Field Service work orders: from case to technician

In Salesforce Field Service a customer request passes through four records before a technician arrives. The case holds the customer’s problem, the work order the job to be done, work order line items the subtasks, and the service appointment the visit that gets scheduled. The hotline creates the case and decides whether a visit is needed at all. If so, it creates a work order, and a work type with the right setting creates the appointment automatically. Dispatch or the scheduling engine then assigns a technician. Planned maintenance takes a shortcut: maintenance plans create work orders without any case.

Which records carry a field service job?

Salesforce sells the product today as Field Service and Operations; the data model has stayed the same. The Field Service developer guide1 describes the core objects like this:

Record	What it holds	Example at a machine builder
Case	The customer’s problem and the communication	“Packaging machine stops with error 412”
Work order	Work to be completed for the customer	Breakdown repair on serial number X
Work order line item	A child record of the work order, a subtask	Replace sensor, recalibrate, test run
Service appointment	The visit to the field to perform the work	Tuesday 8:00 to 11:00, technician Y

The developer guide states that a work order can reference a case “to indicate that the work is being performed as part of a customer case”. The parent of a service appointment is typically a work order or a work order line item. Line items help when one visit has several steps that need different skills or are billed separately.

Work types are templates for kinds of jobs

A work type is a template for a kind of job, for example annual maintenance, breakdown repair or commissioning. According to Trailhead2, it carries the estimated duration and the required skills, and knowledge articles attached to the work type show up on every work order that uses it. Work types can be applied to work orders and to line items, so a line item can carry its own work type with its own skills.

The most important setting is Auto-Create Service Appointment. If it is set, Trailhead says, “every time a work order is created with this work type, a service appointment is created”. The appointment takes duration and date settings from the work type. Without this option, someone has to create the appointment by hand, and that step gets forgotten.

Clean work types are part of the master data that scheduling needs. Which data that is and which system leads is covered in Salesforce Field Service: what data does scheduling need?.

Does every case need a technician?

No, and this is where most of the money in service is saved or lost. Before a work order is created, the hotline should answer two questions.

What is the customer entitled to? The entitlement on the asset or the service contract says which response time applies and what is covered. Salesforce measures response times with entitlement processes and milestones. One detail from the Trailhead unit on entitlements with work orders3: entitlement processes only run on records of their type, so cases and work orders need separate processes. How service contract, maintenance plan and entitlement fit together is covered in Field Service: how to model maintenance contracts.

What solves the problem? I recommend a short triage checklist that sorts calls into three outcomes:

• Remote help. Operator error, a parameter, a reset. The case is closed without a work order.
• Part shipment. The fault is clear and the customer’s staff can swap the part. The order goes to the ERP, the case waits for confirmation.
• Technician visit. Only then is a work order created.

On a breakdown hotline, a voice agent can take over the intake and triage. Where it should stop and hand over to a person is covered in Breakdown hotline with Agentforce Voice. For the human agents in the console, Casey and the Service Rep Assistant describe what Service Cloud adds.

Who creates which record?

Record	Created by	When
Case	Hotline, customer portal or agent	At the first contact
Work order	Hotline, from the case	When triage says “visit”
Work order line items	Hotline, work type or technician	With the work order or on site
Service appointment	Automatically via the work type	When the work order is created
Assignment	Dispatcher or scheduling engine	Status Scheduled, then Dispatched
Work order without case	Maintenance plan	Planned maintenance

Planned maintenance enters through a different door. According to the Trailhead unit on generating work orders4, a maintenance plan creates work orders manually or automatically, and automatic generation “runs 3 times a day”. With the auto-create option on the work type, each of these work orders comes with an appointment. No case is involved.

The consequence: planned and unplanned work land in the same dispatch queue and compete for the same technicians. If the planned maintenance for the next four weeks is already booked, a machine-down call on Tuesday has to push something out. Priorities and service objectives decide what moves, and somebody has to own that rule.

The record chain also decides the licence mix

In practice this hits the small service team where the dispatcher also answers the hotline. That person needs Field Service Plus at $230 instead of Dispatcher at $175 (price list, October 2026). The full role matrix is in Salesforce Field Service licences: who needs which?.

Worked example: a “machine down” call

All details are assumptions. A customer calls at 7:40 on a Tuesday because a packaging machine stops with an error.

1. 01

   Create the case

   Hotline

   The hotline agent finds the asset by serial number and creates a case. The entitlement shows a service contract with 8 hours response time.

2. 02

   Triage

   Hotline

   The error code points to a defective sensor, the customer has no spare. Remote help does not solve it.

3. 03

   Create the work order

   Hotline

   The agent creates a work order from the case with the work type "Breakdown repair, sensor". The work type carries 3 hours duration and the skill "Sensors, series B". A line item for the test run follows.

4. 04

   Appointment appears

   Work type and hotline

   The work type creates the service appointment automatically. The agent sets its due date so the 8-hour response time is met.

5. 05

   Schedule

   Dispatcher

   The dispatcher runs the candidate search, moves a planned maintenance visit from Tuesday to Thursday and schedules the technician who has the sensor in his van. Status Scheduled, then Dispatched.

6. 06

   Visit and close

   Technician

   The technician sees the job in the mobile app, documents the replacement and the test run, and closes the work order. The case is closed after the customer confirms.

Steps 3 and 4 are where the data model pays off. Without the work type, the agent has to know duration and skills, and the appointment is created by hand.

Map your three most common call types

Draw the path for your three most common call types, from the first call to the closed work order, and write down who creates which record. That drawing answers the licence question and shows which work types you need. How this fits into the business case is covered in chapter 1 of the Field Service masterclass.

Sources4

1. 1Field Service developer guide (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
2. 2Trailhead (opens in a new tab)trailhead.salesforce.com
3. 3Trailhead unit on entitlements with work orders (opens in a new tab)trailhead.salesforce.com
4. 4Trailhead unit on generating work orders (opens in a new tab)trailhead.salesforce.com