Copilot in the Field Service mobile app

What it does

Two distinct Copilot capabilities on the technician's phone: the work order summary, which recaps a booking before the technician walks in, and AI-powered work order update, which lets the technician describe what they did in plain language — typed or dictated — and have Copilot propose the corresponding field changes for confirmation. The update capability is in preview; the summary is not.

Key facts

Work order update is a preview feature. Microsoft's own guidance is that it isn't intended for production use and behaviour may be restricted or changed.
Work order update requires the new mobile experience. It does not exist on the older Unified Interface mobile app.
Enabled by an admin in the Field Service Mobile app module under Settings > Mobile settings > Features, using the Work order update toggle.
Copilot can propose updates to a fixed set of fields: booking status, booking times, work order service task completion, work order product quantity, work order product line status, work order service duration, and work order service line status. That list is the feature — you can't extend it to custom columns.
Nothing is written without the technician confirming the suggested changes. It is a proposal step, not an autonomous update.
Input is text or speech-to-text, so it inherits whatever dictation quality the device and OS provide. Noisy plant rooms are not a friendly environment for it.
The summary on mobile is enabled separately. For Unified Interface mobile it's the Copilot Recap for Mobile (Unified Interface) toggle sitting in the Preview section of the mobile app's Features settings; for the new mobile experience it's enabled from the mobile app settings once the new experience is on.
Both need a paid Field Service environment. Trial environments are excluded, as is any region not covered by the Copilot International Availability Report.
Neither capability works offline. Field Service mobile is built around offline-first working, and Copilot is the part that isn't.
Summaries are generated on demand and not stored, so they never appear in the technician's offline cache.

When to use / skip

The mobile summary is worth switching on for any client whose technicians attend assets with history. It saves the "what happened last time" phone call to the office, which is a real, measurable cost.

Work order update is a different proposition. It demos beautifully and it is preview, and those two facts together are how projects get into trouble. If the client's technicians work in areas with reliable connectivity and the client is comfortable running a preview capability with no production support, it's a reasonable pilot with a small group. If technicians spend their day in basements, lift shafts, rural sites or anywhere the signal drops, it's the wrong feature: the moment they go offline, it disappears, and a tool that only sometimes exists is worse than one that never did.

Skip both if the deployment is still on Unified Interface mobile and there's no plan to move to the new mobile experience. You'd be enabling a preview recap toggle and nothing else, which isn't a story worth telling.

Configuration decisions

Whether the client is on the new mobile experience at all, since work order update depends on it entirely.
Whether to enable work order update as a limited pilot or across all technicians, and whether the client accepts preview terms in writing.
Which mobile summary path applies — the Unified Interface preview toggle or the new mobile experience — based on the app the client is actually running.
Whether the field set Copilot can update lines up with how the client closes work. If the process depends on custom fields, the value drops sharply.
How offline behaviour is communicated and trained, since Copilot silently isn't there rather than showing a helpful message.
Whether dictation is realistic for the client's working environment, and whether device policy even permits speech input.

Gotchas

Preview means preview. There is no production support commitment, and a client who has built a process around dictated updates has built it on sand until GA.
The updatable field list is fixed. Clients who have moved key closure data onto custom columns will find Copilot proposes updates to fields their technicians don't use.
Offline is the big one. Technicians will use it in the van with signal, then lose it on site, and log it as a defect.
Enabling the recap in the web app does not enable it on mobile. They are separate toggles in separate places, and the mobile one for Unified Interface is buried in a Preview section.
Speech-to-text accuracy is the device's problem, not Field Service's, but it will be reported as a Field Service issue. Technical jargon and part numbers fare badly.
Trial environments simply don't have any of this, so a proof of concept built on a trial will mislead the client about what they're buying.

Consultant notes

If you demo work order update, say the word "preview" in the same breath, every time. It is the single most over-promised capability in Field Service right now.
Pilot it with three or four technicians who have decent connectivity and a habit of giving feedback, rather than rolling it to the whole crew.
Walk the client through the confirmation step explicitly. Managers assume "AI updates the work order" means unattended writes, and their next question is about audit.
Before go-live, test the whole flow on the client's actual device build and MDM policy — dictation is frequently blocked by device management before Field Service ever sees it.
Check the mobile toggles in production after deployment. Mobile feature settings do not always arrive with the solution the way people expect.

Worth another look when AI-powered work order update leaves preview, or if Microsoft opens the updatable field list to custom columns.