xMatix Field Service

Field service in xMatix is how you decide who does a job and when: a dispatcher hands work to people on an allocation console, a queue offers work to whoever is free, or an assignment rule stamps an owner on a new record. The technician then carries out the job in the mobile app. The jobs themselves are service orders, cases, leads, product demos and visit plans, and they are created and invoiced in their own modules. Field Service is the layer that puts a person on them.

Overview

There is no separate Field Service app. The screens live in the apps that own the work:

Your administrator can rename these entries, move them to other apps or add more console pages, so your menus may differ.

When to use it

• A dispatcher plans the day. Use a console when one person should decide, with the whole backlog and every person's load in view.
• Work should go to whoever is free right now. Use a queue. It offers each case or call to an available member of the queue's pool, within their capacity, without anyone dragging it.
• The owner follows from the record itself. Use an assignment rule. Examples are leads by postal code, or cases by product line. The rule picks the owner when the record is created or when the fields it watches change.
• A job needs a qualified person. Record skills on people and skill requirements on the work. The service order's Time Sheet dialog then flags who is missing a skill.

How xMatix handles it

Every path follows written rules. None of them is an AI verdict, and each one writes an ordinary field you can change afterwards.

• Consoles write one field. Dropping a card on a person writes the console's assign field on the record. Dropping it on the Gantt timeline also writes the date and time. The shipped pages write Executive on cases, leads and product demos, Service Advisor on service orders and Assigned To Resource on visit plans. Service Order Dispatch does not set the order's Technician. Technicians are put on the labour through Time Sheet.
• New records arrive already assigned. When a record is created with its resource field empty, xMatix fills in the creator's own resource. A record therefore reaches a console's unassigned rail only when the creator has no resource of their own, or when someone clears the field later.
• Optimize day fills free slots by fixed rules. On a console with a timeline and a schedule field, Optimize day gives each unassigned card to the least-loaded person who is not on leave, holiday or week off. It places cards back to back, at most 20 per run. Absent and half-day people are not skipped, so review the result.
• Queues offer work in turn. A candidate must be a member of the queue's resource group, be active and linked to a user, show presence Available, and have room under Max work items (default 5). On a skill-based queue the candidate must also hold the named skill. When nobody qualifies, the work stays Pending. Accepting a case makes the acceptor its owner.
• Assignment rules run inside the save. A rule picks from a resource group, one named resource, a position holder or the people mapped to a partner. It picks by sequence, round robin or fewest open records. No assignment rules are shipped.
• Each check reads skills its own way. The time sheet dialog, assignment rules, queue routing and appointment booking each read the skill records differently. The skills page shows which one checks what.
• Availability comes from check-in. Mobile check-in creates a Present attendance row for the day. Consoles also count overlapping leave requests that are not rejected or cancelled. Leave, holiday and week-off rows that no request created must be entered or imported by hand.

Prerequisites

Before anyone dispatches:

• Every person who does work has an active resource linked to their user and tagged to the branches and partner accounts they work for. Queues refuse resources with no user, and the consoles' scope chips filter on branch and partner.
• Each dispatcher's security profile can open the console page and edit the work records it assigns. See Permissions.
• Each technician's profile opens the mobile app and can run Start, Pause and End on time sheets. No shipped profile does both; see Role guide: field service technician.

Example

A tractor dealer runs one workshop and two service vans.

1. At 08:30 the service manager opens Service → Settings → Service Order Dispatch. There are six orders on the unassigned rail, and the manager drags each one onto an advisor's column. That writes Service Advisor on each order.
2. An advisor opens order SV-23102026-000011, selects Time Sheet and assigns the hydraulic repair to a technician. The dialog shows one candidate as missing Hydraulics L2, so the advisor picks someone else. The order becomes Work To Start.
3. On the road, the technician checks in on the mobile app, opens the order while there is still signal, and taps Start on the time sheet. The order becomes Work In Progress.
4. Meanwhile a customer emails about a breakdown. The case lands in the Breakdowns queue, which offers it to the one available member with room under the work-item limit. That member accepts it and becomes the case's owner.
5. At 16:00 the manager opens Support → Case Allocation and switches to Map. One van has had no signal for over an hour. The manager drags that van's afternoon case onto a colleague's lane.

Training

Practice exercise

In a sandbox where you are System Admin, with two active resources linked to users:

1. Create a case with any subject. Then select Edit, clear Executive and save. A new case with an empty Executive gets your own resource, so you clear it afterwards.
2. Open Support → Case Allocation, find the case on the unassigned rail and drag it onto the first resource.
3. Open the case.
4. Open Service → Allocation Console, which opens on the timeline, and drag the same case onto the second resource's lane.
5. Open the case again.

Expected result: after step 3 the case's Executive is the first resource. After step 5 it is the second resource, and First Response Due has not changed. The Service app's console has no schedule field, so its timeline drops reassign but never set a time. Support → Case Allocation, by contrast, writes First Response Due from where you drop.

Quick reference

• There is no Field Service app. Consoles live in Support, Service and CRM.
• A console drop writes one field. On service orders that field is Service Advisor, not Technician.
• Technicians go on the labour through the order's Time Sheet button.
• Queues offer work only to available, linked, in-group people with spare capacity.
• Work that no one qualifies for stays Pending. It is never dropped.
• Assignment rules live in Setup → Process Studio → Assignment Rules. None are shipped.
• Optimize day skips leave, holiday and week off, but not absent or half day.
• Start, Pause and End on the mobile time sheet need a connection.

Permissions

Access comes in two parts. First, the profile must be granted the app and the console page, because app pages are allowlisted per security profile. Second, it needs edit access on the work entity, because every drop is an update to the record. In the shipped profiles:

A profile without the page grant does not see the menu entry. Grant pages on the profile's app permissions. See Security profiles and Role guide: dispatch manager.

Configuration

Set field service up in this order:

1. People. Create resources, link each to a user, and tag branches and partner accounts.
2. Pools. Build resource groups for queues, assignment rules and the consoles' Resource group scope chip.
3. Skills. Add the skill catalogue, each person's resource skills and each job's skill lines. See Skills.
4. Queues. Create queues with a routing model and an agent pool, under Support → Settings → Queues or Setup → Feature Hub → Service → Telephony → Queues. See Skills, capacity and work routing.
5. Assignment. Add assignment rules in Setup → Process Studio → Assignment Rules, or Partner Resource rules for leads, opportunities and product demos. See Automatic owner assignment.
6. Availability. Make sure the mobile check-in is in use, enter leave, holidays and week offs, and set up branch time slots for bookings.
7. Consoles. Grant the shipped console pages, or place more console pages through the designer. Two pages ship without a menu entry: the visit-plan Allocation Console (its Field Sales entry is switched off) and Demo Allocation. Every console setting is listed in the configuration reference.
8. Mobile. On the mobile app configuration, set check-in, the offline list and location tracking (Setup → Design Studio → Apps → Mobile Apps). The shipped app tracks location about every 60 seconds while a user is checked in.

Common problems

I can't find a dispatch or allocation menu

Your profile has not been granted the console page, or your organization has not placed one in your app. Service Order Dispatch is under Service → Settings, which only System Admin reaches in the shipped setup. Ask your administrator to grant the page.

I dispatched a service order but the technician doesn't see it

Service Order Dispatch sets the order's Service Advisor, not its Technician. Open the order and use Time Sheet to put the technician on the labour.

Delivered and invoiced service orders still show on Service Order Dispatch

The page hides only cards whose status is completed, cancelled, closed, expired or rejected. No service order status matches those words exactly, so every order stays. Narrow the scope chips, or ask your administrator to set the page's closed statuses to Work Completed, Invoiced and Delivered.

A case stays Pending in its queue

Nobody passed the queue's checks at that moment. Work through membership, user link, presence and capacity in Troubleshooting field service.

Common questions

Is dispatch decided by AI?

No. Consoles write what a dispatcher drops. Optimize day fills free slots by fixed rules: least load first, back to back, at most 20 per run. Queues offer work by a fixed routing model, and assignment rules follow conditions you write. Every result is an ordinary field value that a person can change. Review every optimized day before accepting it, because absent and half-day people are not skipped and skills are not checked.

What is the difference between a console, a queue and an assignment rule?

A console is a person deciding, with everyone's load in view. A queue is a live offer: it goes to someone who is available now and has spare capacity, and that person accepts or declines. An assignment rule is a fixed decision taken during the save, from the record's own fields, with no regard for who is online. Many organizations use rules for the first owner, queues for urgent cases and a console to rebalance the day.

Does dispatch work offline?

The consoles are web pages and need a connection. On the phone, service orders and time sheets are not in the shipped offline list. A technician can read the orders they opened while online, but Start, Pause and End go straight to the server. See The technician's day.

Related topics

• The Service module: service orders, cases, contracts and SLAs
• Service time sheets: technician allocation and work time
• Role guide: dispatch manager
• Role guide: field service technician
• Resource groups
• The xMatix mobile app
• Field Service on the xMatix site: the product overview