Assignment
Assignment Type
The assignment type categorises the assignment. Assignment types are defined within the organisation according to specific business processes. These can include, for example, repairs, maintenance, or inspections.
Automation
There are various types of automated planning, depending on the level of automation (appointment scheduling, semi-automatic, fully automatic) and the complexity of the planning. Each automated planning method allows for the integration of manually planned deployments, or ‘fixed appointments’ into the planning.
AI Scheduling
The use of artificial intelligence to automatically assign jobs to technicians based on skills, availability, travel time, customer priority and service level agreements (SLAs).
Appointment Booking
The process of scheduling customer visits while considering technician availability, location, skills and business constraints.
Asset Management
The tracking, maintenance and lifecycle management of customer equipment, machinery and infrastructure to maximise reliability and minimise downtime.
Automated Dispatch
Software that automatically assigns work orders to the most appropriate technician without manual intervention.
Augmented Reality (AR)
Technology that enables remote experts to guide field technicians using live video, digital annotations and virtual instructions.
Back Office Integration
The connection between field service software and business systems such as ERP, CRM, finance and inventory management.
Break-Fix Maintenance
Reactive maintenance performed after equipment has failed or stopped working.
Business Rules Engine
Software logic that automatically applies scheduling constraints, priorities and company policies during dispatching.
Capacity Planning
The process of forecasting technician availability to ensure sufficient resources are available to meet customer demand.
Case Management
Tracking customer issues from initial enquiry through diagnosis, scheduling, repair and resolution.
Connected Field Service
An IoT-enabled service model that monitors equipment remotely and automatically generates work orders when issues are detected.
Customer Portal
An online platform where customers can book appointments, track technician arrivals and manage service requests.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
A performance metric that measures customer satisfaction following a completed service visit.
Calculation Motif
The calculation motif is the SAP term for cost element.
Checklist
A checklist is a work instruction for a technician, consisting of individual steps to be confirmed. It facilitates the execution of complex maintenance tasks, including maintenance, condition assessments, or functional checks of systems. With a digital checklist, the technician documents the individual work steps on-site and signs the document, which is transmitted as a PDF or data record to the back office as proof and for further processing.
Component
Component is the SAP term for a material reservation in SAP CS.
Cost Element
The cost element specifies a service rendered more precisely with regard to its billability. Common cost elements are ‘billable’, ‘warranty’, or ‘goodwill'” By selecting the cost element for a service, the technician or back office determines whether it will be charged to the customer or not.
Cost Function
A cost function defines the costs for specific parameters in every possible planning scenario. In addition to obvious parameters such as travel times between deployments and the mileage covered, there are many other factors such as utilisation, SLAs, deadlines, and priorities, with which companies can define their individual optimisation.
Consignment Warehouse
A consignment warehouse is a goods or parts warehouse set up by the supplier in close proximity or even on the premises of a customer to ensure quick delivery of urgently needed parts to the customer. The goods remain the property of the supplier until the customer (or indirectly the technician during a deployment) removes them from the warehouse.
Dispatch Management
The process of assigning technicians to service appointments while balancing skills, travel time, priorities and customer commitments.
Dynamic Scheduling
Real-time optimisation of technician schedules that continuously adjusts appointments as new jobs, cancellations or delays occur.
Digital Work Order
An electronic version of a work order that technicians access and update using mobile devices.
Downtime
The period during which equipment or assets are unavailable due to faults, maintenance or repairs.
Domino Effect
In field service planning, the domino effect refers to the impact of appointment scheduling on the current route planning. Field planning software recalculates all routes or reorders them accordingly.
Doubleplay
The term doubleplay describes the simultaneous use of offline-capable software on two mobile devices by a user. This leverages the different advantages of the devices, such as mobile connectivity, portability, and constant availability of smartphones (for telephony, navigation, status updates) or tablets, as well as the large screen and keyboard of laptops (for text entry, forms).
Earliest Start Date / Earliest Start Time
The earliest start date is the earliest point in time at which an assignment or process may begin. The earliest start date is used to define SLAs.
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
Software used to manage physical assets throughout their operational lifecycle.
Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA)
The predicted arrival time of a field technician based on live traffic, route optimisation and current workload.
Equipment
Equipment describes the system or machine that is to be maintained or repaired (at a technical location).
Feedback
The confirmation serves to record the specific effort in terms of time or material that a technician has expended. Subsequently, this serves controlling in the backend system and often also the invoicing of assignments. Confirmations are always recorded with reference to a process.
Field planning
Field planning, also known as scheduling, plans and controls the deployment of field operatives (technicians, tools, and vehicles) for assignments/processes.
First-time-fix-rate (FTFR)
The first-time-fix-rate describes the rate of error resolution during the first customer visit. A high FTFR indicates high customer satisfaction and low service costs and is a key KPI in the service business.
Form
A form in maintenance and technical service documents inspections and tests, as well as services requiring proof. These may be requested by legislators, customers, internal service management, quality assurance, or controlling. Forms can also trigger further follow-up processes, such as an earlier replacement of a part of a system if a measurement value is poor (Predictive Maintenance).
FSM / Field Service Management
Field Service Management stands for the optimised field planning of a company’s mobile workforce/field operatives for handling service or maintenance assignments.
Geofencing
Virtual geographic boundaries that trigger automated actions when technicians enter or leave predefined service areas.
GPS Tracking
Real-time monitoring of technician or vehicle locations using Global Positioning System technology.
Heuristics
With heuristic solution methods – i.e., certain assumptions that simplify and shorten calculations – good routes can be determined relatively efficiently using a scheduling tool. Such heuristic methods can arrive at practical solutions with limited knowledge and in a short time. Heuristic solution methods form the basis for finding solutions for the class of so-called ‘Multi-depot vehicle scheduling problems’ (including ‘the travelling salesman problem’) encountered in route planning.
Health and Safety Compliance
Ensuring technicians follow legal and organisational safety requirements while carrying out field work.
Hybrid Workforce
A workforce consisting of employed technicians, contractors and third-party service providers.
Intelligent Dispatch
AI-powered dispatching that considers skills, travel, priorities and business constraints when assigning work.
Internet of Things (IoT)
Connected devices and sensors that monitor equipment and automatically trigger maintenance activities.
Inventory Management
Tracking spare parts, tools and consumables used during field service operations.
Job Allocation
The assignment of work orders to technicians based on availability, location and required competencies.
Job Scheduling
Planning technician appointments to maximise productivity while meeting customer expectations and service commitments.
Job Status
The current stage of a work order, such as scheduled, in progress, completed or awaiting parts.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
KPI is the abbreviation for Key Performance Indicator. The term refers to metrics that can be used to measure the performance of activities in companies. Which KPIs should be considered to measure success or failure depends on the company, the respective measure, and its objectives.
Knowledge Base
A central repository of troubleshooting guides, repair procedures and technical documentation used by technicians.
Last Mile
The final stage of delivering a service to the customer, often involving technician travel and appointment completion.
Lone Worker Safety
Processes and technologies that help protect technicians working alone in remote or hazardous locations.
Maintenance Service Type (IH-Service Type)
The maintenance service type defines the type of maintenance service provided. This distinguishes, for example, between services for repairs, shutdowns, inspections, and other scheduled activities.
Material Order
Via the material order in a mobile solution, the technician can order material to a warehouse or storage location. This can be their technician’s warehouse or the customer’s site. They can order material with or without reference to an assignment, for example, to replenish their vehicle stock.
Mobile Workforce Management
Software used to manage mobile employees, including scheduling, dispatch, communication and performance monitoring.
Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
The average time required to repair equipment and restore normal operation.
Notification
In SAP, a notification is a data record with which a user informs maintenance, quality management, or customer service about a specific matter. A notification can be a ticket (for example, generated by a customer call) from which an assignment has arisen or is intended to arise. However, a notification can also be used as an object for recording quality data. In SAP, the CS/PM notification provides a documentation object to describe or have described facts from the customer, back office, or technician.
Notification Type
Notification type categorises the notification according to its origin and characteristics. The choice of notification type is in turn aligned with the process. Examples include service notifications (customer notification, service request), maintenance notifications (maintenance request, malfunction report), or quality notifications (description of the qualitative condition of a system).
No-Access Visit
A service appointment where work cannot be completed because technicians cannot gain access to the property.
Non-Productive Time
Time spent travelling, waiting or completing administrative tasks rather than performing customer work.
Offline capability
Offline-capable software functions even without a connection to the leading system (e.g., SAP). This allows the technician to record data without an online connection or view cached data from the backend on their smartphone or tablet. They can therefore work, record data, and complete the assignment. Offline-capable software differs significantly from a pure caching mechanism, as it not only caches retrieved data but also holds data in the background for specific application cases. For example, material master data with several hundred thousand entries or the installed base can be kept offline.
Operative
Operatives include internal and external field service technicians, vehicles, and other tools or machines that are scheduled for assignments. Since operatives are always scarce and expensive, planning and control are worthwhile.
Optimisation Engine
Software that calculates the most efficient schedules and routes based on multiple business constraints.
Outage Management
The coordination of repairs and customer communications following equipment or utility failures.
Parameter Setting
In route planning, a company’s individual parameters (such as travel times, mileage, SLAs, or priorities) are defined. A specific value is then assigned to them, which is in relation to the other parameters. This results in individually and optimally calculated routes for the company.
Planning Board
A planning board is an originally physical board for planning employees and other operatives, which today mostly takes the form of software that displays capacities and utilisation, as well as the routes and sequence of assignments to be processed per operative.
Predictive Maintenance
Using data analytics and IoT sensors to predict equipment failures before they occur.
Preventive Maintenance
Scheduled servicing carried out to reduce the likelihood of equipment failure.
Process
A process is a schedulable unit that can be uniquely assigned to an operative at a specific time.
Queue Management
Prioritising and organising incoming service requests to ensure efficient dispatching.
Quality Assurance (QA)
Processes used to ensure service work meets organisational standards and customer expectations.
Return
If material is not consumed, either because it was ordered on suspicion or in advance, is defective, or has been removed, the technician can return it to the central warehouse. Returns processing takes place either with or without reference to an assignment. For this purpose, the technician either creates the return via the material confirmation of the assignment or uses the material returns module for cross-assignment returns.
Route
A route is a sequence of assignments. These can be daily or weekly routes, where a technician travels with a vehicle and then usually returns to their starting point.
Route Optimisation
The so-called route optimisation in a field planning solution calculates the most cost-effective variant for all waypoints with the available operatives using an algorithm. What constitutes the most cost-effective variant for a company depends on the respective service and scheduling strategy. This can be, for example, the shortest or fastest route. In addition, there are many other optimisation parameters that a company can individually define in a cost function.
Route Planning
Route Planning is an essential part of field planning in field service. Assignments are grouped into routes and arranged in a specific order. These can be daily or weekly routes, where a technician travels with a vehicle and then usually returns to their starting point.
Resource Scheduling
Assigning technicians, vehicles and equipment to service jobs based on skills, availability and location.
Reactive Maintenance
Maintenance performed after an asset has failed.
Service Report
A service report includes all services such as times, mileage, and material consumption for an assignment or process. It serves as proof of the documented activities or material consumption. The service report provides the basis for later invoicing. The service report, signed by the customer (and possibly the technician), is usually sent to the customer as a PDF document and submitted to the head office for billing as part of the assignment.
Service Type
The service type in a confirmation describes the service rendered with regard to its billing rate. This results, for example, from the type of service rendered (troubleshooting, maintenance) and from the period (weekend, overtime).
Skills
Skills are specific qualifications or general aptitudes of technicians that are required for an assignment and are usually stored in an HR system. This allows the Planner to select the most suitable technician for a deployment.
SLA
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) refers to an agreement between a client and a service provider for services, which includes, for example, the scope of services, response times, and deadlines.
Status
The status describes the processing stage of an order, i.e., an assignment and a process. In general, it refers to the lifecycle of an order from a technical (i.e., not business-economic) perspective: new, in progress, paused, completed, etc.
Subcontractor(s)
A subcontractor is a service provider who, based on a contract for work or services, performs all or part of the service owed by the main contractor to its client on behalf of another company (main contractor). The use of subcontractors is common, especially in the energy supply, customer service, IT and telecommunications, and facility management sectors. Reasons often include cost savings, special skills of the subcontractor, specific regional coverage, or seasonal fluctuations in the order situation.
Scheduling Optimisation
Using AI and optimisation algorithms to produce the most efficient technician schedules.
Static Scheduling
A scheduling approach where technician routes remain fixed and do not automatically adjust throughout the day.
Technician’s Stock
A technician’s stock is the material inventory that the service technician carries in their vehicle. The correct stocking of the vehicle’s inventory plays an important role in spare parts management and consists of an optimal balance between high availability of spare parts and low costs for their storage.
Technical Location
A technical location is an organisational unit of logistics that structures a company’s objects to be maintained according to functional, process-oriented, or spatial criteria. A technical location represents the place where a maintenance measure is to be carried out.
Time window
A time slot refers to a time frame, usually of a few hours, that the Planner agrees upon with the customer for the technician’s visit for on-site repair.
Time-to-Fix
The total time taken to resolve a service issue, from initial diagnosis through to completion. Reducing time-to-fix improves customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Travel Time Optimisation
The use of route optimisation software to minimise technician travel between appointments, reducing fuel costs, emissions and lost productivity.
Technician Utilisation
A measurement of how much of a technician’s working time is spent completing productive customer work versus travelling, waiting or performing administrative tasks.
Utilisation Rate
The percentage of available technician hours spent on productive work. High utilisation improves profitability while ensuring sufficient flexibility for emergency jobs.
Upskilling
The process of providing technicians with additional training or certifications so they can complete a wider range of service tasks.
Urgent Work Order
A high-priority service request requiring immediate scheduling due to safety risks, equipment failure, or contractual obligations (SLAs).
Vehicle Routing
The process of calculating the most efficient travel sequence for field service vehicles while considering appointments, traffic conditions, working hours and customer commitments.
Virtual Assistance
Remote support provided through video, augmented reality or collaboration tools that enables technicians or customers to resolve issues without requiring an on-site visit.
Visual Scheduling
A graphical scheduling interface that allows dispatchers to allocate work using maps, calendars, drag-and-drop scheduling boards and workload views.
Work Order
A formal instruction detailing the work to be carried out by a field technician, including customer information, required parts, service history and completion requirements.
Work Order Management
The end-to-end process of creating, assigning, scheduling, tracking and completing work orders using field service management software.
Workforce Management (WFM)
The planning, scheduling and optimisation of mobile workers to ensure the right field technician is assigned to the right job at the right time.
XAI (Explainable Artificial Intelligence)
Artificial intelligence that provides understandable explanations for scheduling or optimisation decisions, helping planners trust AI-generated recommendations.
XML Integration
A method of exchanging structured data between field service systems, ERP platforms and CRM software using Extensible Markup Language (XML).
Zero-Touch Scheduling
AI-enhanced appointment scheduling that automatically assigns work without manual planner intervention while respecting complex business rules, skills and service constraints.
Zero-Downtime Maintenance
A maintenance strategy focused on preventing equipment failures through predictive maintenance, proactive servicing and intelligent scheduling.