[From Israel Beniaminy, ClickSoftware, June 21 2011]

The following use cases are based on some real-life customers of ClickSoftware's Field Service Management and Field Force Management solutions. To avoid clutter I didn't add these as revisions into the original contributed document, but I used the same format of that document so that, if the TC so decides, this can be easily inserted.

For convenience and concreteness, I have described several of these use cases as relating to asset management in electricity utilities, but we have observed similar needs in water and gas utilities, telecommunications, facility management and additional industries.

Note that while the intent is to highlight additional needs that ClickSoftware asks the TC to consider, these use cases also inevitably repeat some of the needs also inherent in already-existing use cases]

1.1Use Case 5: Asset Management

ElectricCo provides electricity transmission and distribution in its region. As such, it is responsible for many assets. Some of these are "linear assets", that is assets that stretch over some path, such as power cables and the above-ground pylons or underground pipes that support them. Other assets are grouped in specific locations such as stations and substations.

Work requests may be caused by some fault, or by periodic maintenance plans. Either way, the work requests are for specific work on specific assets within the station or substation. For safety and regulatory reasons, all details of the work must be clearly recorded. For similar reasons, meeting planned timelines and close collaboration is essential: For example, while some asset on substation A is being maintained, it may be necessary to stop all power to substation A and divert power to another path via substation B. If service for A is not synchronized with this action, a large neighborhood may lose power. Even more seriously, if the controllers switch on the power to A before service is actually completed, while technicians are still working, lives may be lost. This places a high level of need for real-time and reliable notifications both incoming into FFM and outgoing from FFM.

Another requirement is for the technician to have access to documentation (e.g. physical and connectivity diagrams, maintenance manuals) and asset history (what actions were performed when). In some cases, on-site connectivity can't be guaranteed, so this information needs to be included with the work request and downloaded to the technician's mobile device ahead of time.

While technicians are at the site, they may have a reason to handle another asset that was not included on the original work request. Here are two possible reasons:

  1. The technician notices some problem in an asset near the asset related to the work request. In that case, the technician needs to open a new work request related to that other asset. Once created, the technician may ask that the new work request to be scheduled to him or her for immediate execution (possibly triggering schedule changes in this technician's and other technicians' tasks), or leave it to the scheduling system to schedule the work request to some other time and/or technician.
  2. The technician may find he or she has more time than originally planned between this work request and the next (possibly because performing the original work order took less than expected). In that case, the technician may ask the scheduling system to look for existing work requests that are currently unscheduled or scheduled for a later date and that relate to other assets in the same area. Such work orders often exist, since preventive/periodic maintenance plans often have some flexibility in their timing. Once such work requests are found, the scheduling system may automatically schedule them to the technician. In other workflows, the scheduling system may display such work requests to the technician and allow him or her to choose one that best fits the current situation (e.g. remaining time, accessibility, available tools).

1.2Use Case 6: Managing Technician Teams from the Field

ElectricCodivides its technicians into teams that regularly co-operate in the field. While ElectricCo may have sophisticated automated scheduling and/or human operators (dispatchers) managing technician schedules, final responsibility for getting the tasks done reliably and safely rests with team leaders in the field. For that reason, team leaders need to be able to view the schedule, assignments and current status for members of their teams, and they also need a way to request changes to the schedule when needed. This workflow respects the layered architecture: team leader requests go to the scheduling system, which makes the necessary changes (and may override some of these changes) and conveys them to FFM in the same way that it conveys any other work requests and assignments.

1.3Use Case 7: Planned Outage (long-range, multiple-person work requests)

Occasionally ElectricCo needs to perform extensive maintenance on some asset or group of assets. For example, it may take some substation off-line (diverting power via other substations) for refurbishment, substantial installations and upgrades etc.

Such planned outage may extend over a couple of weeks and involve several people, possibly from different workforces – different ElectricCo divisions as well as outside contractors. The overall work request is highly detailed and bears some similarity to a project plan, involving interdependency between steps where these steps may be performed by the same or different persons and at the same or different times.

The schedule should assign people to the work request and also specify the role of each person – e.g. technician 1 may be able to perform both roles A and B; on the first day she will take part, together with other technicians, in step X, fulfilling role A, while on the second day she will continue step X but in role B, and on the third day she'll perform step Y in role B.

For safety and efficiency reasons, technicians should have access to the steps and status of the overall work request and the current steps within it. They should also have a quick way of broadcasting a message to others on the same work request.

The list of technicians assigned to this work request may change at any time, due to planned or unplanned reasons. If the reason is unplanned – e.g. a technician was called out during the night for emergency repair and can't perform the task assigned to him for the next morning – the technician needs a way to report the absence (or other reason for not being able to perform the task) to the scheduling system. The scheduling system will then rearrange the schedule, send updates to affected assignees, and also make the update available to all involved even if their own schedule wasn't affected.

1.4Use Case 8: Cable service

CableCo provides cable TV, Internet and wired telephony to customer homes. During a service visit, technicians may need to activate a new set-top box (STB). For that, they read the STB's number (and/or number of card inserted into the STB) – such numbers may be obtained via RFID, barcode or other automated means. They report the number through their mobile device, ask for activation, and receive indication for activation status.

While at customer's home, the technician may discover a need for additional work requests – this is similar to sub-case 1 of Use Case 5.

The technician may also need to obtain information from CableCo's operational systems – static info such as maps, and dynamic info such as status of service at customer's area, results of communication with customer's STB etc.

The technician may also need to interact with the customer regarding non-technical issues, such as viewing and explaining the latest cable invoice. This is becoming more and more necessary as customers see the technicians as CableCo's representatives and expect them to be able to address any issue. Also, this opens the opportunity to do additional selling while at the customer's home, so the technician needs to be able to get latest pricing offers, discuss them with the customer, obtain customer's signature for the new terms and services, and activate these services. CableCo sees this functionality as providing an immediate and satisfying service experience and is therefore interested in enabling its technicians to do this kind of selling.