Installing Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 (Trial) – Part II

In the previous post in this series, where I talked about the first part of installation (https://thecrm.ninja/installing-omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-trial-part-i/), I covered how to get the first 3 prerequisites dealt with for installing Omnichannel (namely Customer Service Hub, PowerBI licenses, and Data Consent).

In this post, I’m going to be covering the 4th item – actually getting the Omnichannel Hub installed. It’s not as straightforward as you may think, so I’ve included lots of screenshots, as well as a bonus YouTube video at the end showing the process for this as well (for people who prefer videos).

If you look at the official Microsoft documentation on Omnichannel for Dynamics 365, it says that you need to install the solution from the Dynamics 365 Administration Center:

That’s all very well and good, but doesn’t actually show the reality of things! If you go to the Dynamics 365 Administration Center for your environment, you’re likely to see something similar to the following (you may be fortunate enough to see the option for Omnichannel there, in which case skip to ):

Hold on. There’s no ‘Omnichannel for Customer Service’ option there! Indeed so – and you’re not going to find it easily.

So, in order to actually get the Omnichannel option there in the Applications section, you’re going to need to do the following:

1. Go to https://trials.dynamics.com/
2. Select the ‘Customer Service’ option

Scroll down the page, and where it asks for your email, enter the email address that you used to sign up for the trial with! (this will be in the format of user@domain.onmicrosoft.com). Enter your phone number as well, and click ‘Get Started’

It’ll tell you that you already have a Dynamics 365 account. Click ‘OK, got it’ to continue. What is happening in the background is that a new trial is being created in your tenant, but at the same time Omnichannel for Customer Service is being installed. You don’t need to use the trial environment (and it’ll expire after 30 days), but you WILL be using the Omnichannel application (which will stick around even after the new trial expires).

You’ll then get a beautiful whirly GIF, showing that setup is happening

Once setup has completed, go back to the Dynamics 365 Administration Center (go to http://admin.powerplatform.com/, select ‘Environments’ from the left navigation bar, select an environment, and click the ‘Manage Solutions’ button on the menu bar. Select the ‘Applications’ option from the menu ribbon and Hey Voila! You should see ‘Omnichannel for Customer Service’ present! (you may need to click to the next page on the Applications screen)

Note that it’s showing as being ‘NotConfigured’ – we’ll go through the configuration of this in the next blog post.

Also note that there are two other options underneath this. Once is for Facebook, and one is for SMS. These are the direct integration points for this products that are provided by Microsoft (rather than an ISV or 3rd party solution), and more will appear over time as Microsoft releases further functionality.

Now for the YouTube video, in which I walk through all of the above in a live replay!

In the next part of the series at (https://thecrm.ninja/installing-omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-part-iii/), I go through the actual initial configuration of the Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 configuration