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Creating, assigning and managing service tasks
What is a service task?
In Freshdesk Field Service Management (FSM), a service task is a task or a job that can be scheduled and assigned to a field technician. Service tasks are assigned to field technicians for various on-site jobs such as equipment installations, repairs, or maintenance operations, commonly referred to as MRO. Service tasks contain a summary of the customer's problem, customer contact details (such as phone number, and address), and essential information such as appointment date/ time and any other custom fields relevant to successfully completing the task.
Usually, service tasks are created from a customer request or as a follow-up action from an inspection or audit carried out earlier. A service task can be created by a helpdesk agent or a field technician for any activity that requires an on-site visit.
Support agents or field technicians can create service tasks that are:
- independent, i.e, not associated with a support ticket.
- a part of a parent ticket — i.e, as a child service task of a parent ticket).
- created under another service task — as a child service task of a service task.
Independent service tasks are labeled as ‘Service Tasks’ while service tasks associated with a support ticket or another service task are labeled as ‘Child Service Tasks’. This is illustrated in the below screengrab.
Note: You also have the option of assigning service tasks to helpdesk agents in case they travel to customers and help them in the field. You can assign service tasks to a helpdesk or field agent in the same way that you assign tickets - using the "Assign to" option in the ticket properties sidebar.
A quick guide to creating service tasks:
1. How to create a service task off a ticket:
Click on Service tasks from the right panel on the ticket details page. Click on ‘Create a service task’.
This opens up the Service task form where the necessary fields required by the field technician are filled. You can choose to add more details and pass on additional context to your field technicians.
When you choose a field technician to assign the service task to, their schedule for your chosen date and time opens up below so you can assess whether they will be able to attend the appointment or not. Avoid scheduling appointments too close to each other and allow time for travel to prevent conflicts and delays with other customer visits.
Fields | Description |
Contact details | |
Customer | Add the name of the customer, if not pre-filled |
Phone number | Add the phone number of the customer, if not pre-filled |
Service location | Add the service location of the customer, if not pre-filled |
Service details | |
Subject | The subject is automatically fetched from the incoming ticket. You can edit the subject, if necessary. |
Description | The description is automatically fetched from the incoming ticket. You can edit the description, if you wish to add more context to the service task. |
Status | Mark the status of the ticket (Open/Pending/Closed). |
Priority | Mark the priority of the ticket (Low/Medium/High/Urgent) |
Appointment Info | |
Appointment start time | Set the start date and time for an appointment with the customer |
Appointment end time | Set the end date and time for an appointment with the customer |
Assign field technician and service group | Assign a field technician from a service group or an individual field technician |
Once the necessary fields are filled, click Create to complete adding a service task.
Once a service task is created off a ticket, the field technician can only view the service task, and not the parent ticket from the customer. Access to only the service task ensures that the field technician doesn’t receive a barrage of notifications and emails when exchanges happen on the parent ticket between the helpdesk agent and the customer. It also ensures that non-essential customer details are not shared with the field technician. The helpdesk agent remains the sole point of contact for the customer and passes on the relevant information from the customer to the field technician on the service task.
Viewing Field Technician responses
Once the field technician responds to the service task, the helpdesk agent will receive a notification. The helpdesk agent can then choose to respond to the customer based on the notes from the field technician.
2. How to create an independent service task :
- To create a new service task, select ‘New Service task’ by clicking on the +New button on the top-right.
- This opens up the service task form. Note: This can be created either by a support agent or by a field technician.
- Rest of the steps remain the same as creating a service task off a ticket.
3. How to create a service task via Freshdesk mobile app :
Field technicians can create a service task via the Freshdesk mobile app. To create a service task via the mobile app, just click on the ‘+’ button on the bottom right of the home screen and fill in the required details as above. Based on what is configured for your account, fill in the necessary information, and click on the ‘Create’ button.
To know field technicians can get started addressing customer issues, check out this guide we've created →
