Describe incident types and service tasks
Incident Types
Incident types in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service act as templates that allow users to quickly create work orders for these common types of jobs. You can also use incident types to define specific work order issues and recommended resolutions.
Incident types prepopulate the detail of the work order, which you can manually edit as needed.
Organizations benefit from using incident types because they codify issues, procedures, and resolutions, and help standardize processes across geographies and business lines. Incident types ensure that all field technicians perform the same actions to resolve work orders. Moreover, if better procedures are discovered, the incident type is updated and implemented across the entire organization.
Using incident types helps you save time while creating work orders. Without using incident types, the customer service reps or dispatchers who are creating work orders would have to manually add details.
Incident types are helpful for reporting because they allow you to see trends for specific issues. By using an incident type, you can report on the number of power failures for a specific asset category. This approach is different from reporting on work order types to understand the number of repair work orders.
Other important incident type features include the ability to:
Define multiple issues or procedures that need to be completed by adding the incident types to a work order.
Relate each incident type to a customer asset to build service history.
Relate incident types to requirement group templates to auto populate multiple requirements for a work order and schedule it to multiple resources.
Use incident types in agreements to auto populate the work orders that are created for preventative maintenance.
Service Tasks
As onsite workers are working on work orders, they often have specific tasks they need to accomplish. For example, while fixing a coffee machine they may need complete the following tasks:
Complete the pre-Inspection assessment.
Cut power to device.
Inspect the power supply.
Post the assessment inspection.
Gather customer signature.
Service tasks can be added to work orders to act as a "to do list" for the onsite workers. Each task can be marked as complete as they complete it. Service tasks can be added to incident types as well. This ensures that when an incident type is selected for a specific work order, the service tasks will automatically be populated.