Product documentation
Service engineers in the field are increasingly being equipped with laptops, tablets and mobile phones in order to report back their operations. To address this need, Service Management offers Mobile Field Service, built in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, a device-independent application, which enables it to fully integrate with Service Management processes. It allows your organization to go mobile while still having all the benefits of a powerful ERP system.
Keeping customer needs at the forefront, we have ensured that Mobile Field Service is easy to set up easy to use. Whether your organization prefers Windows, Android or Apple devices, Mobile Field Service is available for you on each of these platforms. Adding further value, the application will run both online and offline which is especially powerful in restricted, dangerous areas or in the middle of nowhere.
Mobile Field Service consists of three components. The first component is the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations AOS server part which handles the communication between mobile devices and performs data staging through a Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations AIF TCP Inbound Port called "MFS".
The second component is a Web service hosted on IIS which handles communication between the mobile device and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, receiving data from the mobile device using HTTP JSON Web services connection and communicating with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations by connecting to its TCP AIF Service. The web service also performs the conversion between JSON and XML formats since the AIF service uses XML and mobile devices support the more lightweight JSON format for messaging.
The third part is the mobile client, which receives data from Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and stores it on a local SQLite database for offline usage.
Mobile Field Service operates online as well as offline. When the mobile device is online, information is synchronized between Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and Mobile Field Service, using a synchronization procedure which runs automatically or manually, using the sync form of the mobile application or in the background when the status of any service task changes.
On the server running Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations the IIS installation can be configured to connect to one AOS AIF service port. The web service cannot coordinate multiple AOS instances at once and must therefore be linked to a single AOS server.