Field Service Monitoring- Part 1

Introduction

Salesforce Field Service is a powerful platform for keeping your Service Resources connected and your onsite business moving.  However, the Field Service application presents unique challenges to visibility that have (until now) kept CRM teams from understanding exactly what is happening in the field.  In this article, we will show you how to add visibility and monitoring to the Field Service Mobile flows that drive your business.

The steps below show the detailed process for adding monitoring visibility to Field Service Mobile flows.  But if you get away from all the Salesforce clicking, it boils down to dragging a couple of new components into your flow.  You can do it!  Let's give it a try.

Step 1:  Install the SightLane FSL Managed Package

Before you even open your Flow, make sure that you have installed the SightLane FSL managed package, which is Free for any SightLane organization.  If you do not have the install link, please reach out to us at [e-mail] and we will send the install location right over.

Step 2: Create a Log Collection 

Creating visibility for Field Service Mobile flows begins the same way as for other types of Flows.  Simply add a new String List variable to your Flow.  As your flow progresses, this collection resource will hold all of your Flow documentation, until it is time to report your findings to SightLane.

Step 3: Add Logging Content

Now that you've added the container to hold your statements, it's time to fill in the details.  Use as much or as little logging as you'd like, based on your visibility goals.  The best part is, you don't have to learn any new skills to create amazing monitoring content.  Just use your existing assignment statements (or add new ones) to add meaningful content to your Flow audit content along the way.

Step 4: Report to SightLane

Once you have your visibility content created, it's time to report it back to SightLane.  This is where monitoring Field Service Mobile flows is a bit different than monitoring in traditional Flows.  Field Service Mobile Flows are not able to access Apex, which means no Apex Actions and no non-FSM sub-flows can be used in your Flows.  This presents a development challenge, but we can overcome it together using SightLane Platform Events.

Because of this, reporting your monitor to SightLane is itself a two-step process:

4.1. Combine Logs into a single String

Because we are creating a new record (actually, a Platform Event) instead of using an Apex Action, we cannot pass in the list of log statements we have been accumulating.  We must combine them into a single String that can populate the platform event field.  Once SightLane responds to the Platform Event (this happens automatically on the back side), it will re-separate the logs into their individual statements for you, and the logs will show up in SightLane, just as you imagined them!

Add a subflow component and select the "SightLane FSL Log Joiner" flow.  This subflow will automate the process of joining your log statements into a single long text string.  Add your log collection variable to the Log List property.  Then set the Delimiter property with a character string that SightLane can use to tell the difference between different log statements (in this example, we chose the pipe ("|") symbol.  Finally create a variable to hold the results.

4.2. Report Logs to SightLane

Instead of using an Apex Action, drag a Create Records component onto your screen.  When you choose the object a record is being created for, select the sightlane__Report_to_SightLane__e Platform Event.  

Now let's fill in a few component fields and let Salesforce take care of the rest.  Be sure to use the same delimiter string that you used in the Log Joiner component.  This is how SightLane will know where one statement stops and the next one begins!  

Once your logs are created and joined and your platform event is in place, you will get real-time information about how Service Resources and other users in the field are using your Salesforce Field Service Mobile Flows.  Closing cases will be a breeze!

Conclusion

Now that we've covered the basics, let's move on to some of the details of Salesforce Field Service that can really make things interesting!