UNIFIED SERVICE DESK FOR MICROSOFT DYNAMICS CRM
This is the article from Microsoft and quite useful for understanding the overview of the Unified Service Desk.
Unified Service Desk for Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides a configurable framework for quickly building applications for call centers so that agents can get a unified view of the customer data stored in Microsoft Dynamics 365. You can aggregate customer information from different areas in Dynamics 365 into an integrated desktop that provides a 360° view of the customer interactions. This gives your customer service agents immediate access to business critical information so they can quickly engage with customers and address queries and issues.
Unified Service Desk, which is built using the User Interface Integration (UII) framework, is designed as a series of adapters and modules that facilitate management of Dynamics 365 UI elements (such as pages and dialogs), automatic loading of related records, agent scripting, a configurable toolbar, and so on. Unified Service Desk can be configured and administered using Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Outlook. Using Unified Service Desk to configure agent applications doesn’t require you to write code for the most part, and therefore reduces the lead time to design an agent application as per your business requirements. Also, with the computer telephony integration (CTI) framework of UII, organizations can build adapters to connect Unified Service Desk with their existing CTI infrastructure to support customer communication in agent desktops over various channels such as chat, email, or telephone.
What is User Interface Integration?
Unified Service Desk leverages the power of the User Interface Integration (UII) framework to help you quickly configure a customized agent application. The UII framework lets you build and deploy composite agent applications that can provide unified access to customer information in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and external systems, and can aggregate different modes of customer interactions or channels. UII provides a framework for non-intrusive integration of existing line-of-business (LOB) systems at the UI level. For more information about how you can use UII, see Unified Service Desk and the UII framework in the Unified Service Desk Developer Guide.
What makes up Unified Service Desk?
Unified Service Desk is a collection of solutions and data files that contain configuration entities and the underlying entities for the UII framework. You configure the Unified Service Desk entities to define the user experience in the client application, such as various controls, their layout, user flow, and so on. All configuration information is stored in the Unified Service Desk entities, and you can bundle it along with the solutions and data files into a “package” that defines a Unified Service Desk application. The package can then be deployed to any Dynamics 365 instance, and users can connect to it using the Unified Service Desk client application to experience the interface and functionality defined by the configuration data of the application.
The Unified Service Desk feature is defined by the following two solution files:
- Dynamics Unified Service Desk: This solution file contains the primary Unified Service Desk entities that you configure to define the agent application experience.
- User Interface Integration for Microsoft Dynamics 365: This solution contains the underlying entities required by the Unified Service Desk configuration entities.
Unified Service Desk comes with four sample applications. More information: Sample Unified Service Desk applications
For information about the core Unified Service Desk concepts, see Core concepts for configuring Unified Service Desk in the Unified Service Desk Developer Guide.
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The Unified Service Desk (USD) is a desktop application that helps customer service agents provide phone, email, chat, and social media support to your customers. USD provides a configurable framework to quickly build an Agent Desktop application that's integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. With USD we can quickly make a customized agent desktop application by leveraging the User Interface Integration framework.
Here we get the standard Package Deployer connect to CRM page, so we enter our server details and click Login.
Now we have multiple packages within the USD Package, these are a base package for CRM 2013, a CRM 2013 SP1 package with Product Updates (which includes scenarios based on the product update), and a CRM 2013 SP1 package. All options include sample data.
We can see that the package deployer validates the configuration, and we can click Next to continue.
Note: If we want to install on to another machine, we would need to install the base version of USD and then copy across the USD folder from our master set up.
We can see the progress of the installation, and see that the first step is to disable a number of plugins, and then the managed solution entities are created in CRM that are required by the USD.
We can see that updates are applied to the managed solution entities.
The updates include a number of data import files that are the sample data.
Once the Unified Service Desk has been installed, and we look at the solution within CRM, we can see that a number of solutions have been imported.
What does the Unified Service Desk look like?
We are then presented with a customer service dashboard, which gives us a number of KPI’s, which from the sample data and configuration we choose earlier, is all centred around case management.
Scrolling down we see a list of the case that have been assigned to our user, which is effectively our case backline.
If we click on as case, we get the standard CRM form within the main panel. We can then expand out the Left Nav panel by clicking on the arrow, and see our Call Script which takes us through a new of predefined actions and makes the process flow really nice to use with the main panel updating as and when we need to perform an action.
As we process say through the Request for Service process, we can perform a number of actions either in sequence or if we like out of sequence, with the final action being to Resolve the case and Close the current session, which ends the Session Timer.
We also get a tab called My Work which shows us activities, or any items we can work on within our queue.
We have a Search tab, that can be set up to allow a number of entities to be searched, giving us a simplified enquiry mechanism, which obviously uses the standard CRM default views.
From the USD we can also have activity reminders be displayed in an Outlook style popup.
A handy technical tab, is the debugger which is available from the cog menu option. This shows us our action calls, along with action data and parameters.
We also get to see any debug information from the debug output sub-tab.
And get to see a number of data parameters that are specific to the USD session we are using.
We can specify an Agents call script, along with the possible answers that we can accept. The answer will then determine the tasks the agent must follow to progress say a case.
We can customise the menu toolbar, to include a number of different options, icons, and various actions which can be configured to have conditions associated within them to when they are available.
From a customisation perspective we can create a number of custom action scripts, which are JavaScript functions, which we can call from various event actions.
One of the great features about using the USD, is that we can create more complex client side controls, which we just can’t really do through web resources and JavaScript within standard CRM. A couple of examples are CTI (Computer Telephone Integration), or maybe Webcam Integration to allow us to take a customer photo when registering them at a customer service desk and storing it as the Entity Image on the contact record.
In the example that we have installed we have an SLA Timer that is displayed in the Status Panel.
To enable tracing, we simply set the various setting to Error, Warning, Verbose or All.
From the Shared Listeners section we can see that the log files will be created within
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To research into emerging technology and how it can benefit users. As part of the Spring ’14 Update Microsoft released the Unified Service Desk.
The Unified Service Desk (USD) is a desktop application that helps customer service agents provide phone, email, chat, and social media support to your customers. USD provides a configurable framework to quickly build an Agent Desktop application that's integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. With USD we can quickly make a customized agent desktop application by leveraging the User Interface Integration framework.
The Unified Service Desktop can be download from here.
The administration guide for the USD can be found here.
How do we install the Unified Service Desk?
First we need to install the base USD, this contains the general application framework, which includes connecting up to CRM, security, error logging, and base application. The installer we need here is the UnifiedServiceDesktop.msi. The installation for this is pretty straight forward, just next, next, finish :)
When we have installed that we need to deploy the package that we require, this is done via the second download which is the CRM2013-USD-PackageDeployer.exe self-extracting zip file. Once we have extracted the package deployer, we need to run the PackageDeployer.exe to install the USD solutions to CRM, along with the additional components to the actual USD we installed above.
Here we get the standard Package Deployer connect to CRM page, so we enter our server details and click Login.
Now we have multiple packages within the USD Package, these are a base package for CRM 2013, a CRM 2013 SP1 package with Product Updates (which includes scenarios based on the product update), and a CRM 2013 SP1 package. All options include sample data.
We will choose the CRM 2013 SP1 with Product Updates package, as this allows us to use some of the new features of service management, and click Next to continue.
Note: The new features demonstrated are, Entitlements, Service level agreements (SLAs), Routing Rules, Automatic case creation rules, Customer service schedule.
We can see that the package deployer validates the configuration, and we can click Next to continue.
Next we need to specify where the USD has been installed, as the Package Setup needs to install a number of custom controls. So we browse to the installed location of the USD and click Next to continue.
Note: If we want to install on to another machine, we would need to install the base version of USD and then copy across the USD folder from our master set up.
Clicking Next starts the installation process off.
We can see the progress of the installation, and see that the first step is to disable a number of plugins, and then the managed solution entities are created in CRM that are required by the USD.
We can see that updates are applied to the managed solution entities.
The updates include a number of data import files that are the sample data.
Finally we see that the various relationships are created, the plugins that were disabled are now enabled, and the installation is now complete.
Once the Unified Service Desk has been installed, and we look at the solution within CRM, we can see that a number of solutions have been imported.
What does the Unified Service Desk look like?
When we launch the USD from the desktop icon, we get the now standard WPF login form, which allows us to specify our server either On-Premise or Online / Office 365.
We are then presented with a customer service dashboard, which gives us a number of KPI’s, which from the sample data and configuration we choose earlier, is all centred around case management.
Scrolling down we see a list of the case that have been assigned to our user, which is effectively our case backline.
If we click on as case, we get the standard CRM form within the main panel. We can then expand out the Left Nav panel by clicking on the arrow, and see our Call Script which takes us through a new of predefined actions and makes the process flow really nice to use with the main panel updating as and when we need to perform an action.
As we process say through the Request for Service process, we can perform a number of actions either in sequence or if we like out of sequence, with the final action being to Resolve the case and Close the current session, which ends the Session Timer.
We also get a tab called My Work which shows us activities, or any items we can work on within our queue.
We have a Search tab, that can be set up to allow a number of entities to be searched, giving us a simplified enquiry mechanism, which obviously uses the standard CRM default views.
From the USD we can also have activity reminders be displayed in an Outlook style popup.
A handy technical tab, is the debugger which is available from the cog menu option. This shows us our action calls, along with action data and parameters.
We also get to see any debug information from the debug output sub-tab.
And get to see a number of data parameters that are specific to the USD session we are using.
How Configurable is the Unified Service Desk?
The Unified Service Desk is very configurable, there are a number of new menu options within the Settings area of CRM that allow full control of call scripts.
We can specify an Agents call script, along with the possible answers that we can accept. The answer will then determine the tasks the agent must follow to progress say a case.
We can customise the menu toolbar, to include a number of different options, icons, and various actions which can be configured to have conditions associated within them to when they are available.
From a customisation perspective we can create a number of custom action scripts, which are JavaScript functions, which we can call from various event actions.
One of the great features about using the USD, is that we can create more complex client side controls, which we just can’t really do through web resources and JavaScript within standard CRM. A couple of examples are CTI (Computer Telephone Integration), or maybe Webcam Integration to allow us to take a customer photo when registering them at a customer service desk and storing it as the Entity Image on the contact record.
In the example that we have installed we have an SLA Timer that is displayed in the Status Panel.
As part of the CRM SDK Templates for Visual Studio, we can create a number of different UI and USD Controls, Adapters or a Panel Layout.
How do we Enable Tracing?
We will occasionally get problems that we need to debug, so we can enable tracing within the UnifiedServiceDesk.exe.config file which is located within the same directory as the Unified Service Desk, e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM USD\USD
To enable tracing, we simply set the various setting to Error, Warning, Verbose or All.
<switches>
<!--
Possible values for switches: Off, Error, Warning, Information, Verbose
Verbose: includes Error, Warning, Info, Trace levels
Information: includes Error, Warning, Info levels
Warning: includes Error, Warning levels
Error: includes Error level
-->
<add name="EventTopicSwitch" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Uii.Common.Logging" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.CrmConnectControl" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector.CrmServiceClient" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.WebResourceUtility" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.CommonUtility.UserProfileManager" value="Error"/>
<add name="UnifiedServiceDesk.KPIControl" value="Error"/>
</switches>
<sharedListeners>
<add name="fileListener"
type="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector.DynamicsFileLogTraceListener, Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector" BaseFileName="UnifiedServiceDesk" Location="LocalUserApplicationDirectory" />
<add name="USDDebugListener" type="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics.UsdTraceListener, Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics" />
</sharedListeners>
<!--
Possible values for switches: Off, Error, Warning, Information, Verbose
Verbose: includes Error, Warning, Info, Trace levels
Information: includes Error, Warning, Info levels
Warning: includes Error, Warning levels
Error: includes Error level
-->
<add name="EventTopicSwitch" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Uii.Common.Logging" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.CrmConnectControl" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector.CrmServiceClient" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.WebResourceUtility" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics" value="Error"/>
<add name="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.CommonUtility.UserProfileManager" value="Error"/>
<add name="UnifiedServiceDesk.KPIControl" value="Error"/>
</switches>
<sharedListeners>
<add name="fileListener"
type="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector.DynamicsFileLogTraceListener, Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector" BaseFileName="UnifiedServiceDesk" Location="LocalUserApplicationDirectory" />
<add name="USDDebugListener" type="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics.UsdTraceListener, Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics" />
</sharedListeners>
From the Shared Listeners section we can see that the log files will be created within
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\USD
This post should have given a good overview of the Unified Service Desk, how it can be used and some of the types of customisations that can be made to it.
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