Salesforce adds IoT Insights to Field Service Lightning

#News(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup 

Those billions of devices produce a firehose of useful data — think smart air conditioners that notify repair teams when they’re about to fail and datacenter climate control systems that perform self-diagnostics — but given the sheer volume, teams tasked with monitoring it are liable to miss something. That’s why Salesforce is today debuting IoT Insights, a new add-on in Lightning — its component-based, no-code framework for app development — within Field Service Lightning, a mobile app and communications service that helps facilitate, manage, and track IoT device maintenance and repairs.

Starting this week, customers can see IoT signals directly within Saleforce’s Service Cloud and Field Service Lightning mobile app consoles, alongside customer relationship management data. The newly unified flow surfaces critical alerts, like imminent device failures and historical service information, and enables technicians and mobile workers to learn which devices require servicing or fixing before they arrive at the job site. Additionally, it lets them create rules and guided processes to trigger case creation and work orders automatically, as key IoT signals come in.
The idea is to help companies track the status of connected devices — Gartner projects there will be more than 20 billion connected things by 2020 — and provide more proactive customer service. For instance, a smart home service team could send a field worker out to preemptively inspect an air conditioning unit on the verge of failing. With IoT Insights available in both the Service Console and the Field Service Lightning mobile app, both the customer service agent and field worker can provide personalized service.