Add inspections to work orders

Field Service inspections are digital forms that technicians use to quickly and easily answer a list of questions as part of a work order. The list of questions can include safety protocols, pass-and-fail tests for a customer asset, an interview with a customer, or other audits and assessments.

With a drag-and-drop interface, inspections are easy to create, and are easier for technicians to fill out compared to paper forms. Inspection answers are stored in Microsoft Dataverse, making it easy to report on results and fit inspections into your automated business processes.

Inspections in Field Service provide:

• Offline support: Technicians can view and fill out inspections on their mobile phones or tablets without internet access. Answers are synced when connectivity is restored (cellular or WiFi).
• Customer assets: Inspections can be associated with assets, allowing users to see a history of all inspections for a particular piece of equipment.
• Version management: Administrators can continuously update and publish inspections to accommodate changing processes and evolving business needs.

Inspection process

The inspection process involves the following steps:

1. Administrator creates an inspection template and then publishes it which associates the inspection to a Service Task Type.
2. Dispatcher adds the Service Task Type to a Work Order.
3. Technician completes the inspection.
4. Dispatcher views the inspection results.

This article provides an example of creating an inspection using a maintenance checklist on a customer asset.

For a guided walkthrough, check out the following video.

Prerequisites

• Dynamics 365 version 9.1.0000.15015+.

• Knowledge of work order incident types and service tasks is encouraged.

• Field Service-Administrator role to create inspection templates and associate them to service task types.

• Field Service-Dispatcher role to add service tasks with inspections to work orders.

• Field Service-Resource role to view work orders they're assigned to, along with work order service tasks and the related inspections.

Create inspection

Create an inspection that can be reused and added to multiple work orders.

1. In Field Service, change to the Settings area.

2. Go to Work Orders > Inspection Templates and select New.

   

3. Provide a Name for the inspection template and add an optional description. You can't change the name after the template is published.

4. Select Advanced and choose the look and feel of the inspection from the technician's perspective.

   • Show title and description: Show or hide the title and description of the inspection.
   • Layout density: To display answer areas underneath questions, select Comfortable. To display answer areas to the right of questions, select Compact.
   • Show question numbers: Show or hide the question numbers in the inspection.

5. Select Toolbox and fill out the inspection questions:

   • Enter the question types.
   • Use the Required toggle to make the inspection question mandatory.
   • To add more details for an inspection question, select the Gear icon and fill out the details.

6. To group questions together in an organized way, add pages from the Page drop-down. You can also use pages to make it easier to add logic to multiple questions at one time.

7. In the Preview section, test the inspection from a technician's perspective.

8. In the Designer section, make changes if necessary. Then, select Save. The inspection is in a draft status so you can continue to make changes and add logic. When you think the inspection is ready, go to the next step.

9. To add the inspection into the work order process, a service task type must be associated with it.

   To automatically create the service task type, select Publish and generate a new service task type and then confirm.

   

   To associate the inspection with an existing service task type or manually create the service task type, select Publish, confirm, and then associate inspection to service task type.

Question types

Add a question to the inspection by double-clicking or dragging-and-dropping a question type from the right side.

• Textbox: Allows technicians to enter text from their keyboard for a free form response. There's an option in the advanced panel to make the text box bigger to allow for multiline responses. In early access opt-in release, a text box can be input with a default value and can also be made as read-only.

• Checkbox, Radiogroup, Dropdown: Allows technicians to choose an answer from predefined options. The question types Checkbox, Radiogroup, and Dropdown are similar. The Checkbox question type is multi-select, whereas Radiogroup and Dropdown allow for a single answer. The difference between Radiogroup and Dropdown is cosmetic so choose based on the desired user experience.

• Entity lookup: Allows technicians to choose a Dynamics 365 record. In the inspection designer interface, admins must select an entity and a field to display. For a chosen entity, the Name field and mandatory fields are the entity attributes that can be displayed in the lookup. When the user types, up to the first 50 records that start with the search string appear in the dropdown. The first results might not contain all matches, so continue to add to the search string until the matching result starts showing on top. Entity lookup respects security roles of signed-in user, meaning some entities and records might not be displayed.

  • Add filters to review the records displayed in the entity-lookup options. For example, an entity-lookup inspection question created for the bookable resource record type. You can filter the list of bookable resources to ones with the resource type set to User to remove subcontractors and machines from the list.

• Number: Restricts input to numeric value or returns an error. Typically represents a measurement or numeric rating value.

• Date Time: Allows technicians to enter a date and time.

• File: Allows technicians to upload a file, take picture, or choose multiple pictures from their camera roll.

• Barcode scan: Allows technicians to populate the field with the barcode number by scanning a barcode with their device's camera. Choose "Textbox" question type, then select Barcode for input type in the Advanced section.

• Matrix (Dynamic): Adds a grid of questions. More rows can be added dynamically while performing the inspection. See the following screenshot for an example.

  

Associate inspection to service task type

Associate the inspection to a service task type. This association is necessary because inspections aren't added directly to work orders, they're added as part of Work Order Service Tasks.

1. In Settings, select Service Task Types.

2. Select an existing service task type or create a new one.

3. Enter the following information:

   • Has Inspection: Set to Yes.

   • Inspection Template: Select the inspection you created. The inspection form appears.

4. Select Save & Close.

It's common to add service task types to incident types in order to bundle work together. However, it isn't required because you can add individual service tasks to work orders.

Add inspection to work order

1. Create a new work order and select Save.

2. Select the Tasks section and select Add task.

3. For Task Type, select the service task type you created that has an associated inspection.

4. Select Save and Close. The inspection can't be filled out until the task is saved. Once the technician completes the inspection, the completed inspection appears.

   

Alternatively, your inspection service task can be added to the work order via a work order incident type.

Perform inspections on mobile

Technicians can view and complete inspections on the Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile app.

1. Sign in and go to the assigned work order.

2. Select the service task that has the related inspection.

3. Find the inspection form and enter answers. If an inspection question is required, you must answer or you can't mark the task complete.

   

4. If needed, upload files, take pictures, or upload pictures from the phone's camera roll. When uploading a file or image, select the caption icon to add a comment. File attachments are limited to 3 MB per file. Administrators can increase this limit.

5. When finished, select Mark Complete or set Complete % to 100.

6. Enter a Result to report on the overall inspection:

   • Pass
   • Fail
   • Partial Success
   • NA

7. Enter the actual duration the task took to complete.

8. Select Save and Close.

If needed, you can select More > Clear Responses to start over, and permanently delete all responses for this service task inspection.

View responses

In the Field Service web app, a dispatcher can see the inspection responses by viewing the task in the work order.

Other notes

• Inspections can't be embedded into Power Apps portals.

Known issues

• Marking a work order task as complete from the grid view doesn't work unless the task is opened at least once.

  

• Dispatcher can't delete individual attachments in an inspection response. The out-of-the-box Field Service-Dispatcher role doesn't have the ability to delete inspection attachments; they can, however, Clear responses and Clear files, which clears all attachments. If a dispatcher wants to be able to delete individual attachments from an inspection, they must have delete privileges for the Notes entity.

• If a resource has trouble seeing an inspection on the work order service task form (as seen in the following screenshot), deactivate and reactivate the related bookable resource booking.

• Inactive inspections and work order service tasks aren't available in offline mode.

• The question type "Entity lookup" shows inactive records.

• Users might encounter errors while loading the inspection form, if an inspection contains a large (50+) number of files.

• Users might encounter errors when adding a large number of files in a single upload. This issue is more likely to happen when the files are large and/or the network signal is poor. We recommend splitting large uploads in smaller chunks, where each upload doesn't exceed a total size of 40 MB.

• Trailing blank pages without questions in an inspection causes deserialization errors in out-of-box flows.

Field Service inspections or Power Apps inspections

Here are a few reasons customers choose to use Field Service inspections.

• Offline support: Technicians can view and fill out inspections on their mobile phones or tablets without internet access. Inspections and answers are stored locally on the mobile device and then synced to the server when connectivity is restored (cellular or WiFi).
• Version management: Administrators can easily republish or change inspections to accommodate changing processes and evolving business needs.
• Easier to create and use: Field Service inspections require no further training and are designed to be easy to use. Power Apps inspections need extensive knowledge of the Power Apps platform and might require coding.
• More scalable: If your organization has many different inspections, it's easier to create Field Service inspections with a drag-and-drop interface and with dynamic branching. Power Apps inspections require creating new entities and forms for each inspection, which is more time consuming.
• Better integrated with Dynamics 365: Field Service inspections are built into the work order and asset servicing capabilities.

Field Service inspections or work order service tasks

Compared to work order incident types and service tasks, inspections have more benefits:

• Easier to create: Administrators can quickly create an inspection with a drag-and-drop interface without needing to create new entities and fields.
• Easier to fill out: Technicians can quickly enter responses for each inspection question and save all of them at once. Work order service task records have to be opened and completed one-by-one.
• More flexible and robust: Field Service inspections have many question formats and validation options, such as multi-option select, mandatory fields, images, attachments, and more.