Most Field Service reps work on fields or travel from one location to another location, and there are some situations when they don’t have access to the internet means they can’t access Salesforce’s real-time data.

The Briefcase Builder comes to mind in this situation. It provides a better way to make offline record data available to your Field Service lightning.

The Briefcase Builder tool helps you to specify the data and share records offline with Field Service reps. Remember, The Briefcase Builder is only available to orgs with Field Service enabled.

Business Use Case

Amy James is working as a Field Service Reps with Appiuss software.
Due to lousy internet connectivity, he cannot access customer data often; hence he spent lots of time resolving such issues.

Solution

Recently I got a chance to implement Briefcase Builder for Field Service Reps, and I think this is the right solution for the above business use case.

We will use Briefcase Builder to package the data for offline use. Below are steps to implement Briefcase Builder:

1. Create Briefcase: Provide the briefcase a name

2. Select Data: Use the filter conditions to specific records that field service reps can view offline.

3. Add Assignments: Specify Users or Public Groups who can view the briefcase.

4. Select Apps: Select applications (Android or iOS Field Service Mobile App) to associate with your briefcase.
5. Activate Briefcase: Make sure to activate the briefcase to be available immediately for field service reps.

Perform the following steps to solve the above business requirement

Create Briefcase

1. Go to Setup | Search Briefcase Builder and click on it.

2. Click on the New Briefcase button.

3. Enter the Name, Developer Name will auto-populate , description is optional.
4. Click on Next.

Select Data

1. Select object | Work Order.
2. Add filter values.
   1. Filter By: Created Date
   2. Criteria: Greater Than or Equal
   3. Value: This Day
3. Click on Show Advanced
   1. Select Number of returned records (up to 2000): Custom limit
   2. Record limit: 5
   3. Order By: Work Order ID
   4. Sort: Ascending
4. Click on Next button.

• If you want to apply multiple filters, make sure that filters are numbered sequentially, 1, 2, 3,4, and so on. You have to apply filter logic using these numbers. Filter logic operators include AND and OR. For example:
  • 1 AND 2 finds records that match both values
  • (1 AND 2) OR 3 finds records that match both filter 1 and filter 2, or filter 3

Add Assignment

1. Click on the plus sign (+) next to each user to assign the briefcase.
2. Click on the Next button.
3. You can assign a group to the briefcase, all users in the group have access to it.

Select Apps

1. Select the app that you want to associate with the briefcase.
2. Click on the forward arrow.
3. Click on the Next button.

Activate Briefcase

1. Click on the Activate button to make the briefcase available for the assigned users or groups.

You are done!

Points to Remember

1. Always use Run As User to investigate whether a particular user is receiving records from the objects you set up in their briefcase. 
2. You can’t delete a briefcase that is installed from a managed package. The only solution is to uninstall the entire package.
3. As of Winter 22, You can maximumly activate five briefcases per object.  

4. You are only able to define ten filters per object.
   1. To improve the performance, use an indexed field while defining the filter. 
   2. Make sure that you have at least one filter per object, which will improve the performance. sd
5. The total records that can be retrieved offline view is 50,000.
6. Briefcase Builder does not support external and Setup objects.
7. All users in the group have access to the briefcase assigned to it.

I want to hear from you! What did you learn from this post? Share your tips in the comments!