Service Call (Appointment) Scheduling Procedures

Scheduling an Appointment

All of these steps must be completed for a service call to be considered properly scheduled: 

1.  Select the pre-appointment checklist before scheduling remote appointments. 
2. Set Queue to one of the following, as appropriate: 
   

1. Remote Support
   
2. OnsiteSupport" 

3.  Create a service call by using TimeZest, either to send a link to a customer or by generating a link you can use internally. 

1. If it's an onsite appointment, make sure to specify the location if it's not the default.
   
2. If the ticket is for background work, use the TZ scheduling URL to schedule the work for the tech. The customer will not be notified of the appointment. 
   

4. Once the service call is scheduled, the service call should appear with the tech’s name on the tech's calendar. If the call was scheduled on short notice, it's advisable to notify the tech via Slack. 

 

Always use TZ to schedule appointments, even if you don’t need to send a TZ link to the customer. (For example, if you’re scheduling the appointment while on the phone, you would not be sending the customer a TZ link, but you should still perform the scheduling through the TZ interface. 

This includes the case where the customer must stay away from their computer while work is performed. 

      

  

If this is a remote appointment and ScreenConnect is not installed on the machine to be accessed by close of business on the day prior to the appointment, office admin should cancel appointment and send note template to ticket contact(s) indicating this. 

 

All work to be performed must be ticketed. All work must either be scheduled or added to tech's TODO queue as a ticket, whether customer is there or not. 

Please see also Scheduling Policies. 

Rescheduling Appointments

Do not edit service calls to change the date of an appointment, even for internal appointments. This is confusing and will affect the proper working of our workflow rules. Always create a new service call.

Please use the following guidelines to keep appointments clean so we can keep track of appointments and make it easier to troubleshoot issues with the service call workflows.

"Schedule Again (Copy)" Proper Use

If you use the “schedule again (copy)” function in AT to reschedule an internal service call, always remember to: 

1. Edit the text of the new service call or it will reflect the day and time of the original service call.
   
2. Set the original service call to “cancelled” rather than editing it or deleting it.
   

 

Do not use the “schedule again (copy)” function for customer-facing service calls because the customer will not receive the confirmations and notifications that go out from TimeZest. Please use TZ to schedule customer-facing service calls.

Cancelled Appointments

It's important to keep service calls up to date so that the weekly report of service calls accurately reflects only service calls that actually took place. If a team member determines that a service call is to be cancelled, it is the responsibility of the team member to ensure the service call is cancelled in Autotask. If the tech cancels the appointment or realizes that a customer has not called in for a remote appointment, then it is the responsibility of the tech to cancel the service call.

1. Click on the Service Calls & To-Dos tab in the ticket. 

2. Hover over the service call hamburger menu and click Edit Service Call. 

3. Click the Status dropdown box in the service call and change it to "cancelled."

4. Cancel the TimeZest appointment right from the ticket. (Otherwise the user will receive an appointment reminder.)

(When you cancel a service call, the "Time Entries Done?” ticket field will reset to Not Applicable. (This is due to a workflow rule.)  You'll need to refresh with F5 to see this change.

Further Reading on TimeZest

For more details on TimeZest, see TimeZest Basics.

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