Thoughts & musings from a Microsoft Business Applications Ninja!
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Like all of the other applications and features within Dynamics 365 and the PowerPlatform, the ability to use Omnichannel features requires security role/s to be assigned to users.
These are assigned in the usual way that all security roles are assigned for an environment. A user (with appropriate admin privileges) will need to go to admin.powerplatform.com, select ‘Environments’ in the left-hand navigation bar, select the environment that they’re wanting to set security for, and click the ‘Settings’ menu button
Under the Settings menu, select the option for ‘Users + Permissions’, and then select ‘Users’
You’ll get a screen opening, in which you can manage users and security roles for them. Select the user/s that you’re wanting to assign Omnichannel security roles to, and click the ‘Manage Roles’ menu button (it’s possible to assign the same role/s to multiple users at the same time).
Note: You can also use the search box (not displayed in the image below) to search for a specific user that you’re wanting to add the role/s to)
When the Manage User Roles window opens, you’ll be able to see all security roles that you can apply to the user/s. For Omnichannel, there are 4 specific roles:
Note: All Omnichannel users (agents & supervisors) should be assigned the ‘Customer service app access’ security role
The differences between the three Omnichannel security roles are as follows:
| Omnichannel Agent | Can view user list / presence list / work stream list/ queue list |
| Can view quick replies | |
| Omnichannel Supervisor | Can view user list / presence list / work stream list / queue list / PBI config list |
| Can edit default presence and default capacity of a user | |
| Can edit queue assignment of a user | |
| Can add / remove users from presence | |
| Can add / remove agents from queue | |
| Can view / add / edit / delete quick replies | |
| Can view operating hours | |
| Omnichannel Administrator | Can view user list / presence list / work stream list / queue list / PBI config list |
| Can edit roles of a user | |
| Can edit default presence and default capacity of a user | |
| Can edit queue assignment of a user | |
| Can add / edit / delete presence | |
| Can add / remove users from presence | |
| Can add / edit / delete presence associations | |
| Can add / edit / delete work streams | |
| Can add / edit / delete channel settings, context settings, routing rules | |
| Can add / edit / delete queues | |
| Can add / remove agents from queue | |
| Can view / add / edit / delete quick replies | |
| Can add / edit / delete PBI config | |
| Can view add / edit / delete operating hours | |
| Can view add / edit / delete auth settings |
Once role/s have been selected and saved against user records, you’ll be able to see the users show up in the ‘Omnichannel’ user view
You’ll also be able to see these users under the ‘Users section of the Omnichannel Administration application
We’ll look next at how Omnichannel users are managed.
So far I’ve covered the Omnichannel installation process over the last two posts (https://thecrm.ninja/installing-omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-trial-part-i/ and https://thecrm.ninja/installing-omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-trial-part-ii/), which is all about getting the Omnichannel Application to appear in the Dynamics 365 Administration Centre under Applications.
However, once we’ve gotten it to appear, we now need to carry out the initial basic configuration to get it to be active.
This will then get us to a point where we can start configuring it to use with the different channels that we’d want to have it active for, such as online chat, Facebook, etc.
So if you’ve been following the process so far, in the Dynamics 365 Administration Center you’ll see the following:
The next step is to select the line for Omnichanel, and click ‘Manage’:
You’re going to be prompted with another permissions request, and oh boy this is a LONG one! Select the ‘Consent’ box, and click Accept to continue (you’ll need to be a Global Tenant Admin to do this)
For all of your hard work so far, you’re going to be presented with the following BEAUTIFUL screen!
This is the Omnichannel Admin Centre, where you’ll be able to now set up Omnichannel for the environment/s that you want to have it present in. To proceed, click the ‘Add an org’ button, and you’ll be asked which environment (organisation) you want to set up Omnichannel for:
Select the environment, accept the Privacy Terms, and then click the purple right-arrow to move on to the next step.
For each of the options available (currently they are Chat, SMS and Facebook), you’ll be asked if you want to enable it for your organisation. Select the option/s you wish to be present, and click the purple right-arrow to continue (example shown below of the Chat enable screen):
Continue until the end, where you’ll get the Summary screen (shown below). Click the purple check button to confirm and continue:
You’ll now be shown a status screen, where it’ll tell you that your selected options are being set up:
At this point it’s a good idea to take a break. Simply because the setup of these is going to take a whiiiiiiiiiiiile (it’s obviously doing a lot behind the scenes!). Go have a coffee, a walk, visit the gym, do some laundry, etc. Once it’s finally finished, it’ll show that setup is complete:
And if you go back to the overall Omnichannel Administration summary page, you’ll see a nice little summary of the environment here as well (along with the option to set up another environment with Omnichannel)
Once this has been completed, you’ll now be able to see Omnichannel present within the list of Dynamics apps within the Dynamics environment:
The next stages will be to carry out the Omnichannel configuration within Dynamics 365 for the different channels, which I’ll be going into in the next series of posts.
I hope that you’ve found this helpful so far – please reach out with any questions that you may have!
Alison Mulligan coming on The Oops Factor. Some great discussions around motorbikes, admin privileges, and deleting records!
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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:
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
In order to be able to access Omnichannel for Dynamics 365, it’s necessary to install the Omnichannel Hub solution. There are several prerequisite items that are necessary in order to do this, with several steps.
The requirements for Omnichannel Hub are as follows:
Let’s go through the above steps. Due to the length of this, I’m going to be splitting this into two parts. This guide will cover getting Omnichannel up and running in a Trial environment – I’ll be doing a separate entry on getting it in a Paid For environment.
Customer Service Hub
This is actually quite simple. When setting up your trial at https://trials.dynamics.com/ (using the link to set up the trial for development purposes, of course)
You need to select the option below on the scenario screen (you can of course select the ‘All of these’ option as well!)
If creating the environment from admin.powerplatform.com, ensure that you select the option to create a database for the environment, ensure that you select the option to deploy Dynamics 365 apps, and then select the ‘Customer Service’ option (you can select others as well – it won’t affect Omnichannel)
Once it’s installed, you can check that it’s there by going to your Apps within the Dynamics 365 environment, and you should see the Customer Service Hub option there, both on the app menu on the left, as well as on the main screen
PowerBI License
Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 requires a PowerBI license assigned to users. They may have this already as part of their assigned license/s. Sometimes the system doesn’t always pick this up – if this happens, it’s possible to get and assign PowerBI Free licenses for users through the Office Admin portal (under Billing/Purchase Services):
When going through the check-out process, you’ll be prompted for a credit card. Thankfully it’s possible to bypass this by selecting the option to invoice, rather then use a credit card (it’s a free license anyhow, so just go through the process and finish). Once the licenses are in the admin centre, assign them to the users who’ll be using Omnichannel.
Data Access Consent
In order to allow Omnichannel for Customer Service to read and write data on behalf of users, Data Access Consent needs to be granted. This has to be performed by a Global Tenant Admin, who needs to use the following link – https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2070932.
Once they access the link, they’ll need to sign in, and they’ll be presented with the following acceptance screen (note how many things are being accessed!):
They should select the ‘Consent’ box, and then click Accept
In the second part of this series (https://thecrm.ninja/installing-omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-trial-part-ii/ ), I go into the details of how to actually install the Omnichannel Hub!
With all of the functionality that has recently been released for Dynamics 365, I’ve been taking a look into the Omnichannel capabilities, and what it brings to enable clients and their customers from a technology standpoint.
I feel that this is really going to be a major benefit to many different sectors, and will allow users to benefit majorly in being able to retain and grow their customer base, through the general customer experience and behaviour.
The video below is the start of a new series in which I’m going to go deep into what Omnichannel actually is, how it works, and the capabilities that it brings.
Chris Huntingford making an appearance on The Oops Factor, and breaking his own rule of ‘an interview should be MAX 7 minutes, bro!’. Discussions around experiences, community, tech and tattoo’s
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Bringing Em on to The Oops Factor to talk about tattoo’s, community, marketing…and of course their Oops Factor experience!
Interviewing Keith Whatling for The Oops Factor, and gaining some valuable lessons about projects and spelling