This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates are logged below, with the most recent updates at the top.
| Date |
What’s Changed |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 11 FEB 2016 |
Initial Document Creation |
Oracle Field Service Cloud helps you provide unparalleled customer service by leveraging customers’ service needs, optimizing scheduling, and informing field service representatives. By getting the right person to the right place at the right time, you deliver service quality with maximum efficiency.
Oracle Field Service Cloud is built on time-based, self-learning, and predictive technology, empowering you to solve business problems while evolving your field service organization. This foundational technology empowers users with accuracy, context, and intelligence through eight powerful modules: Core Manage, Routing, Mobility, Forecasting, Capacity, Smart Location, Collaboration, and Customer Communication.
The table below offers a quick view of the actions required to enable each of the February 2016 features for customers upgrading from the August 2015 release. If you are upgrading from a prior release, additional actions may be required in order to enable the new features or functionality. For more information about the feature upgrade or the actions required, see the section of the document as indicated in the Feature column.
| Action Required to Enable Feature |
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| Feature |
Automatically Available* |
End User Action Required |
Administrator Action Required |
Oracle Service Request Required** |
| New Features and Enhancements |
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| API / Integration |
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| Configuration Screens Redesign |
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| Security |
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| Core Platform Enhancements |
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| Mobility |
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| Collaboration |
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| Routing |
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| Forecasting |
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* Assuming you have already implemented the listed module.
* Oracle Service Requests are generally required when purchasing access to newly available features or products.
In addition to the existing SOAP APIs, this release provides new REST APIs for simplified integration of Oracle Field Service Cloud with other Oracle Cloud products.
- The events publishing API allows users subscribe to events for integration of external applications with Oracle Field Service Cloud.
- This release adds support for OAuth2 as an authentication mechanism for REST APIs to streamline integrations with other Oracle products and customer-specific middleware.
- The daily extracts API lets other business systems receive data from Oracle Field Service Cloud.
The Plug-in Framework was extended to support HTML5 applications and take advantage of HTML5 features, including offline work and persistence storage. The Plug-in Framework also allows these applications to exchange data with Oracle Field Service Cloud. The new external plug-ins can be developed without Oracle resources and can be either the traditional external type or plug-ins that function with third-party plug-in APIs.
Oracle Field Service Cloud now includes inbound and outbound adapters that support integration with Oracle Integration Cloud Service (ICS) so that Oracle Field Service Cloud can be integrated with other cloud applications such as Service Cloud. The adapters define the ways that other information systems can communicate with Oracle Field Service Cloud through ICS by mapping objects from different systems to each other.
Accelerators have been developed for integration between Oracle Field Service Cloud and the Oracle E-Business Suite so that EBS users can quickly connect to a field service solution. The integration focuses on activity and work order integration, resource and inventory integration, and job status. Work orders created in EBS can be scheduled in Oracle Field Service Cloud, and Oracle Field Service Cloud can update inventory in EBS.
Configuration Screens Redesign
Oracle Field Service Cloud has a redesigned user interface that now conforms to other Oracle Cloud solutions. The new design uses the key principles of Oracle Alta UI, a design system that focuses on visual content, simplicity, and ease of use. The user interface elements that have been redesigned include the Configuration page, header, internal navigation, tables, popup windows, and the Business Rules screen.
The redesign includes a new Configuration page that contains all company settings. Instead of having to access multiple screens to configure your organization, now you can find all of them on a single page. Permission to access this page is granted by user types. The following figure shows the redesigned Configuration page.
- Security enhancements—This release of Oracle Field Service Cloud provides the ability to restrict IP addresses of clients for public API calls (whitelisting) and increased security using a safer hashing function.
- Offline authentication while using SSO—To provide additional protection in offline mode, mobility users now have a new PIN-based method of re-authentication for offline use after they have been successfully authenticated in online mode.
Travel Stats Real-time Correction
New customers do not yet have statistical information to predict travel time between activities so the travel time is now determined from street level travel time estimates provided by the Oracle Spatial and Graph RouteServer.
Work skills are used to match the requirements of an activity with the appropriate resource to perform the task. The functionality has been enhanced in this release by providing the ability to limit the time period that a work skill is assigned to a resource. This feature is useful for situations where skills require periodic certification, when work assignments are temporary, when equipment is available for a limited time, or when special activities (such as planned maintenance) are scheduled.
In addition to English, Oracle Field Service Cloud is now available in the following 18 languages:
Chinese – Simplified, Chinese – Traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French – European, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.
This release of Oracle Field Service Cloud brings enhanced functionality to the Mobility application. These enhancements provide additional information and allow complete management of field teams from mobile devices.
The Mobility user interface has been redesigned using the principles of the Alta design system to be consistent with the rest of the Oracle UI. The header, activity list, inventory list, calendar, and all input forms now conform to Alta user interface. New resource and activity hints also use Alta styling.
When field personnel activate their route, a bell icon now appears in the title bar. When activities are added or deleted to the route or when the address of an activity changes, notifications are generated and the bell icon displays the number of new notifications. This feature increases efficiency and reduces time lost because of travel to deleted activities or to those activities that have had address changes.
Field service personnel can now see how much time is allocated to their current activity and how much time is remaining once the activity is underway. They receive an alert when the activity is scheduled to be finished, and they can adjust the time in the field if necessary. The countdown timer is visible on Mobility screens.
- Resource info in Mobility—Previously, field managers could view and monitor a resource’s route and progress from the Mobility application, but full resource management had to be done on the desktop Core Manage application. Enhancements in this release now let managers access and update basic resource data, including resource information, calendars, work zones, work skills, locations, and resource hints, using the Resource Info dashboard on mobile devices.
- Activity management enhancements— The management of activities in Mobility has also been enhanced. Managers can see activity details and hints on the Manage screen, see not-ordered and not-scheduled activities, and drag and drop activities to assign them to an available resource. All resource-related information is organized on one screen in an Alta-UI style dashboard.
- Calendars—Previously, field managers could view a consolidated calendar view of working, non-working, and on-call times assigned to resources only in the desktop Oracle Field Service Cloud application. This release now provides a full overview of team calendars on mobile devices and lets field managers make updates from the Mobility application. Field managers can adjust individual schedules if required; they can also view the group’s plan and adjust schedules according to the plan.
Support for Oracle Maps and Geocoding
Oracle Field Service Cloud now uses Oracle Maps as the default map and geocoding provider instead of Google Maps.
Work zones now offer more flexible configuration based on custom shapes. Shapes are added when adding or editing work zones using unique work zone identifiers, and work zone shapes are displayed on a map on the work zone configuration screen.
The Mobility module now includes a Team Map screen that displays the location of all resources in a group on a map. The activities and routes also appear on the map.
The addition of custom map layers on map screens in Mobility allows custom map data to be imported into the map view. Custom layers can be turned off, and multiple layers can be displayed simultaneously.
Simplified Configuration Setup
The Collaboration module has been significantly simplified in this version of Oracle Field Service Cloud. In earlier versions, configuring collaboration permissions was a detailed process that required multiple screens. This release provides a single page for assigning user group permissions and configuring Helpdesks. It is now possible to edit multiple users simultaneously and set collaboration groups for them, and each user can be assigned multiple user groups.
The new location sharing feature in Collaboration allows field technicians to share their location, including driving directions, when collaborating with another technician in order to receive assistance or equipment more readily.
Phone Calls Through the Voice Channel
Technicians can consult on issues using the voice channel of Collaboration instead of making a separate phone call or using the chat window for their discussion. Clicking the Call icon on the chat window results in a more efficient exchange of information than a regular phone call or a text chat session can provide.
New user avatars on the User Information page and in the contacts list make it easier to locate someone and to help link names and faces for users who may not know each other.
A new message indicator and a locked scroll bar in the chat window makes new messages more obvious to the user than the previous scrolling chat window did. This feature is especially useful when users are engaged in community chats with multiple other users.
Routing plans can now be configured to run automatically in a defined sequence so that activities in a previous routing plan must be completed before activities in the subsequent routing plan can begin.
Immediate Assignment for Urgent Work
The Routing module of Oracle Field Service Cloud can now prioritize activities and assign urgent ones to technicians immediately, rescheduling less urgent activities at a lower priority. When an activity meets particular criteria defined in business rules, the Routing module assigns the activity immediately to minimize time between activity creation and assignment.
Additional Routing Enhancements
This release includes clearer, more understandable codes in the Routing module. Another enhancement is an attempt to adhere to the estimated arrival time of the field service representative that was given to the customer, even with any reassignment or routing change for the activity.
This release provides an improved forecasting algorithm that, given adequate data, can take weekly and seasonal fluctuations into account. Additionally, managers can view and compare actual and forecasted workload and available resources. Managers with appropriate permissions can override and publish forecasted workload and resources to perform what-if analyses as well as save and export the data.
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