Note: There are other models too where you could have the same resource in multiple territories as a secondary resource. Now if a customer selects a face to face appointment, you could call a scheduling policy with only only Primary Resources flag and if your customer selects a video / phone call you could also have the Secondary Resources flag checked which will allow this customer to setup meetings with all your primary and secondary resources, there by giving you additional capacity.
Performance Considerations
Precision scheduling is a performance intensive affair and it considers several different elements while coming up with the available time slots – skills, skill levels, resource holidays, working hours, location, etc.
Performance improvements tips
1.Remove Event checks in Scheduling Policy
If you are not checking Salesforce Calendar for Resource Availability then disable it.
2.Reduce Time range
Reducing the time range that you fetch the Resources & Time Slots for, helps improve the performance of the Scheduler algorithm and allows you to query more eligible resources. Using this mechanism, you have certain controls present
Flows: Use Time slot multiplier to reduce the number of days you are querying for from 14 (default) to 7 by reducing this Time Slot Multiplier flow variable to 1. Click here for details
APIs: Use Start Time & End Time to reduce the number of days you are querying the system for (default is 31 days.) Click here for details
3.Appointment Distribution
Using the new capability introduced in Winter 22: Appointment Distribution
One of the biggest bottlenecks is the number of resources whose calendar needs to be checked. As the number of eligible resources increases, Salesforce scheduler takes longer to fetch the resource list. For a 14 day period it is recommended that we keep around 20 eligible / qualified resources ie: In other words 20 resources with the same skill in the service territory if you are using the out of the box flows.
If the above doesn’t give you the performance boost needed then consider the new capability introduced in Winter 22 which will only look for the calendar of the x least utilised resources at that point and hence circumvent this problem. Since you are considering the least utilised resources and showing up their slots, you will likely get most of the available slots and automatically balance the workload of your resources.
Here x is configurable(Click here for release notes) Use the new Number of Resources to Show (Appointment Distribution) attribute in flows. This attribute is available in the Select Service Resource, Select Service Appointment Time, and Select Service Resource and Service Appointment Time screen components. If you’re using APIs, use the resourceLimitApptDistribution parameter. This parameter is available in the getAppointmentCandidates REST API and the available-territory-slots Connect API.
A simple test allowed me to manage a territory of 300 resources too using this feature on the flows shipped with the product, as long as I restricted the number of eligible resources (x) to 20.
Note: The above figure could change based on customisations and the specific data shape so would recommend running a test or proof of concept on your specific setup before moving ahead.
https://unofficialsf.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/largeUCSF-300x133.png00Akshayhttps://unofficialsf.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/largeUCSF-300x133.pngAkshay2021-08-29 23:02:132023-02-08 22:24:03Tele or virtual Scenarios using Salesforce Scheduler
Company ABC LLC wants to have a self-service tool to allow the customer to schedule an appointment in person or via virtual conference (Voice/Video) to have a more interactive experience
COVID crisis has amplified the need to do video conferencing
Company ABC LLC wants to have the flexibility to send a notification to customer about the appointment
if Virtual appointment send virtual conferencing links
Company ABC LLC wants the flexibility to allow to add Cohost for a virtual conference or add additional invite on the customer side (eg: Spouse/friend) or employee side (Specialist, Product manager, etc) on a virtual conference – This is optional
Technology Considered
Salesforce Scheduler
Webex Virtual Conferencing when a customer chooses to do Virtual Conference ( Voice/Video)
Leveraging Webex API v1
Personas
Customer scheduling meeting ( in person /Virtually) and Customer’s Addl. invitee
Employee as Host/CoHost
Employee as additional Attendee
User Flow
Client/Company is leveraging Salesforce Scheduler to schedule appointments in person or virtual from available spots
Clients’ Customer clicks on Schedule an Appointment
He inputs his basic information (name, email and phone) and selects the in-person or virtual option
He picks up time and date and clicks next
For a virtual appointment, SF will send WEBEX API call with Oauth token, meeting invite details ( title, day, time, meetingpassord etc) along with Customer/invitee information (name and email)
Webex will create a meeting and send API response with a Webex link and behind the scene notify the Customer and host ( For host it leverages email tied to user associated for authentiication )
optionally add multiple regular invitee/cohost invitee during creation
Salesforce- Webex OpenID/Oauth integration is leveraged for Authentication/Authorization purpose
Deep Dive and Develop Steps
Step 1: Setup Salesforce Org and Webex Account
Step 2: Setup Oauth in Webex and Salesforce
Step 2a: Verify Webex Oauth Setup via Postman Webex Collection
Step 3: Setup/Verify Oauth with Salesforce
Step 4: Invoke Webex API…Invoke Webex API vai Apex/Named Cred
Optional steps outside of Scheduler
Optional – SF will make Webex API call outside of scheduler with employee information as Co host/invitee or it can make Webex API call to add additional invitee on the customer side or employee side without being co-host
Edit Existing Webex invite by Adding Specialist banker as Cohost
How can i troubleshoot with Postman
Step 1 -Pre Requisite
Get Salesforce Org where you can run flows
Email id ( preferably new one so it does not have webex account on this from your corporation side )
Webex Developer Account to Create meetings
How to get this
Send email to devsupport@webex.com to create Trial Account with License with your Name and email address
Account userid( your email id ) and steps to setup password will be sent to your Email id
TIPS
If you just go to webex and create webex account it will NOT work
if you have Corp userid/pwd with Webex it may not work
The default time zone for all times shown in a Salesforce Scheduler flow would be the timezone set for the user scheduling the appointment. See more details on how this would work for the various flows here.
In Spring 21 feature, a feature provided an ability to (pre)set the timezone across multiple screens on the Outbound, Inbound & Guest User flows (Create & modify) across mobile & desktop.
One common scenario this helps you to cover is, when a Customer care agent is booking an “On-behalf” appointment and wants to see the time-slots in the timezone of their selected territory.
Now, this is easy to achieve with Clicks, not code!
Imagine a customer care agent based in Chicago (Central time) is booking an appointment for a customer who wants to meet a banker in the Denver branch (Mountain time) of Cumulus bank.
Wouldn’t the customer care agent wants to see the time slots in Mountain time automatically and book the appointment?
With Salesforce Scheduler, now the agent can easily look at the available time slots in the bank operating hours timezone by default and book the appointments. Don’t worry about the Timezone in which the territory is operating and all; it is taken care of!! All the timings shown in my flow are configured to Cumulus Bank (Denver) operating timezone.
Question: What if some other bank is at a different location or any Service Territory for that matter? Will my flow behave like it is configured to that Service Territory dynamically?
Answer: Oh Yes!!
Let’s look at how it is done,
Configuration is the same for Outbound, Inbound, and Guest flows, illustrating for Outbound Flow.
Add a new Assignment Element called Set Territory Timezone, after the Location Screen.
Set the DefaultTimeZone variable to Timezone from ServiceTerritory Operating Hours.
Save the flow.
— Now the flow is configured to the timezone based on the Service Territory chosen —
Screens that have an impact :
Candidate Screen now shows Next Availability in the Service Territory Timezone.
Flow Time Slot Screen, now by default shows Time Slots in Territories Timezone.
Flow Review Screen shows the selected time slot in the timezone in which Territory Operates.
For Inbound and Guest Flow., Next Availability and Time Slots are configured to Territory Timezone on Resource Time Slot Screen, and it looks like,
These are some of the use-cases that can be solved but not limited to,
Agents booking on-behalf appointments, want to see all time-slots in territory timezone by default.
Branch Managers and above, no matter from where customer books an appointment, he/she visits our site and tries to book appointment and all time-sots should be shown in my Territory supported Timezone by default.
Guest appointment booking, are you sending out an email to customer to book an appointment using the link and wants him to see time-slots in your territory timezone?
Your customer will never miss his/her appointment time, when booked with Territory timezone!
https://unofficialsf.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/largeUCSF-300x133.png00Akshayhttps://unofficialsf.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/largeUCSF-300x133.pngAkshay2021-06-21 22:32:432021-06-21 22:33:32From: Saikiran Gogurla: Spring 21 Feature: Preset the Territory’s Timezone on the timeslot screen
THIS CAPABILITY IS COMING WITH THE SALESFORCE SCHEDULER PRODUCT IN SUMMER 22 RELEASE!! CHECK IT OUT
Ever wondered if you can offer a link to your customers to book an appointment with you? Or a situation where you want everything to be preselected, and you will immediately jump to the timeslot screen? Well, wait no more! In this blog, we will show you how you can achieve this!
Let’s consider the first scenario. You give a link to a customer OR add a link to your email signature. Here is what you have to do.
Part 1: Prepare!
We need to build a flow such that our landing page should be the timeslot screen. To make that work, we should be able to populate all the required values. In current out of the box flows, all the screens we traverse are used to populate values required for the timeslot screen. Let’s see what all values we need to populate.
Work Type Group: This is the outcome from the OOB Work Type Group Selection page. This helps the internal logic to get which topic/template we are trying to book.
Service Territory: This is the location of your appointment.
Service Resource: This is the resource that will cater to the appointment request.
Since these values are needed as inputs for our flow, we can create flow variables and mark them available for input.
Once all these flow variables are created, we can create the assignment for those. Note that we need to assign Service Territory Id to a Service Appointment instance. This makes sense if you look at location screen output. That screen is giving selected territory output as “{!ServiceAppointment.ServiceTerritoryId}”. And since we cannot just set one field on the Service Appointment instance, we will have to initialise all other fields as an empty string. For this, we can refer to the OOB assignment stage.
The next step is to link all required values to the timeslot screen. Again, we can refer to the OOB timeslot screen configuration. We should be doing the only change to pass our input flow variables for Service Resource and Work Type Group.
After that, configure the review screen. Make sure you map all the required attributes.
And finally, we should configure the save action. Here you can pass “{!serviceAppointmentFields}” as input, which is an output of the Review Screen. For now, we are considering invoking this flow for guest flow, so we are adding Lead as input as well.
Optionally you can configure the confirmation screen. Done! Your flow should be ready to be tested. Save and debug the flow by providing the input attributes!
Part 2: Distribute!
In a nutshell, we created a flow that takes all the parameters needed for the TimeSlot screen and process it. Once such a flow is ready, we can then use any mechanism of distribution of the flow.
The below demo shows all things in action. You can see that a service resource has sent details to a prospect related to Salesforce Scheduler. That email includes a link. Once the user clicks on the link, they will get redirected to our public community page, which hosts the flow we created from the above steps. All the user have to do it to select a slot, add their details and submit!
Part 3: One More Thing!
Now that we have created a flow that takes input, we surely don’t expect our Service Resources to generate the link manually! Besides, it’s easier to use existing components to build a flow that will give output as an URL to proudly put in their email signature or give to customers! Heck, they can even include that in their digital business cards!
To do this, we will reuse existing OOB components. It’s like the Service Resource will perform initial actions on behalf in OOB flow on behalf of the end-user. Following are the steps to create such a flow:
We will configure the “Generate Signature URL” button on the Service Resource page. From there, one can initiate the signature generation flow. Hence we need “recordId” as an input flow variable.
We will pass this record id to the existing WorkTypeGroup selection page. This will ensure that only the WTGs which are related to that resource are displayed.
Next, configure the Service Territory screen. Here we need Service Resource Id and WTG Id, which will be the output of the previous screen. Having both the inputs will ensure that search results for the territory will give us the correct territory.
Finally, we will generate the URL from all the selection with the help of a formula flow variable. The formula looks like this:
Note that we have considered the scenario that actual booking flow is configured in a community, hence the “communityURL” variable.
Once you build out the flow, it looks like this:
Test this flow in the flow debug, and once done, activate it. You can configure a new quick action on Service Resource and add that to its layout.
So you want to preload some values on the final Review screen provided by Scheduler?
Check this out…
Let’s say you want to prefill the email & phone details.
Set the Email and Phone in the first assignment stage:
2. Assign Service Appointment record variable in the review screen. In an Outbound flow template that input is blank and that’s why making changes only mentioned in step 1 will not work.
That’s it!
Note this method works for the Outbound flow & Inbound flow and is restricted to the following fields:
Below is how Operating Hours or Working hours for a Service Resource are determined in Scheduler today.
As you can see the Scheduler’s algorithm considers the intersection of operating hours set at various levels. The Operating Hours set at Service Territory is mandatory but at other levels is optional and an intersection is considered only if the respective operating hour has been added. Typically customers use the Operating Hours set at the Service Territory & Service Territory Member level. Read more about it here
In Summer 21, a feature provides setting up these working hours (or Operating hours are a more granular level.) It allows you to define the Operating Hours that a Service Territory Member can work for a Work Type Group. This helps solve the following needs.
So how does it work?
Now lets take an example of a scenario I would like to model and how the setup would work in Salesforce Scheduler
Scenario
The Market St Branch, San Francisco (Service Territory) is open from 9am to 5pm on Monday to Friday. All appointments are for 60 mins (for simplicity.)
Misha Clayton working as a banker (Service Resource) in this branch has the skills to manage the following topics (Work Type Groups): Investment Banking, Business Banking & General Banking.
Below is her schedule
Monday
General Banking & Business Banking topics from 10am to 12pm
General Banking & Investment Banking topics from 1pm to 3pm
Tuesday
Business Banking & Investment Banking topic from 10am to 4pm
No General Banking appointments
Wednesday
All topics from 9am to 5pm
Thursday
Only General Banking from 9am to 5pm
Friday
Banker does not take any customer appointments on any topics
Setup
First we will setup the Market St Branch working hours by adding the Operating Hours on respective Service Territory
Now we setup Misha’s schedule for the Market St Branch by going into the respective Service Territory Member record and adding the needed Operating Hours
Since Friday doesn’t have any hours setup in this Operating Hours record, Friday hours will not show up for Misha in the Market St Branch.
So lets see what the time slots show up when a customer selects Misha for the Market St Branch for different Work Type Groups
Business Banking
2. General Banking
3. Investment Banking
Similarly, I could have set up Dr John (who has the skills to practice multiple specialities but only practices one speciality in each clinic.)
https://unofficialsf.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/largeUCSF-300x133.png00Akshayhttps://unofficialsf.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/largeUCSF-300x133.pngAkshay2021-05-12 09:30:002021-06-11 07:19:29Summer 21 Feature: Specify the Hours that a Resource can work on a particular Topic
Salesforce Scheduler introduced a new feature in the Summer ’21 Release which allows developers to easily make custom time slot screen flow components that interact with external systems. The new Apex methods call the Get Appointment Candidates and Get Appointment Slots APIs. This capability helps you easily get all the service resources and available time slots or get available slots for a resource.
With this new feature developers have the choice of using the Scheduler REST APIs and the Scheduler Apex methods. The REST APIs are a powerful tool that allows you to develop custom user interfaces and applications that run on your own websites. The Apex methods offer a great option for developers building custom UI components and processes that are run by users that are already logged into Salesforce, such as running a Lightning Flow launched from a button on the Account Screen or viewing a page inside of a Salesforce Experience site.
Check this out below.
Calling the Scheduler Get Appointment Candidates API with Apex
Here’s a little concept illustrator to show you how easy it is to call the API using Apex.
Let’s say you want to ask Scheduler to return the next time slot available for a Work Type Group and Territory. The user is a call center user, talking to a customer and the customer says “give me your next available appointment please”.
Solution Architecture
A simple Flow embedded on the account page
The flow calls an @invocableMethod which uses the new API
The method returns the 1st time slot found
The flow creates a service appointment using the time slot returned
User Experience
The top left of the 2 screen shots below illustrate how the call center user can ask the scheduler to return the next available time slots and create a service appointment.
Screen Flow
As you can see in the screen shot below, the flow is pretty simple. It takes in the account id from the Account Page. It prompts the user for Work Type Group, Territory and Earliest Start Time. It passes these parameters into the Apex Action. If a slot is returned, it creates a service appointment, if not, an informational message is displayed.
Apex Class
As you probably already know, you can call Apex Methods from a Lightning Flow using the Action component. There are lots of great articles and tips on building @invocableMethods, which I won’t go into here. For this example, the method I created takes in the parameters, calls the Scheduler Apex Method named lxscheduler.SchedulerResources.getAppointmentCandidates, and returns the first result found, or returns nothing if no slots are found.
Receiving the Input Parameters from the Flow
In the example code below, to accept the input parameters from the flow, I created a class called payloadIn. It contains variables for Work Type Group Id, Service Territory Id, Scheduling Policy Id, Account Id and Start Date Time. We use these values to call the Scheduler Method. Variables like Account Id are not mandatory, I’ve just included it in my example.
Setting the Input Parameters in the Apex Method
The Get Appointment Candidates API provides an easy to use class to set the parameters that you want to pass to the Get Appointment Candidates API, lxscheduler.GetAppointmentCandidatesInput. As you can see in the example code, I simply set the parameters to the values passed in from the flow. I’ve hard coded the EndTime to be the Start Time plus 3 days. You can of course change this to be more dynamic.
Calling the Apex Method
It is super simple and is represented by this line in the example code:
Note, that no authentication code, connected apps, named credentials and other items are required to call the Apex Method. Since the running user is already authenticated, they can call the Scheduler API, just like they can call any other Apex Method they have access to.
Hooray! This is what is so awesome about this new API and makes code based development for Scheduler so much easier for these types of use cases.
Parsing the Results – they’re different from the REST API results
The method returns the results as a JSON string. I won’t go into the ins and outs of JSON and you can certainly find out more with a quick web search, but what you need to know is that the results from the lxscheduler.SchedulerResources.getAppointmentCandidates call are slightly different from the REST API call.
The REST API call for getAppointmentCandidates returns this format:
Did you notice the difference? The outer wrapper for “candidates: [ …]” is missing from the results, so you need to make sure you deserialize the results using the proper format.
Here’s the class I used to deserialize the results:
public class schedulerCandidates {
public datetime startTime; public datetime endTime; public List<String> resources; public String territoryId;
public with sharing class LXScheduleFirstAvailable {
@invocableMethod(label='Schedule to First Available' description='Schedule to whomever is next') public static list<event> ScheduleIt(list<payloadIn> payloadList ){ if(payloadList == null || payloadList.size() <> 1) return null; payloadIn pl = payloadList[0]; lxscheduler.GetAppointmentCandidatesInput input = new lxscheduler.GetAppointmentCandidatesInputBuilder() .setWorkTypeGroupId(pl.workTypeGroupId) .setTerritoryIds(new List<String>{pl.serviceTerritoryId}) .setStartTime(pl.startDateTime.format('yyyy-MM-dd\'T\'HH:mm:ssZ')) .setEndTime(pl.startDateTime.addDays(3).format('yyyy-MM-dd\'T\'HH:mm:ssZ')) .setAccountId(pl.accountId) .setSchedulingPolicyId(pl.schedulingPolicyId) .setApiVersion(Double.valueOf('50.0')) .build(); //call the Apex Method - no REST API authentication or API user needed!!! String response = lxscheduler.SchedulerResources.getAppointmentCandidates(input); //parse the results using JSON.deserialize if(response==null) return null; list<schedulerCandidates> allslots = schedulerCandidates.parse(response); //slots found, return just the first one if(allslots!=null) { event thisevent = new event(); thisevent.startdatetime = allslots[0].startTime; thisevent.enddatetime = allslots[0].endTime; thisevent.description = allslots[0].territoryId; thisevent.whoid = allslots[0].resources[0]; return new list<event>{thisevent}; } //no slots found, return null return null; } public class payloadIn{ @invocableVariable(required=true) public string workTypeGroupId; @invocableVariable(required=true) public string serviceTerritoryId; @invocableVariable(required=true) public string schedulingPolicyId; @invocableVariable(required=true) public string accountId; @invocableVariable(required=true) public datetime startDateTime; }
This new Apex API is awesome and simplifies calling the Scheduler API for use cases where the user is already logged into Salesforce.
Additional Notes about this Example
In my example flow, I’m using 2 create record steps to create the Service Appointment and Assigned Resource. In production, you probably want to use the Scheduler flow component called Save Appointment. I’ve described how to use that component here. This component gives you added capabilities to ensure that the time slot selected is still available at the time of record save.
https://unofficialsf.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/largeUCSF-300x133.png00Akshayhttps://unofficialsf.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/largeUCSF-300x133.pngAkshay2021-05-10 09:13:312021-06-08 01:39:35From Chris Albanese: Summer 21 Feature: Get Resources and Available Time Slots Through New Apex Methods
Several of your schedulable resources (Bankers, Advisors, Doctors, Store associates) work out of External calendars like Outlook, Google Calendar or even external systems (EHRs) for their daily work. Their non-customer meetings like “Out for training for 2 hours” or “Out for lunch” are setup in an external calendar. Obviously you would want Scheduler to stop showing up these times slots to your customers.
Below are two ways to achieve this
1. Using a Syncing solution
Here you can use a Syncing solution (In Exchange to Salesforce mode or X2S) which pulls that training appointment setup in the banker’s external calendar from your external calendar (Lets call it Exchange for now) to the Salesforce calendar.
Make sure, you have enabled the Scheduling Policy switch : “Check Salesforce Calendar for Resource Availability.” This ensure that Scheduler will not show any slots that have Salesforce Calendar events at that time. (Only Salesforce Calendar Events that have Show Time As = Free are not considered.)
So how does this work?
Now say your banker has booked 2 hours of training in their exchange calendar. The syncing solution will make an asynchronously call to pull this appointment from Exchange to the Salesforce calendar. When a customer loads the Scheduler interface*, Scheduler will consider existing Service Appointments and also check the events in the Salesforce calendar. Scheduler will then merge all the unavailable times from both these sources and then provide the free time slots. Hence, the 2 hour banker’s training will not show up as a free slot in the Scheduler’s interface*.
This helps get on-demand availability by building an apex class which pulls availability from an external calendar.
Obviously, here customers will have to make investment to build & maintain this middleware that reads from their external calendar. This needs significant expertise on the customer side but gives more control of the security model and could give more flexibility in case the customers have a complex external calendar architecture.
There are already partners out there who have built out adaptors to connect to this apex interface. (Check the comments 🙂 )
One thing to keep in mind is that this solution is NOT a replacement for the standard syncing solution. This will exclusively be used with Scheduler & only for service appointments.
So how does it work?
Once you have built this middleware, make sure, you have enabled the Scheduling Policy : “Check External Systems for Resource Availability” and called this interface that you have built. This ensures that Scheduler is checking your external system for availability.
Now say your banker has booked 2 hours of training in their exchange calendar. When a customer loads the Scheduler interface*, Scheduler will consider existing Service Appointments and also get the availability synchronously from this Apex class which you have configured to reach out to your Exchange server and get those unavailable 2 hours. Scheduler will then merge all the unavailable times from both these sources and then provide the free time slots. Hence, the 2 hour banker’s training will not show up as a free slot in the Scheduler’s interface*.
* I used Scheduler Interface generically but it actually includes multiple touch points depending on how you have built out your appointment booking experience using the various options provided by Scheduler (See below)
Salesforce Scheduler flows are just flows. You can supplement the screens with any information you want with simple configuration.
Adding a display field in the same Screen element where the Select Work Type Groups is. The example includes merge fields and an image field.
https://unofficialsf.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/largeUCSF-300x133.png00Akshayhttps://unofficialsf.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/largeUCSF-300x133.pngAkshay2021-05-06 04:28:002021-06-11 07:20:02From Chris Albanese: Your Branding on the Salesforce Scheduler Flows
Salesforce scheduler provides you a really nice component to search for a location. You can enter any address or zip code in the provided input box and get the desired territory (if it’s correctly configured! duh! ).
There are certain tricks involved in this out-of-the-box component you can play around with and make it work according to your need.
Distance measure (kms or miles):
This is a straightforward setting where you can define the search radius to be in miles or kilometers. By default, it is in miles. However, if you want to change it to kilometers, you need to change a flow variable called “distanceUnit”. This variable is of type text and valid values for this are mi or km. If you put any other value, this component will simply reject it and will show default miles. So make sure you have set it only to one of those accepted values.
Setting the default distance value
There is another attribute to set the default search radius as well. It’s a flow variable called “locationDistance”. Supported values for this variable are [ 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 ] if the distance unit is miles and [ 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 ] if the distance is kilometers. By default is 5 miles OR 10 kilometers depending on your distance unit setting. If you set any value other than the above specified, it will set back to its default value. So make sure you set it correctly.
Skip Location Screen:
Often customers want to create virtual territories or want to skip the territory selection and instead preselect a service territory in the Scheduler flows. It’s pretty simple to customize the flow (using clicks not code) to make this happen!
Here is one of the way we can do that:
Copy the Service Territory Id of the Service Territory which you want to auto select in the flow. (xYou can do this by going to your Service Territory record and selecting the Id from the URL as shown below)
Open your flow. Open Initial Assignment node.
In the Edit Assignment screen, look for ServiceAppointment > Territory ID field. Put the Id of territory you have copied in earlier stages.
Since now we have already chosen a territory, we do not need to show the location screen to the user. We can simply remove it from the flow. Just join the lines from the Appointment Type Screen node to the Resource Decision box (considering this is an outbound flow).
Hit that Save and activate button and voila! You won’t see that location screen anymore!
Just to keep in mind:
Salesforce scheduler is a Precision Scheduling Engine which checks calendars in real-time so say you have 1000 resources with the same skills, the engine has to parse through calendars (both internal & external) of resources to come up with time slots. So definitively test the performance of this setup.
Since you will be setting only the service territory id, you will not see Address populated on Service Appointment. So if you need that, make sure you populate those values in the Assignment screen itself ( step number 3 above).
Auto-populate Location:
There are 2 design attributes on the location screen among others. Those are called Latitude and Longitude. These attributes take values set in the flow variables “locationLatitude” and “locationLongitude” respectively. These are geolocation attributes that get set when you select a location on that screen. Since these attributes are available for input in flow builder, we can set those values beforehand so that the location component will populate with a territory as soon as it loads.
Let us take an example of a territory location: Market Street Branch in San Francisco. Geolocation for this would be 37.793872°, -122.394865°. You can get this value if you google for geo-location a certain address or simply query one of the territories with that address [SELECT Latitude, Longitude FROM ServiceTerritory]. We can set these values in the design attributes which take lat lang as input.
Just save this and you will get all the locations selected from the default radius of the search.
Now, to make it more interesting, let us try auto-populating lat lang info from the user’s browser. We can make use of simple HTML Geolocation API. Since location is related to users’ privacy, this API will return the location once the user approves it.
Since the location screen is an OOB component, we will have to create a new component that will run this HTML Geolocation API. Also, this component will have to execute before the location screen is loaded so that as soon as the location screen loads, we will get location coordinates.
Here is a sample component which will give you output as gelocation is design attributes:
<aura:attribute name="latitude" type="String" description="latitude of the browser location" /> <aura:attribute name="longitude" type="String" description="longitude of the browser location" />
Once the component is created, we can add that to any screen before the location screen. Since we are using OOB flow, let’s configure it at the Appointment Type Screen.
That’s it! Activate and run the flow. Once you land on the Select Appointment Type screen, our geolocation component will ask users’ consent to share the location. If the user approves the consent, then you will see service territory getting searched according to the users’ location. If there are no territories available in that geolocation, the user will get a standard message as: No results for that Work Type Group found in that service territory. Try a different address, or expand your search area. Users can then search specific locations from the search bar available on the screen.
