Service Call (Appointment) Scheduling Procedures

Service Call (Appointment) Scheduling Procedures

This article needs clarification and general improvements. 

Scheduling an Appointment

Before scheduling a service call add the pre-appointment checklist from the checklist library to the ticket. 

The default queue is Remote Support. If the work is to be performed onsite, please change the queue to Onsite Support and the work type to 03. Consulting - Onsite Support.  

Use TimeZest to send a scheduling link to a customer or generate a link you can use internally. 

  1. For onsite appointment, make sure to specify the location if it's not the default.
  2. If the ticket is for work where the user must not be at the computer, use one of the "no customer there" appointment types.  
  3. If the ticket is for background work that the customer is not aware of, generate a TZ scheduling URL and schedule the work for the tech. The customer will not be notified. 
Once a service call is scheduled, the service call will appear with the tech’s name on the tech's calendar. (This sync comes from Autotask, not TimeZest.) If the call was scheduled on short notice, it's advisable to notify the tech via Slack DM. 
 

Alert
Always use TZ to schedule appointments, even if the appointment is not customer-facing. Make sure to choose the right appointment type in TZ. This will ensure that the appropriate notification templates (if any) go out. 
  
Please see also Scheduling Policies. 

Rescheduling Appointments


Please 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. Instead, schedule a new service call (using TimeZest for non-recurrence tickets.)   

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. 

1. If the service call was configured using the TimeZest panel in the ticket, it should be cancelled from the panel as well. Otherwise, it will continue to show as "scheduled" in the TZ panel. Once it's cancelled in the TZ panel, the service call is immediately deleted from the ticket. After a couple of hours, Autotask will removed it from the technician's Microsoft calendar. 

2. If the service call was not configured using the TimeZest panel (primarily for recurring tickets), edit the service call using one of the following options:
  1. If you change the service call status to cancelled, it will still show up in technician's Microsoft calendar as CANCELLED.
  2. If you remove the resource from the service call, the calendar item will disappear from the technician's Microsoft calendar entirely. 

The sync may take a few hours to complete, so you will not see the change in the tech's Microsoft calendar immediately. 

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


Idea
When rescheduling or canceling an appointment, it is a good idea to alert the customer so they do not get confused with cancelled/rescheduled alerts from TimeZest. 
If an appointment is rescheduled with a different tech in a short amount of time (e.g. within a couple of hours), it is helpful to alert the tech so they're aware something time sensitive was added to their calendar. 

Further Reading on TimeZest

For more details on TimeZest, see TimeZest Basics.





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