Service Areas: To Add a Service Area and Assign a Staff Member to It

A service area in the system represents the geographical areas where your company can provide services for customers. The coverage area of each service area is determined by the postal codes specified for the service area.

In this implementation activity, you will learn how to add a service area to the system.

Story

Suppose that you are an administrative user of the SweetLife Service and Equipment Sales Center, and you are adding to the system a new service area where the company plans to provide services for customers.

Configuration Overview

In the U100 dataset, the following tasks have been performed for the purposes of this activity:

• The minimum system configuration, which is described in Company with Branches that Do Not Require Balancing: General Information, has been performed.
• The SWEETLIFE company has been created on the Companies (CS101500) form. This company has multiple branches created on the Branches (CS102000) form, including SWEETEQUIP (Service and Equipment Sales Center).
• On the Service Management Preferences (FS100100) form, the minimum settings have been specified, including specifying the numbering sequences and work calendar, for the service management functionality to be used.
• On the Employees (EP203000) form, the EP00000043 (Edward Smith) and EP00000044 - Ricardo Martinez employees have been created and have been defined as a service management staff members. That is, the Staff Member in Service Management check box has been selected on the General tab for each employee.

Process Overview

On the Service Areas (FS201900) form, you will create a new service area record; on the Postal Codes tab, you will add the list of postal codes related to the service area. Then on the Employees tab of this form, you will add the staff members who can perform services in the service area.

System Preparation

Before you start creating a service area and assigning it to a staff member, do the following:

• Launch the MYOB Acumatica website, and sign in to a company with the U100 dataset preloaded. You should sign in as a system administrator by using the gibbs username and the 123 password.
• In the company to which you are signed in, be sure that you have enabled the Service Management feature on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.
• On the Company and Branch Selection menu on the top pane of the MYOB Acumatica screen, select the Service and Equipment Sales Center branch.
• Download the following Excel file, which includes the list of postal codes needed for the current activity: GeoZones_JAMAICA
  Note:

  While in this activity, you are going to use the list of postal codes included in the provided Excel file, in a production environment, you will need to prepare an Excel file with the postal codes that are related to your service area.

Step 1: Adding a Service Area

To add a service area to the system, do the following:

1. Open the Service Areas (FS201900) form.
2. On the form toolbar, click Add New Record.
3. In the Summary area of the form, specify the following settings:
   • Service Area ID: JAMAICA
   • Description: Jamaica
   • Country: US - United States of America
4. On the form toolbar, click Save.
5. On the table toolbar of the Postal Codes tab, click Load Records from File; then upload the postal codes from the GeoZones_JAMAICA.xlsx file.

   In the Common Settings dialog box, which opens when you click Load Records from File, leave the default values, and click OK. In the Columns dialog box, again click OK.

   The list of postal codes appears on the Postal Codes tab. Together they define the area to be served.

   Note:

   For a service area with just a few postal codes, you would have instead done the following for each postal code included in the service area: On the Postal Codes tab, click Add Row on the table toolbar, and enter a postal code included in the service area.
6. On the form toolbar, click Save.
7. In the Service Area ID box of the Summary area, click the magnifier button. In the lookup table that opens, you can see the list of service areas created in the system, including the JAMAICA service area, which you have created in this step.

Step 2: Assigning Employees to the New Service Area

To assign staff members to particular geographical areas, you can assign each staff member to the service area where they are available for performing services.

To assign multiple staff members to the service area you created, do the following:

1. While you are still viewing the Service Areas (FS201900) form, in the Service Area ID box, select JAMAICA.
2. On the Employees tab, add rows for the following employees, and save your changes:
   • EP00000043 (Edward Smith)
   • EP00000044 (Ricardo Martinez)
3. On the form toolbar, click Save.