time spent on unassigning multiple activities. See more here.
New Activity Sidebar: Tools & Smartforms
Enhanced capabilities in the Activity Sidebar now allow planners to manage tools and Smartforms directly. We also added the ability to configure the order and visibility of tabs, making it easier to manage key information within the sidebar. This enhancement provides an improved user experience by harmonizing planning processes and offering greater flexibility when using the activity sidebar. For more information, see here.
Ability to select all matching filter results
We improved the filtering functionality, allowing planners to select all matching results with a single click, instead of selecting them one by one. Additionally, a new setting lets you adjust the number of shown filter results. This enhancement increases productivity by supporting end-users in various situations, and reduces the time spent selecting matching filter results. Learn more here.
Master Data
Improved UX with Service Contracts
Service Contracts in Master Data have been improved to create a more user-friendly and intuitive experience. The enhanced layout improves readability and simplifies the management and organization of contract information, including custom fields. Explore more information here.
Partner Portal
Better access to activity information with Modal UI
Access to activity information has been improved in the Partner Portal. Partner Managers can now view work order data through the Modal UI view, with Crowd Owners ultimately controlling access via screen configuration. This enhancement allows Crowd Owners to enable features like viewing skills, attachments, extensions, and custom fields, according to business needs, offering improved consistency and greater flexibility in how partners access data. Discover more details here.
Service Map
2408 brings several enhancements to the Service Map, including the ability to save and configure default views, and control object visibility at different zoom levels. Check out the demo video below for more details:
Save filters as views on the Service Map
When a large volume of objects is shown on the map, finding the right information without a saved view can be time-consuming and inefficient. To address this, dispatchers can now save selected filter sets as views, with an auto-save feature creating a last autosaved view. Views can also be set as default, enhancing usability by allowing dispatchers to quickly choose the appropriate view See more here.
Control object visibility with different zoom levels
Now dispatchers can adjust the precision of objects by selecting the number of objects displayed at different zoom levels. This improvement boosts performance by optimizing the map display and helps provide flexibility to meet each customer's unique visualization needs. Check out more details here.
Integration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition
Enable business object replication across multiple companies from SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition
For customers operating in multiple countries, integrating data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition with SAP Field Service Management is now more efficient. Data can be mapped to specific companies in SAP Field Service Management using organizational assignments like Sales Area, Company Code, Purchasing Group, and Plants. Master and transactional data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, can be integrated into the respective SAP Field Service Management company based on assigned replication rules, with the ability to extend these mapping rules to custom fields. This enhancement simplifies data management in SAP Field Service Management, ensuring users have access to the correct data. See the complete details here.
AI-based Scheduling
Service Regions in Auto-Scheduling
Service regions are now fully supported in custom policies with the introduction of three new rules:
- Enforce Service Region: Restricts technicians to activities within their designated service region.
- Job Has Service Region: Confirms if a job is associated with a service region.
- Resource Has Service Region: Confirms if a technician is assigned to a service region.
Service regions have also been added to the existing rule UDF - compare values. These enhancements reduce implementation effort by leveraging familiar concepts from manual scheduling and closing key feature gaps. More information here.
Support for multiple technicians in auto-scheduling
In this release, we have introduced functionality that ensures a supporting technician's time is considered blocked during the auto-scheduling process, and it also allows for the re-optimization of assigned activities requiring one or more supporting technicians. These enhancements safeguard manually created schedules from being disrupted by automatic scheduling and enable seamless re-optimization of schedules involving supporting technicians. Read more here.
Final Thoughts
SAP Field Service Management 2408 strengthens the entire field service value chain. These enhancements enable field service organizations to unlock value through generative AI, simplify workflows with new feature functionality, and enhance company-wide integration. We invite you to explore these new capabilities, share your feedback, and help us shape the future of SAP Field Service Management by submitting your influence requests here. Stay tuned for the 2411 release, where even more innovations are on the way!
Get in touch!
Thoughts or questions? Feel free to share any feedback in a comment. It would also be great to hear directly from you which AI innovations you think could be the most impactful for future releases. For related posts and more information, please join our SAP Field Service Management Community page and explore our SAP Field Service Management Website. You can also watch the SAP Field Service Management 2408 Release Demo here, and I encourage you to register for our upcoming webinars for the most up to date information by registering here.
| User | Count |
|---|---|
| 7 | |
| 6 | |
| 4 | |
| 2 | |
| 2 | |
| 2 | |
| 2 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 |
