Winter ’24 Updated Dispatch Console Skill Filters to Be Retained Between Sessions – Learn How to Override
Related References:
- Salesforce Idea for Skill Filter Retention
- Filter the Gantt in Field Service
- Customize the Field Service Dispatcher Console
Scenario
Included in the many great Dispatch Console enhancements released in Winter ’24 was a smaller change that wasn’t directly called out. Prior to this release, the Skills Filter on the Dispatch Console was not retained between sessions, so users had to re-select them each time. The original idea is here, and the text in the Help documentation refers to this update as well – see below.
For many this will be a welcome change, but for others it will cause frustration as they’ll have to clear any previously applied filters, and it could lead to confusion if it is not realized. There doesn’t appear to be a standard way to turn it off, so I’ve provided a quick workaround that seems to do the trick.
How Does it Work?
Any time the Dispatch Console is saving information, it is almost always doing so in the FSL__UserSetting__c object. This object keeps information about a particular user’s setup in the Dispatch Console. As such, with the changes in Winter ’24, there is a new field introduced on the object called Resource Skills (FSL__Filter_Resources_BySkills__c). Whenever a user makes skill filter selections on the Dispatch Console, those selections are saved into this field on their User Settings, thus allowing those filters to persist between sessions. This is shown below as comma-delimited references to the Skill Ids.
Make it Stop!
I haven’t seen any way to deactivate this behavior, but maybe it is there somewhere, or coming soon. In the interim, we can create a simple Flow to prevent values from being saved to this field on the FSL__UserSetting__c record. This does not impact the filter behavior within the current session of the Dispatch Console at all, but rather allows the Skills filter to load empty on each refresh/new session.
Thankfully, the FSL__UserSetting__c object is accessible in standard record-triggered Flows. For this purpose, a before save Flow is exactly what we need, and evaluating on before update only will be sufficient. We can also set entry criteria to only execute this update when the FSL__Filter_Resources_BySkills__c field is set.
Then add an Update Records element to change the value of the FSL__Filter_Resources_BySkills__c field back to empty to override what the managed package is writing to that field.
The final version will look this simple.
That’s all there is to it. Now users can add Resource Filters with abandon and they’ll have a fresh start on the next load without having to clear them manually. Thanks for checking it out!
