Field Service Management Glossary
Plain definitions of the terms that come up when teams evaluate field service software — and what each one means in practice.
- Field service management (FSM)
- The coordination of work carried out away from a central office — scheduling it, assigning it to the right person, tracking it while it happens and proving it was completed. FSM software is the system a dispatcher and an operations manager run that work in. It applies to any team whose people travel to the work: technicians, cleaners, guards, drivers, inspectors. Read more
- Work order
- A single unit of work, from the moment it is requested to the moment it is signed off. A complete work order records what needs doing, who is qualified to do it, when it is scheduled, what was found on site and what proof exists that it was finished. Read more
- Dispatch
- Deciding which agent does which job next, and sending it to them. Dispatch differs from scheduling: scheduling answers who is working today, dispatch answers what each of them does next, and it changes throughout the day as jobs land and run long. Read more
- Dispatch board
- The screen a dispatcher works in — typically a timeline of agents against hours, alongside a map of where they are. It is the operational picture of a day, not a plan made the night before. Read more
- Route optimization
- Ordering a set of stops so the total travel between them is as short as practical, given time windows, skills and vehicle constraints. In field work it usually matters less for fuel than for how many jobs fit in a day. Read more
- Arrival detection
- Automatically registering that an agent has reached a job site, using a configurable radius around the location. It removes the confirmation phone call and the argument about how long someone was on site. It is per task or site — not a perimeter fence around a whole workplace. Read more
- Proof of service
- Evidence that work actually happened as claimed: timestamped photos, a completed checklist, a digital signature, a recorded arrival and departure. It is what a client, insurer or auditor asks for when an invoice is queried.
- Skills-based assignment
- Matching a job to a person by what they are qualified to do, not only by who is free. Each job type declares the skills it requires and each person carries a skills profile, so the wrong person is never proposed for the job.
- Task type
- A template for one kind of job. It carries its own workflow states, transition rules, custom fields, required skills and default duration — so an installation and a warranty callout stop sharing one generic form. Read more
- Mobile workforce
- Employees who do their work away from a fixed desk and are managed through a phone rather than a workstation. Often called deskless. The management problem is different from office work: you cannot see the team, so the system has to report reality back to you. Read more
- Shift roster
- The published plan of who works which hours over a period, usually built from repeating patterns and released for a week or a month at a time. A roster says who is available; dispatch decides what they do. Read more
- Kiosk mode
- A shared device — typically a tablet at a site entrance — where staff clock in and out with a PIN instead of using a personal phone. Useful where people do not carry a work phone or where a single site start is the norm. Read more
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