Installing Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 (Trial) – Part I

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:

  1. The Customer Service Hub needs to be installed on the environment within the tenant
  2. There needs to be a PowerBI License assigned to the user/s
  3. Data Access Consent needs to be accepted
  4. The Omnichannel Hub needs to be installed

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!

Introduction to Omnichannel for Dynamics 365

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 on The Oops Factor

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

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!

Update on things

I’ve been somewhat quiet on here for the last month or so (as well as Twitter and LinkedIn). Fear not – I haven’t disappeared, there’s just been a lot going on.

Image result for update

 

  • Some time off work (for religious festivals)
  • Crazy client projects, requiring massive amounts of effort to convince them of Microsoft technology
  • Moving this blog (yup – that’s right). It looks like the same, but due to some of the limitations for analytics of the previous hosting provider, I’ve now moved it to a different host (and whilst doing it have learned quite a bit more about WordPress!)
  • Submitted to speak at PowerPlatform UG London in November – got accepted!
  • Submitted to speak at D365 UG London in November – unfortunately didn’t make the shortlist, but hopefully another time
  • Have started a (new) video series, which is going live VERY soon. Some great people lined up to come on it, and looking for more
  • Submitted to speak at D365 UG Summit EMEA 2020 in Barcelona – will only find out in November if I’ve made the shortlist, but feeling excited!
  • Apart from having a mentor, have managed to find a really amazing coach to help me get to the next level(s). Really looking forward to this journey
  • Have decided on what piece of Microsoft tech I’m going to be talking about in detail (oh, you thought I’d say here what is is? No – you’re going to have to wait a bit to find out, but it won’t be too long)

In other news, I’m also looking at putting a new garden shed in our garden (well, we already have the shed – need to put a base in place, and then assemble it). Ah, the fun and joys…

 

Keep an eye out for the future developments and information that I’ll be writing about!

Canvas Apps & Lookup Fields (CDS)

Canvas apps are amazing. Seriously so. I’ve been developing my knowledge around them, and it’s incredible what you’re able to do with them. Clients are loving them as well, with how quickly it’s possible to develop something that’s visually appealing.

From a licensing perspective when looking at using data into/out of D365, I’m usually using the CDS as the datasource. This means that apart from a handful of scenarios, users would be licensed with a PowerApps licence, rather than a D365 one.

With all of the wonders and benefits that canvas apps brings, there still are some limitations. One of them I came across earlier today pertains to lookup fields.

Using Contact as an example, we see that ‘Currency’ is a lookup field:

When inserting a Gallery control, it’s possible to choose up to 3 fields to be displayed (depending on the layout selected). However, when we go set the value to a lookup field from the entity, they’re not there – it’s not possible to select a lookup field to be displayed. As you can see below, there’s no possibility to select ‘Currency’ (which we saw above):

I have no idea why Microsoft chose to do this, as it is possible to select a lookup field when connecting using a D365 datasource (though admittedly even then it only seems to work in limited situations, such as for Opportunities)

So, ways to work around it:

  1. Don’t! Accept the situation for what it is, and hope that Microsoft allows it in the future
  2. Create a custom text field for the entity. Create behaviour (eg with Flow, though keep in mind scalability of the solution and Flow run limits – you don’t want to be burning through all of them!) to copy the value of the lookup field to this new field (ensure that if the value is changed, it updates the custom field value as well). You can then use this field to be shown on the gallery control
  3. For lookup fields that are actually lookups (see item 4 below), it’s possible to change the ‘Text’ property for the field. Using the example above of Currency, the formula needed would be ‘LookUp(Currencies,’Currency Name’ = ThisItem.Currency.’Currency Name’) (without the extra quotation marks). See left side image below for example of this
  4. For lookup fields that are actually of type ‘Customer’ (yup – special behaviour…thanks Microsoft!) there’s a different way that you’ll need to do this. You have to use the AsType function to declare  the type (i.e. account) of the relationship (this can also work for Owner fields, where the owner can be a user or a team). The formula needed to show the Account name would be AsType(ThisItem.’Company Name’,[@Accounts]).’Account Name’. See right side image below for the example of this

I’d also like to give thanks to Jason Almeida for his help and assistance with finding solutions – he’s an amazing guy!

What are your thoughts on this?

What is a Functional Consultant?

One of the questions that I’m regularly asked by people is ‘what do I actually do’. Well, that’s a good question, after all. Usually I’ll say something like ‘I look out of windows, and think about things’. It’s more exciting to them than what I actually do!

When I was interviewing in the consultancy world, I came across all of these wonderful titles. Technical consultant, Functional consultant, etc. I had to try to understand what they meant, as I’d like to think I have skills across the entire project lifecycle (though I’m not a developer).

Image result for project life cycle

So, with that in mind, I thought it might be good to do a post on what exactly a Functional Consultant is (as that’s apparently what I am…)!

The general statement goes as follows: ‘A Functional Consultant is there to be the liaison between the client and the development team. They listen to the client, understand what they’re trying to do, and facilitates the development of the product’.

Hold on – I know what you’re about to ask. This sounds similar to a Business Analyst, right?

That’s true, to a point. But there are functional (if you’ll excuse the pun) difference.

A Functional Consultant has strong product knowledge, understands the product/s on a (very) technical level – how it works, why it works that way, any limitations, etc. This can be quite specialist at times, depending on the product at hand. They know how to take advantage of native system functionality, and how it can support the client and their needs. This then allows them to best advise the client on the right solution that they should be going with.

Image result for correct advice

They also have the understanding, ability and knowledge to take what the client needs, create ‘user stories’ from this. The aim of a user story is to provide the full package and information for a specific feature, that is able to be understood both by the client as well as the development team. This will therefore include high level detail, as well as go into detailed specification/s that are required for the specific feature to be able to be developed and work.

By doing this, they remove the need for continual back and forth between the client and development team during the development process.

Image result for back and forth

There is also more to the role of the Functional Consultant. Because of their experience and in-depth product knowledge, along with the ability to understand and analyse what the client actually needs (as opposed to what is currently in place), they are able to up-sell, cross-sell, and increase the opportunity that they’re bringing to the client. Of course they’re going to be bringing in revenue by doing this, but they’re also then able to provide further value to the client overall.

This will then lead to a better professional image, further opportunities, and potentially even to act as a favoured advisor to the client (which is of course an amazing place to be in!).

Image result for trusted advisor

So, how would YOU describe your role?

Canvas Apps – Changing field order

Image result for field order

In Model Apps, it’s extremely easy to set out the fields on the form as you wish to. It’s a simple case of drag and drop.

However when looking at Canvas Apps, it’s not so straightforward (at least not initially!).

When adding a form to the app, you can then select which fields you’d like to appear (assuming you’ve connected it to a data source with fields, eg a CDS entity). These then show up, but aren’t always in the order that you’re wanting them to.

You can’t drag and drop the fields on the form itself – the interface doesn’t allow you to! So how exactly is this done then?

It’s actually done on the field selector slide out – you click the field that you want to change the placement of, and move it up (or down) the list.

This will then change where the field is then displayed on the form (you can also do some clever stuff with the number of columns being used etc). Quite a nice way to easily update them.

Happy layout placing!!