Field Service Dispatch Board

Before you start

This use case has configuration prerequisites, including work orders that carry a scheduled window, a technician and coordinates. Make sure you review the Set up section of this page before building!

Learning focus points

• Turning records into technician rows on a Scheduler timeline
• Reading one query two ways, as a schedule and as a map
• Handing a dragged event to a flow that does the reassignment

Objective

Give the dispatcher one screen instead of a spreadsheet and a phone.

A dispatcher balances two things at once: who is free, and how far away the job is. Salesforce answers the first question in a list view and the second in a map, on different pages, so the dispatcher keeps a spreadsheet of the day and rebuilds it every morning. The moment a job moves, the spreadsheet is wrong and nobody else knows.

Time and geography are the same decision. Splitting them across two screens is what makes dispatching feel like guesswork.

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Solution

A board that answers both at once. On the left, a timeline with one row per technician and every job in its slot. On the right, the same jobs as pins, each in its technician's colour. Both read the same query, so they can never disagree about what is scheduled.

Everything here is built with Avonni Dynamic Components and no code.

One query, two views, one colour per technician across both. The timeline answers who is free, the map answers how far away, and the pink work at the top belongs to nobody yet.

How It Works (User Perspective)

1. The dispatcher opens the board on the day's date.
2. Each technician has a row, and each job sits in its scheduled window.
3. The jobs nobody owns yet sit in their own row at the top. That row is the queue the morning is spent emptying.
4. The map shows where those jobs actually are, in each technician's own colour, so a gap in someone's afternoon can be filled with the job nearest to them.
5. Dragging a job onto a technician, or to another time, opens a short flow that confirms the change and writes it back.

What we'll create

• 1 Avonni Dynamic Component holding the board
• 1 query of the day's work orders, read by both halves
• 1 Scheduler in timeline view, one row per technician
• 1 Map of the same jobs, its pins coloured per technician
• 1 formula field holding that colour, read by both halves
• 1 screen flow that performs the reassignment

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Set up

Prerequisites

Work orders that can be scheduled and placed

• The standard Work Order object is enough, and it exists without Field Service Lightning. You need a scheduled window (StartDate and EndDate), a technician, and latitude and longitude.
• Work Order carries its own address and coordinates, so the map plots the job itself rather than the customer's billing address.

A technician the Scheduler can group by

• The Scheduler builds its rows from one field on the record. Owner works if the assigned technician owns the job; a dedicated lookup or text field works too.
• Whatever you choose, that field is what a row is. Choose it before you build, because changing it later reshuffles the whole board.

A reassignment flow

• A screen flow that takes a work order, a technician and a time, confirms the change and saves it. The board calls it; it does not need to know the board exists.

Build the board

1

Create the Dynamic Component and its query

Create a component named Dispatch_Board. Add a query on Work Order filtered to the day you want to dispatch, and give it a row limit.

Both halves of the board will read this one query. That is the point: two components, one source of truth.

2

Split the canvas

Add a Columns Container with two columns. Give the timeline the larger share, around 8 columns to the map's 4. The schedule is what the dispatcher reads; the map is what they check.

3

Add the Scheduler and map its fields

Drop a Scheduler in the left column and point its data source at the query. Then map the fields:

Mapping	Field	What it becomes
Title	Subject	The label on the event
Resource Name	your technician field	The rows of the board
From	Start Date	Where the event begins
To	End Date	Where it ends

Resource Name is the mapping that turns a flat list of jobs into one row per technician.

Set the display to timeline and the time span to day. Agenda and calendar views answer "what is happening"; only the timeline answers "who is free", which is the dispatcher's actual question.

4

Frame the working day

Set Available time frames to the hours your crews actually work, for example 07:00-17:00.

Left alone, the timeline spans the full twenty four hours, so an eight hour day is squeezed into a third of the width and every job title truncates to three letters. This one setting is the difference between a board that is readable across the room and one nobody can use.

The same board framed to the working day. Every job now carries its own name.

Keep at least one job unassigned

If your technician field is a plain text field, leave at least one record with it empty.

The Scheduler builds its rows from a grouped query and treats the first result as the "unassigned" placeholder, removing it before it draws. Rows from a text field all look like that placeholder, so with nothing genuinely unassigned in the data it deletes a real technician instead, and the board is short one row with no error anywhere. One empty record makes the placeholder real and every technician survives. A lookup field is not affected.

The row it adds is labelled "Empty" and that label is not configurable today. On a dispatch board it earns its place regardless: it is the queue.

5

Colour both halves from one field

Add a text formula field on the work order returning a hex colour per technician, for example CASE(Technician__c, "Jon Amos", "#0176d3", ...).

Point the Map's marker at it: set the marker type to Pin and bind Fill colour to the formula field. Every pin now takes its colour from the record, so the map is right by construction.

The Scheduler cannot do the same. Its event mapping accepts a title, a resource and two dates, and nothing else, so a row is painted palette[position] from Events palette. Order your palette to match your technicians and check it once on screen. If you later add a technician, check it again: the row order comes from a grouped query with no sort, so nothing guarantees it stays put.

Give the unassigned row the loudest colour in the palette. It is the only row whose length is a problem rather than a fact.

6

Add the map beside it

Drop a Map in the right column and point it at the same query. Map the title to the job's subject and the location to the record's latitude and longitude.

Give every job its own coordinates. Two jobs on the same point render one pin on top of another, and the board silently under-reports the day.

Give it a zoom level that frames your service area. A dispatch map that opens on the whole country costs the dispatcher a scroll on every single job.

The day's jobs as pins. Same query as the timeline, same colour per technician, so the two halves always agree.

7

Hand the drag to a flow

Select the Scheduler, open its Interactions tab and add an interaction on Event Drag. Choose Open Flow Dialog and point it at your reassignment flow.

Event Drag is the trigger that fires when a dispatcher moves a job.

The Scheduler exposes the dragged event and its new start and end, so the flow receives what changed and decides whether to accept it. Put a Refresh Query on the flow's finish so the board and the map both re-read once the record is saved.

Doing the reassignment in a flow rather than writing the record directly is what lets you refuse a move. Travel time, skills and parts availability are business rules, and the drag is only a request.

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Going further

Empty the queue from the board. An unassigned job dragged onto a technician's row is the assignment, and the flow behind Event Drag is where the rules live. That single gesture is most of a dispatcher's morning.

Let the dispatcher see only their patch. The Scheduler takes query fields as filters, so a territory or skill field becomes a filter menu above the board.

Give a job somewhere to go. Event actions add a context menu on each event, so a job can be opened, put on hold or marked complete without leaving the board.

Close the loop from the map. The Map exposes the selected marker's record, so clicking a pin can highlight the same job in a side panel.

Related components

• Scheduler
• Map
• Columns Container