Thoughts & musings from a Microsoft Business Applications Ninja!
Speaking with ‘The Power Automate Guy’ himself!
Touching on important points such as drones, the renaming of ‘Flow’ to ‘Power Automate’, and being yourself within a role.
If you’d like to come appear on the show, please sign up at http://bit.ly/2NqP5PV – I’d love to have you on it!
Click here to take a look at the other videos that are available to watch.
I’ve been contacted by several people over the last few days who have been experiencing an error when trying to get Omnichannel configured. It looks something like:
The actual text of the error is: AADSTS65001: The user or administrator has not consented to use the application with ID ’18cc9627-776c-4142-b8f5-9cd83517e3bb’ named ‘Omnichannel for Customer Service’. Send an interactive authorization request for this user and resource. Trace ID: 36dd2358-2d41-463c-a2f6-013038636400 Correlation ID: 9ac093cd-e525-4bb4-b277-3ac8e7478b6b Timestamp: 2020-01-07 12:14:15Z
No matter what people tried, they still got it. I went through the process of setting up a completely new environment – lo and behold, I got the same issue! (the screenshot above is actually from my system). Incidentally this is why it’s so important to be able to replicate an issue, so that you can confirm what’s actually causing it to happen.
Reaching out to some very helpful people at Microsoft, I (thankfully) got a quick response from them
Essentially, there are some issues with Azure Active Directory (AAD) consent flows for applications at the moment (it’s not specific to Omnichannel). There’s a fix that’s being worked on, but no idea when it will be finished and rolled out.
They were nice enough to share with me how to address it, which is what I’m now sharing here! To fix this issue, carry out the following steps to manually grant permissions to the application:
1. In your Azure Portal, search for ‘Azure Active Directory’ in the search bar, click on it when it comes up, and navigate to Enterprise Applications in the left hand bar. Alternatively you can use https://ms.portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_AAD_IAM/StartboardApplicationsMenuBlade/AllApps/menuId/to get you straight there.
Click it to open, and you’ll see a list of the enterprise applications that use AAD.
2. You’ll then want to search for the application that has the issue (in this case, Omnichannel)
You’ll want to double-check that the ‘Application ID’ is the SAME as the Application ID that you’re getting in the error message, especially if there are multiple results coming up in the search list!
Once you’re sure that it’s the correct application, click it to open it.
3. You’ll see a section in the left bar called ‘Security’, and under this should be an entry for ‘Permissions’. When this opens, you’ll see a button in the main window called ‘Grant admin consent for User‘.
4. Click this – it’ll cause a window to pop up, where you’ll grant permissions for the application. Once granted, the window will automatically close.
You can then go back to the place where you were experiencing the error, and it should work!
We’ve all been there. We’re on a website page, trying to understand it, and not really getting anywhere. Whether it’s about how to fill in a form, or technical instructions and information, our mind has gone blank. The words are on the page, but they’re just not making sense – and we don’t know what to do!
What would we say if suddenly a prompt came up, asking if we needed some help with understanding things, and offering to connect us with a live agent if we wanted some assistance? Well, quite a lot of people would be grateful for that, I’d think.
There are quite a few websites out there that have this functionality – I know that I’ve seen it on various sites I’ve been on, though it’s not always been implemented in the best of ways.
Well, now Microsoft have decided to bring in their own form of it, and it sits right within Omnichannel for Dynamics 365! It’s able to allow customers to interact either with a bot or with a live agent, depending on how you’ve configured it to work.
Currently it’s in Preview, but I’m expecting it to move to General Availability soon.
Even better, Microsoft have even released a short video around it!
There are two parts to configuring it:
Firstly, you need to enable Proactive Chat. Go to your Chat channels under Omnichannel Administration, open up the Chat record you’re wanting to have Proactive chat enabled for, and change the ‘Enable Proactive Chat’ option to Yes (obviously if you don’t have any chat channels set up, you’d need to create a new one)
Secondly, there’s some code that needs to be embedded on the actual web-page that the chat is active on. Now I know what some of you are thinking – ‘how the heck do I code’? (OK – so the developers aren’t thinking that – they’re thinking ‘oh goodie!!’. Well, I’m not from a development background myself, but I managed to get it to work quite easily. Take a look at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/omnichannel/developer/how-to/start-proactive-chat , where several different scenarios are shown (along with sample code), and you can tweak these as required.
The result then looks like:
This is really helpful. I can then click the ‘Chat Now’ button to start the chat. What I’m also really liking about the experience is that the chat option/window floats on the bottom right side of the screen, so no matter where I am in the page, it’s available (and easily able to be seen)
There are many different ways in which this can be configured. Some of the immediate ones that come to mind (but by no means all of them) are:
It’s a really helpful addition to the current Omnichannel capabilities, and I’m sure that there will be many more to come!
Talking about how running can help with things, interesting sights seen during some of the runs, managing expectations for system migrations with new fields, and the importance of involving the key business unit users as early as possible during the project process!
If you’d like to come appear on the show, please sign up at http://bit.ly/2NqP5PV – I’d love to have you on it!
Click here to take a look at the other videos that are available to watch.
Well, somewhat of a mouthful of a title for this article, but I couldn’t think of a better way to put it!
You know the scenario – we’ve all been there. There’s a custom form (for a system entity, or even a custom entity). Multiple sections, tabs, and multiple fields that are required. Users are going through data entry, but SOMEHOW have forgotten to fill one (or more???) in, and they’re just not able to save the form!
Well, Microsoft has now upped the quality of the user experience, and OH BOY was I SO excited to see this!
Previously when you clicked the Save button, it just wouldn’t allow you to save. It told you that it was missing required information, and you had to go search to see WHICH field(s) you had missed out on.
But search no longer. For now the notification bar has a whole new behaviour:
Firstly, it tells you that there are notifications, and to select to view (Note: If you’ve only missed out one field, just skip to step 2!)
Then when you click on it, it tells you which (required) fields have data missing from them!
Even better, if you click on the notification for a specific missing field, it even takes you to that field – no longer do you have to try to find where it is!
This is truly amazing, and will help enable users (and relieve their frustration) so much!
Over the last few days, my social media streams have gotten quite busy with people posting their thoughts on the last year – what they did, what they were aiming to achieve and did actually achieve, etc. I thought it would be good, as part of progressing myself (and my writing skills) to do the same, and what better time than New Years Eve!
Please note that this isn’t going to be the shortest blog post…
Additionally, technology has come so far. Looking back 10 years, ‘cloud’ was a word that was unfamiliar to most. The first SaaS offerings for Microsoft products was starting to come about – I remember UK hosted solutions for Dynamics 2011 launching, as Microsoft wasn’t doing anything directly yet. Office 365 first went live in 2011, and slowly started being adopted. Over the last year, the Power Platform has scaled immeasurably, and really become a standard/common part of client solutions.
On a personal level, much has happened, both for myself and my family:
Looking forward to 2020, I’ve been drawing up a list of goals and things that I want to achieve in it. So here goes (there will obviously be more that happens during the year…):
So, here’s to wishing you all an amazing and wonderful year ahead, and getting to know more of you!
The previous post in this mini series looked at how we go about enabling skill-based routing (https://thecrm.ninja/omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-skills-part-ii/).
What we’re now going to do is understand how we go about attaching skills (which we’ve already learned how to set up) to conversations. The premise behind this is that when a customer will access Chat on a website interface, they’ll be presented with one (or more) pre-chat survey questions. The answer/s that are given are then used as skills, and the chat session will be automatically routed to the user who is best placed to help the customer. This is done based on the skill-attachment rules, which we’re now looking at.
There are two types of options available for skill matching:
To create a new skill attachment rule, you’ll need to create (or modify an existing) workstream (we’re going to look at workstreams in another post)
Go to Skill Attachment Rules, select the type of matching logic that you’re wanting, and create a new rule (assuming you’re not modifying an existing one)
In the new rule window that opens, fill in the necessary information on the left hand side. You can then start to set up your rule conditions (and oh boy can these be complicated!) in the Condition box on the right.
Once done, hit the Save button, and the Skills section box will become active. Clicking the ‘New Attach Skill’ button in this box will allow you to select the skill/s and proficiency levels that you’re wanting to use.
Click the ‘Save and Close’ button, and it’ll appear in the Skills box. If you’re wanting to add more than one skill at a time, click the arrow on the Save & Close button, and click the ‘Save and New’ option.
If you then go back to the Workstream record, you’ll need see this appearing in the Skills Attachment Rules section.
Jason Almeida comes on The Oops Factor, and talks about a somewhat different hobby, along with how he’s been using the PowerPlatform to help with it! We then discuss the importance of communication, and the benefits that it brings.
If you’d like to come appear on the show, please sign up at http://bit.ly/2NqP5PV – I’d love to have you on it!
Click here to take a look at the other videos that are available to watch.
In the previous post, we started to learn how we go about setting up Skills for Omnichannel within Dynamics 365 (https://thecrm.ninja/omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-skills-part-i/).
In this post, we’re going to see how we enable Skill-Based routing within Omnichannel, as in order to use skills, we need to enable it! (seems obvious, right?).
To do this, we need to be signed into the Omnichannel Administration app, and we then go to ‘Skill Based Routing’, which is under the Settings area in the left-hand side navigation bar:
Clicking here brings up the skill-based routing settings. At the time of writing, this feature is still in preview, and shows an information window declaring this (this will disappear once it goes GA)
Clicking on the toggle slider will change the value to ‘Yes’, and will enable it. It’s also shown nicely in green, which is something that I’m really liking!
Select a Rating Model to use, from the right hand grid. As touched upon in the previous article, rating models are used to set how proficient a user is with a specific skill. You can have multiple rating models saved, and use them for specific scenarios.
Rating Models are made up of two parts:
In the next article (https://thecrm.ninja/omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-skills-part-iii/) we look at how we go about attaching skills to conversations
We’ve already gone through and taken a look as to how we set up Queues (https://thecrm.ninja/omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-queues/) and Users (https://thecrm.ninja/omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-users/). The final part of this trio is looking at how we set up Skills in Omnichannel, and apply them (which is going to be in several parts, due to the complexity of this one item!)
As we’ve previously covered (https://thecrm.ninja/omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-queues-users-skills/), skills are used within Omnichannel to enable Skill-Based Routing.
There are several parts to getting this working:
Yup – it’s somewhat more complex than just saying ‘I want skills!’
So this post is going to cover how to actually set up the skill record entries, which thankfully isn’t too difficult (especially if you’ve been bearing with me, and following the other setup instructions that we’ve been through so far).
To create skills, it’s necessary to have a skill type. Think of it as a hierarchy – if you’re wanting to provide customer services in multiple languages for technical issues, you’re going to want a Language skill type, and Technical skill type. Under each skill type, you’re going to have the applicable entries. So for Language, you’ll have English, Spanish, Chinese, etc.
At the time of writing, creating Skill Types are done from the Systems Customisation (this will likely move to the new Admin Centre at some point, but hasn’t yet). So make sure that you’re logged in as a Dynamics system Administrator, and open Advanced Settings:
Note: The process below is taking place in the default solution. It’s of course possible to deploy this as part of a custom solution – if you’re wanting to do this, then open the custom solution from the Power Platform admin centre, and continue with the steps shown below.
Hover over ‘Settings’ in the ribbon menu bar, and choose Customisations
Now select ‘Customise the System’
Select ‘Option Sets’ in the left hand navigation, then scroll down to ‘Bookable Resource Characteristic Type’ in the main window
Open up, and you’ll see the following window
Using our scenario, I’ve added Language and Technical Area as skill types. Now very importantly, ensure that you SAVE the record, and then PUBLISH it. If you don’t, the skill types won’t show to be used!
Right, now that we’ve done all of that prep work, we can get on with actually entering the skills that we want to use…
So, go back to the Omnichannel Administration section, scroll down in the left hand menu to Skills, and click it to open it. It’ll show all of the skills that we’ve entered (well, it won’t show any entries here yet, as none have been put in yet!). Click ‘New’ on the menu ribbon to create a new entry
You’ll be presented with the following screen, which after all of the above is thankfully quite simple.
The fields are as follows:
Then click ‘Save’ on the menu bar. Once the entry saves, the form will update, and now show a User (Agent) section:
You can now add users (agents, as they’re referred to) to the skill. Click the ellipse on the right hand side of the Users (Agents) grid, and then select the ‘New Bookable Resource Characteristic’ option (the names of these things just keep on getting longer and longer, don’t they!)
A nice simple window will open on the right of the screen, where you can enter the details:
This is done as follows:
You can then click the ‘Save and Close’ button at the bottom of the window, and it’ll add them.
However if you have multiple users that you’re wanting to add, I’d HIGHLY recommend clicking the arrow next to this button, and selecting the ‘Save and Create New’ option. It’s not just to create with the same skill – you can change the Skill Value as well, and it’ll save you more clicks!
Hopefully you’re still following along, and managing to get the setup done correctly – well done!
Up next – enabling skill based routing( https://thecrm.ninja/omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-skills-part-ii/)