Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

[MDBowser]

With ArcGIS Workforce retiring, and replaced with Tasks within the Field Maps App - what are we supposed to provide for our dispatchers for Task Assignment?!  Is there an equivalent to Workforce for this?  The documentation on this is super limited at this point.

I understand there is the Field Maps Designer for deploying this, however, this is for the technical GIS staff to deploy.  The solution I require is something for dispatchers to assign and manage work assignments (tasks) for mobile crews.

Did Esri just abandon this component of ArcGIS Workforce and require users to develop it on their own?

Anyone in the know, please help!

Cheers,
Mike

[LizArmstrong]

Hi, 

We do not currently have a video demo illustrating managing tasks with the Instant Apps Manager template but we intend to do a Tips from the Team video on that. Meanwhile, I can highlight the key functionality in the Instant Apps Manager template that Workforce also had:

• Ability to create, edit (including assign), and delete individual tasks
• Ability to batch create, edit (including assign), and delete tasks
• Ability to see a map and a table view of the tasks
• Ability to sort and filter tasks based on various criteria like due date, assignee, etc. 

If you have other dispatching requirements, I'm happy to take those down and share it with the teams that build Instant Apps and Experience Builder. 

Tasks does not currently support being able to assign a single task to multiple workers. Would you mind sharing your use case for that and I can log it as an enhancement request? I'm not sure if it would fit your scenario but there is a way to have an unassigned task list where workers can pick up work. 

[MDBowser]

Thank you for the information.  

I have been pouring over the documentation trying to understand how this relates to the Workforce functionality that is being deprecated and I am struggling to understand what functionality exists vs not.  In workforce I can assign a task to a mobile worker - this is linked to the data collection map for that specific assignment.  How does this work with Tasks now?  If my mobile worker has 4 different data collection maps in field maps, how does the assigned task steer them to the correct map to begin data collection?  And on this note, how does one expose all these tasks for a dispatcher to pick from?  From what I can see here - this functionality is lost as this is all based on one data collection map?

The challenge we have here is we literally just pitched workforce functionality for our org to get buy in as a solution for work order management for field data collection - and they loved the functionality.  Now we have to retract that, which is pretty frustrating. So I need to flush out what we can and can not do with this new paradigm.   Perhaps you have a functionality matrix between workforce vs tasks you can share?

Thank you for your help.

[Laura]

You enable a tasks layer per map in field maps designer. 

[Laura]

I've configured our tasks to support work order management rather than focusing on training and deploying the workforce. Field crews are now using Field Maps, and supervisors are assigning tasks through Experience Builder. I designed an editor interface that matches the format they're familiar with, allowing them to easily create tasks directly within the app.

The GIS team should collaborate with the supervisors to define the types of tasks that can be assigned, ensuring everything is set up properly in advance because you will choose a task type rather than type out what the task is every time.