Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, CRM, Microsoft CRM, Dynamics CRM
This weekend I was so fortunate to talk at the Field Service BootCamp. I have tried to design the Field Service solution to be as simple as possible. I remove most of the logic from view, but keep the essence of the process. What do you think?
Check out the recording from my session here:
This video is how I demonstrate the Customer Service solution based on my blog series. I like to keep things simple, but at the same time functional. Please let me know what you think.
Next video will be “how to install the solution” from scratch, so you can try it out yourself😀
This is the last post in a long series about Customer Service and Dynamics 365. After several implementations over the years, the following configuration should be a great place to start.
Fire up a new trial of Dynamics with Customer Service, and add an office 365 trial to the same instance. I will not be going in depth on how to create a trial. Navigate here if you need tips
NB! for some steps you need Global Admin privilege
The first step we need to do is setup a Shared Mailbox in the admin for O365. Navigate to https://admin.microsoft.com <- Make sure you are on the correct org when doing this.
When done you should se the message above. You now have successfully created a new email address for Exchange.
Download the solution from here
https://github.com/thomassandsor/CustomerService – open folder solution, and download THE LATEST VERSION 18+
In the video I will explain why UNMANAGED, but I am not an ISV is the short answer. I have written about what’s included, so easy to reverse.
Remember to PUBLISH CHANGES
You will now see a new App called CS
Next you need to add a new team to Dynamics. Open the Advanced Settings in the navigation to the top right. We will be doing the next part in the old client
Open Settings – Security and Team. Add a new team and give it a name. I have chosen Customer Service. This is the team name that will own the Cases before they are assigned.
Also remember to add the security role “Team – Customer Service”. This security role is imported along with the solution
This is the step where we connect Microsoft Exchange with Dynamics 365
Name of the queue is not important, but make something that is sensible.
When you click save, a new Mailbox will be created automatically by the system. Open the Mailbox, an navigate to the next step.
This is the point where you need to be Global Admin to continue. Start by approving the mailbox/email address.
Step 2 you test and enable the mailbox. Once this is done, head on over to “alerts”
You might need to refresh this a few times before it displays anything. The refresh button in the upper right corner is the easiest way to update the feed. You should only see information messages now. This should not generate any errors.
Next step is really important for keeping the subject logic. All of this will make sense later when you see the reply of the emails you send. Open the Email Configuration Settings and make sure it looks just like below.
Now we create an Account and Contact that we use for our demo. The Account name can be whatever you want, but the contact needs to have a valid email address.
Now it is important to check that emails actually are going out of the system. Open the contact you created with the valid email address. Create a new email activity.
NB! make sure that you substitute the from address to Customer Service (queue you created earlier) before you hit send. This will send FROM the queue to the Contact.
If things go as planned you will see an email appear in the mailbox. Be sure to check you spam if nothing is in the inbox!!!
After importing the solution you will now find “Email 2 Case” in the Automatic Record Creation area. Open this via the Customer Service HUB
Make sure you select your Queue that you have added earlier ADD QUEUE
Open the Email 2 Case Flow to see the structure that Microsoft now has create for Email to Case.
If you like adding the Team as owner to the cases (Optional), you have to add this line to the Owner field in the Flow.
NB! You have to retrieve the GUID from the Team in CRM.
Last step is to Activate the email to case record creation.. At this point you should be able to see emails entering CRM via Cases.
Next step we have create a signature for the user. Signatures can be personal or company specific. The signature is located under the setup section. Navigation is at the bottom left of the CS app.
The signature below is HTML. I don’t expect you do this from scratch. I have a great guide here
Getting close to the end now, we have to add all our hard work to the Customer Service User replying to the emails. In the user form you see 2 fields “Signature” and “Default Queue”.
Update with the queue you created earlier, and the signature you just created. This is what will defines what the email leaving the system will look like.
This last step is optional. I created it in Flow, so beware of possible hitches with a few things regarding the current environment connector.
The purpose is to notify the Agent that a new Email has arrived for the case. If for some reason the system received email to a close case, I reopen the case and notify the agent.
https://make.powerapps.com and open the solution Customer Service – CS
Open the Flow. You might be asked to authenticate the connection, so do this before you move on.
Last step is activating the process
Let’s see what happens when I now send an email inn to Dynamics
Then wait for the autoresponse
Inside of CRM the Case now has been created
Next week I demonstrate how to demo the solution 🎬🎥
This post is a part of a series of posts for Customer Service. The complete GUIDE can be found here
Before we complete it all I will clean the form a bit. The demo I will be focusing on is the B2B space. If you use the B2C part of support, you might not need any of this. Just continue to the next post:)
It looks good out of the box, but it doesn’t provide a great amount of value.
Start off by deactivating the BPF from customization. Then we have to delete all records of the process running. Open Advanced Find, and look for the table that has the same name as the Business Process Flow
PS: If you happen to have a demo setup, it might also include Field Service demo data. Then you have to repeat the process for “Case to Work Order Business Process”.
Does not give any extra added value. I am replacing this function with a similar value, but different way of working. I open in form editor and remove.
First make sure to remove the Entitlements
Then make sure that the view is set to Recent Cases. Don’t trust that the name of the subgrid is correct. You actually have to make sure that you have the Recent Cases view here.
Create a new section for Recent Cases, and move the Recent Cases out of the Reference Panel. This way we can actually click on a case and open it from the Quick View.
Just hide it. Don’t need it for now
In the B2B scenario we need to make a few adjustments to the customer field, and add some onload logic for the agent. In the B2B scenario we need the customer data to be good, and therefore we can’t accept cases where the contact is unknown.
Check this article on how to fix the Customer/Contact fields
Remove unwanted subjects.
Let’s just agree that this doesn’t look very exciting, but it does the job. It does the job quite well!
This is how I want it to look. I have hidden a bunch of components that Microsoft includes as standard Customer Service. Normally it is just a little too much. This will lead to an easy training and a simple customer service view for the agent.
Removing the Business process flow we loose a lot of colors, but this is for actual production. Not a fancy demo to excite someone buying.
This post is a part of a series of posts for Customer Service. The complete GUIDE can be found here
Many years ago Opportunity retired the Customer field and replaced it with Primary Contact and Primary Account fields. Case has not yet done this for reasons I can’t really understand. As you will see in this article we achieve the same result when adding the contact field, but the customer field is still a polymorphic lookup.
Email to Case could easily add to the contact field instead of the customer field. Field service is actually dependent on account being in the customer field for it to work properly.
This is how Case has to be setup to make sense in the B2B world:
If the Contact and Customer are known to the system, they will automatically populate. If the Contact is new to the system, the connection to the Account will be missing. In this case we need to alert the Agent, and ask them to update the contact record.
The following JavaScript is added to the Case form. It checks the Customer field to see if it is contact. If this is the case, it will check if the Contact has a Account connected. Most likely it will not have an Account, so we will be prompted “Do you wish to update the Contact?”. Answer YES here, and a quick view of the Contact will appear. Update Account, and then the JavaScript will do the rest for you. ✨MAGIC✨
var formContext = "";
function OnCrmPageLoad(executionContext) {
formContext = executionContext.getFormContext();
//
//You don't need to change this. Just understand that forms have one the following states when opening
//
var FormTypes =
{
Undefined: 0,
Create: 1,
Update: 2,
ReadOnly: 3,
Disabled: 4,
QuickCreate: 5,
BulkEdit: 6
}
runAlways(formContext);
switch (formContext.ui.getFormType()) {
case FormTypes.Create: OnNewFormLoad(); break;
case FormTypes.Update: OnUpdateFormLoad(); break;
case FormTypes.ReadOnly: OnReadOnlyFormLoad(); break;
case FormTypes.Disabled: OnDisabledFormLoad(); break;
case FormTypes.QuickCreate: OnQuickCreateFormLoad(); break;
case FormTypes.BulkEdit: OnBulkEditFormLoad(); break;
case FormTypes.Undefined: alert("Error"); break;
}
}
//
//I only use the RunAlways, OnNewFormLoad and OnUpdateFormLoad, but i keep the others here if i ever would need.
//When looking at this you can always know what funtion is running. Easy to read and debug.
//
function runAlways() { }
function OnNewFormLoad() {}
function OnUpdateFormLoad() {
//
//Clean up Contact Data. If contact has account, but account not in Customer field perform update. If Contact doen's have account ask for update
//
GetAccountInfo();
}
function OnReadOnlyFormLoad() { }
function OnDisabledFormLoad() { }
function OnQuickCreateFormLoad() { }
function OnBulkEditFormLoad() { }
//******************************************************************** */
//CUSTOM FUNCTIONS are added below here. Below this point you add all types of functions you need.
//******************************************************************** */
function GetAccountInfo() {
var CustomerField = formContext.getAttribute("customerid").getValue();
if (CustomerField != null) {
if (CustomerField[0].entityType == "contact") {
var CustomerGUID = CustomerField[0].id;
CustomerGUID = CustomerGUID.replace("{", "");
CustomerGUID = CustomerGUID.replace("}", "");
//
//If the Customer Field contains a contact, I want to change this. I want the Customer Field to be an account. Step 1 is to find out if the contact has account registered.
//
Xrm.WebApi.online.retrieveRecord("contact", CustomerGUID, "?$select=_parentcustomerid_value").then(
function success(result) {
var Id = "{" + result["_parentcustomerid_value"] + "}";
var Name = result["_parentcustomerid_value@OData.Community.Display.V1.FormattedValue"];
var LogicalName = result["_parentcustomerid_value@Microsoft.Dynamics.CRM.lookuplogicalname"];
//
//IF the contact has an account I move the Contact to Case Contact, and receive the Account from the Contact and enter it to Customer on Case.
//
if (LogicalName != null){
formContext.getAttribute("primarycontactid").setValue(CustomerField);
formContext.getAttribute("customerid").setValue([{ id: Id, name: Name, entityType: LogicalName }]);
formContext.data.entity.save();
}else{
//
//Promt if you want to open contact for update?
//https://carldesouza.com/how-to-implement-javascript-confirmation-dialogs-in-power-apps-and-dynamics-365/ - THANK YOU
//
var confirmStrings = { text:"Contact is not connected to Account. Please update!", title:"Data Update Recommended", confirmButtonLabel:"Open Contact", cancelButtonLabel: "Not Now" };
var confirmOptions = { height: 200, width: 450 };
Xrm.Navigation.openConfirmDialog(confirmStrings, confirmOptions).then(
function (success) {
if (success.confirmed){
//
//If the user chooses to update, I open a small contact form, and make the user set the Account.
//After Save&Close i recall this function, and then I update Account and Contact for case.
//
Xrm.Navigation.navigateTo({pageType:"entityrecord", entityName:"contact", formType:2, formId:"e4206691-b1e3-4e9d-a23a-4865b9511091", entityId:CustomerGUID}, {target: 2, position: 1, width: {value: 20, unit:"%"},height: {value: 50, unit:"%"}}).then(
function success() {
GetAccountInfo();
},
function error() {
alert("The system was not able to save the change. Please reload the page and try again");
}
);
}else{
//Say or do something if the user doesn't update Contact
}
});
}
},
function (error) {
Xrm.Utility.alertDialog(error.message);
}
);
}
}
}
If you ever had a problem with navigating between entities for updating data, this PCF component will absolutely save a lot of time.
Clement Olivier
https://stuffandtacos.azurewebsites.net/
@Clement0livier – Twitter
https://github.com/carfup/PCFControls – download the tool
He created a PCF component for quick updating related entities without having to leave the record.
Internally we have all of our active projects in a list. For every project we have a customer contact registered for continuous surveys (Power Automate, Forms Pro, SMS.. Cool Stuff). For the system to work correctly we need to make sure we have both the phone number and email address updated at any given time for the automated surveys to work.
What would we do without devs!!:)
The first request for this function was CRM 4.0, and now it is here (Release Wave 1 2020).
Dynamics Copy / Paste in email is now possible, and will be released in April.
Thank you Balachandar Swaminathan for finding this
https://in.linkedin.com/in/balachandar-swaminathan-40a39020
I haven’t touchet managed solutions for quite some time, so importing a managed solution recently surprised me:)
This article is not explaining the differences in detail, but I wanted to make sure you knew there is a difference between upgrade and update. I don’t understand why Microsoft insist on recommented the way they do. I feel you need to know the project before this is a certainty.
New for me is the option of upgrading. If you remove an item in the source managed file, this will now actually delete it in the destination. Say you remove a field on account this should remove the field in the destination.
Do you remember the old ways of doing it?
Introduced arround 2011 OR Introduced arround 2015
A great way to test something before committing to any changes. I would not use this for an ISV solution, but if you happen to use Managed internally this might be a way to go.
This is marked as the Not Recomended option, but I still feel this is the normal way to do. If you are doing an ISV import this doesn’t matter because the solution file probably is correct, but if you are working with managed internally, I would use this just because I might not trust someone in dev doing config 100% correctly…
Source
Microsoft DOC
I was never a fan of the Business Process Flow (BPF) because of the many flaws. Sometimes I didn’t think it was easy enough, and other times not advanced enough. It simply wasn’t what I needed.
In a recent project I decided to give it another go, because the customer wanted to continue with the BPF they had from their old CRM system.
Opening the PBF now I see that there is so much new features here that I haven’t seen before. I guess most of these features are due to the FLOW platform now taking over the BPF.
I know you can report on the BPF entity, but that is more complex than reporting on the opportunity entity if you ask me.
Can I set the “Phase” field on the opportunity when navigating to the next step in the BPF? Let’s see!!
Open the Business Process Flow from your solution and notice a button at the bottom right “Business rules for this stage’s entity”.
Create a new Business Rule for Opportunity “Oppty – Set Pipeline Phase”.
For the first condition we check if the BPF is in the stage named Prospect.
If true, set the Pipeline Phase to “1 – Qualify”.
Repeat for the second step!
The business rule should look something like this:
Let’s get back to the Opportunity. We see that it default is active on the Qualify stage in the beginning of the sales process.
Click the next stage
And there you go!!
So what do I think of the BPF now? Honestly, I liked it. It might be a replacement for many other JavaScripts that I have been using the later years, and that is only a good thing. In this case I was able to skip JavaScript and therefore deliver a solution with a low technical footprint:)
This week I needed to use the List Records function, and I realized that I had no idea how to use the filters. Thank you Jonas Rapp for creating the FetchXML Builder!! The function “Flow List parameters” saved my day:)
Let’s begin with the simple filters where I get a contact with the last name of Sandsør
Test your search result with the Execute button so see that anything is actually returned. Then open the Flow List Parameters
The tool converts the Fetch XML, and magically gives the correct filter to add in our FLOW query. It can’t get much simpler than that!!
Lookups act a little bit different with the syntax, as lookups always to. This got me quite confused before finding this tool, because I was not getting match to my result.
I am searching for contacts with a given GUID. In my case I didn’t know what the GUID was, so I randomly generated a GUID for the formula. In FLOW I substituted the GUID part of query with a dynamic variable.
Filter Query with lookups, you need to add “_” as seen above. When working with lookup you won’t get at match without the “_LookupField_Value”.
The last filter is a little more complex, and might not get used due to some limitations of Odata (Must match on unique ID for related).
In this scenario I wanted to locate all contacts with last name “Sandsør” where the regarding accountID = GUID.
Choose the main entity on top, and add “link-entity”
Make sure you have the correct relationship here. Some Lookups support more than one entity, and therefore you make sure you have the correct one.
Again we find the magic with the “Flow List Parameters“.
In this scenario we also get Expand Query result that we need to copy/paste.
Once you have figured out what filter to use, you can select the “Apply to Each” function, and add custom logic in here.
CRM Keeper 