Work Type
A Work Type is a Salesforce template object that captures the standard attributes of a job, including its estimated duration, required skills, and required products.
Definition
A Work Type is a Salesforce template object that captures the standard attributes of a job, including its estimated duration, required skills, and required products. Work orders, work order line items, and service appointments inherit those values from the Work Type, so similar jobs are described the same way every time.
Work Types are used in Field Service and in Salesforce Scheduler (formerly Lightning Scheduler). They became available in API version 38.0. A Work Type is reusable, so one definition such as "Cable Install" or "Annual Service" can stamp consistent values onto thousands of records.
How Work Types Standardize and Schedule Field Service Jobs
What a Work Type holds
A Work Type is a reusable description of work your team does over and over. The core fields are Estimated Duration and its companion Duration Type, which can be set to Minutes or Hours. Together they tell the system how long a given job usually takes. A Work Type also carries a Name and a Description so dispatchers and agents can pick the right one quickly. Beyond timing, a Work Type links to two important child sets. Required skill requirements list the competencies a worker needs, each with a skill level from 0 to 99.99. Required products list the parts a technician should bring. When a work order is created from the Work Type, both lists copy over automatically. This means the estimate, the skill bar, and the parts manifest all arrive together, without anyone retyping them. Because the Work Type sits upstream of the records that use it, editing one definition quietly improves every future job that references it. That is why teams treat a Work Type less like data and more like a small, living piece of process documentation.
Auto-creating the service appointment
One of the most useful Work Type settings is the option to auto-create a service appointment. When that checkbox is on, saving a work order or work order line item that references the Work Type spins up a Service Appointment automatically. The appointment is the schedulable record, so this saves a manual step and keeps the dispatch board populated. The Work Type can also reserve buffer time around the visit. Block Time Before Appointment and Block Time After Appointment let you pad the schedule for travel, setup, or paperwork. A two-hour install with thirty minutes of post-work blocks ninety minutes of the technician's day beyond the job itself, so the optimizer will not double-book that window. Crew-based work is handled here too. Minimum Crew Size and Recommended Crew Size tell the scheduler how many service resources a job needs. A job that needs a two-person crew should not be offered to a lone technician, and these fields are how the system knows that before it ever proposes a slot.
How the scheduler uses it
Work Types feed the Field Service scheduling and optimization engine directly. Estimated Duration sets the length of the time slot the optimizer tries to find. If the duration is wrong, every plan built on it is wrong, so this single field carries a lot of weight. Skill requirements drive resource matching, because a service resource is only offered for a job when their assigned skills clear the required levels. Required products feed inventory checks, helping ensure the right truck stock is on hand before a technician is dispatched. The buffer-time and crew-size fields shape availability so the engine respects real-world constraints. None of this requires custom code. The values you set once on the Work Type become the rules the optimizer follows on every job that uses it. The same data model also powers self-service booking. When the duration, skills, and buffers are accurate, customer-facing scheduling shows honest availability instead of slots a technician could never actually keep.
Work Types in Salesforce Scheduler
The Work Type object is not only a Field Service idea. Salesforce Scheduler, the appointment-booking product once called Lightning Scheduler, uses the same object. There a Work Type represents the task a customer is booking, such as a mortgage consultation or a financial review, and it defines the intended duration and the skills the representative needs. In Scheduler, Work Types are grouped under Work Type Groups, which act as the appointment topics a customer chooses from. A group like "Wealth Management" can contain several related Work Types. Service Territory Work Type records then connect a Work Type to the branches or locations where it is offered, so booking only shows availability where that service is actually delivered. The practical upshot is consistency across two very different experiences. A bank advisor booking flow and a cable company dispatch board both lean on the same template object. Learn the Work Type once and the knowledge transfers between Field Service and Scheduler with very little rework.
Skills and required products in detail
Skill requirements are the matchmaking layer of a Work Type. Each one names a skill and a required level on the 0 to 99.99 scale your business defines. A service resource must hold that skill at or above the stated level to be considered for the job. Work orders and work order line items inherit these requirements from the Work Type, and you can still add more on the individual record when a specific job needs extra expertise. Required products work the same way for parts. Adding a product to the Work Type tells the system which items the job consumes, so the technician arrives stocked and the parts can be tracked against the work. This reduces return trips caused by a missing component. Both sets are additive rather than locked. The Work Type provides a sensible default, and the work order can layer on more. That balance, a strong default plus room to adjust, is what makes a small catalog of Work Types cover a wide range of real jobs without becoming rigid.
Curating a healthy catalog
The biggest Work Type mistake is letting them multiply. Every Work Type is process documentation, so a sprawling list becomes hard to trust and harder to maintain. Mature implementations keep a small, deliberate set, roughly one per common job pattern, and review them on a schedule. Good naming pays off immediately. A dispatcher creating a work order under pressure should recognize the right Work Type at a glance, so names like "AC Tune-Up" or "Meter Replacement" beat vague labels. Descriptions should say what the job covers and what it does not. It also helps to revisit the numbers. Estimated durations drift as crews get faster or jobs change, and a stale duration quietly degrades every schedule built from it. Treat the catalog as living configuration. A short, accurate, well-named set of Work Types gives the scheduler clean inputs, gives agents fast choices, and gives the whole operation a shared definition of what each job actually involves.
Create a Work Type for a recurring job
Create a Work Type when your team performs a job often enough that retyping its duration, skills, and parts each time wastes effort. Build it once in Setup, then reference it from work orders and appointments.
- Open the Work Types tab
From the App Launcher, find and open Work Types, then click New. Work Types live in the Field Service and Salesforce Scheduler data, so make sure the relevant feature is enabled in your org first.
- Name the job and set the duration
Enter a clear Name and Description. Set Estimated Duration to how long the job usually takes, and set Duration Type to Minutes or Hours. This length drives the time slot the scheduler reserves.
- Decide on appointment behavior
Select Auto-Create Service Appointment if you want an appointment generated whenever a work order uses this type. Set Block Time Before and Block Time After to pad travel or setup, and set crew size fields if the job needs more than one resource.
- Add required skills and products
Save the record, then add skill requirements with the levels a worker must hold, and add required products for the parts the job consumes. These lists copy onto every work order created from the Work Type.
A short, recognizable label for the job pattern, such as Cable Install or Annual Service.
How long the job typically takes, expressed as a number that pairs with Duration Type.
The unit for the estimate, either Minutes or Hours.
- An inaccurate Estimated Duration distorts every schedule built from the Work Type, so review durations as crews get faster or jobs change.
- Auto-Create Service Appointment only fires when the work order or line item references the Work Type, so existing records are not retrofitted.
- Skills and required products are inherited as defaults; a specific job can still need extra requirements added on its own work order.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Work Type.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Work Type.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
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