Thoughts & musings from a Microsoft Business Applications Ninja!
Chatting to Mike about some interesting cars, Batman, & what exactly the word ‘NASA’ means to him. Also covering items such as the joys of printing, data synchronisation, and Mike’s Top Three tips for consultants entering the technology space.
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Talking to Daniel about WHY his brain is smaller than yours, his path in life to become a technologist, and the underlying reasons behind all of it. Discussing his love of automation, and the seasonal show that he & his family provide not just the neighbourhood, but all local visitors!
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This is a question that I’m being asked on a semi-regular basis at the moment, so I thought it would be helpful to do a writeup around things. It’s definitely not clear from the outset based on existing documentation. However, being able to speak to wonderful people such as Tricia Sinclair has been amazing in being able to figure out the differences between the two applications.
So, where to start. Well, let’s first of all understand the similarities between the two applications.
Firstly, they are both multi-session apps. To put this in context (as mentioned elsewhere previously) – traditionally Dynamics 365 applications have been ‘single session’ applications. This means that users would navigate around, open/close records, create or edit as necessary. If users wanted to have multiple records open, they’d need to have multiple tabs open, or even multiple windows (yes, I still remember the days before browsers had tab functionality!).
What multi-session means in this context is that users are able to open up multiple records, and switch between them in the same tab. Open records pop into the left-hand navigation bar, and users can easily click between them. Not only that – users are also able to open further tabs within the same record pane, to access further information. These stay open whilst users switch to other records, which is really quite helpful!
So for example, a user could open a case record, then open the contact associated to the case, as well as the account related to the case. They could then further open the knowledge base to search for articles, and so on and so forth. All of these stay open.
Both apps are also web applications – they run in a browser, rather than needing to have a specific software application installed for them (unlike Unified Service Desk).
So, where do they actually differ? Well, this was a bit difficult for me to understand in the first instance, though that turned out to be because I had both Customer Service Workspace as well as Omnichannel configured within the same environment! Turns out that this wasn’t the best approach to take to compare the two, & understand their capabilities. Easily fixed though with quickly spinning up a new trial to install one in.
So with knowing how Omnichannel works (after all, I’ve written quite extensively around it), let’s take a look at the Customer Service Workspace app:
Now, without Omnichannel installed in the same environment (& obviously licensed for users), it’s not possible to have native Dynamics 365 channels such as Chat, WhatsApp, etc. Conversations will not appear for customer service agents who are using the Customer Service Workspace.
Note: If you DO have Omnichannel installed in the same environment, and users are licensed to use it, then conversations will show up within the Customer Service Workspace app for them. They’ll have notifications pop up on the screen for incoming customer sessions.
That’s not to say that it’s not possible to have channels available within Customer Service Workspace. So how do they actually come in?
Well, as it turns out, channels within Customer Service Workspace need to be third party channels. There are a plethora of 3rd party add-ons for Dynamics 365, that offer different communication capabilities. Some of these do date back a while (to before any native Microsoft capabilities).
For example, there are ISV add-ons for Customer Service that can embed a call dialler into the experience, so that customer service agents can call directly from a record. Or alternatively an add-on such as a 3rd party web chat application, that can then surface these within the Customer Service Workspace. Each of these obviously would need to be purchased, licensed & integrated appropriately with your Dynamics 365 solution as necessary too.
Now both applications also have other similar functionality, such as the Productivity Pane, Agent Scripts, Smart Assist & Knowledge Search. However there can be differences between them. For more information, I’d suggest taking a look at Tricia’s blog article that goes into depth on this.
So to summarise, Omnichannel is for the native Microsoft channels, giving customer service agents the ability to service customers using them. Licensing (currently) is with Customer Service Enterprise, and then either the Digital Chat or Digital Messaging add-on SKU’s.
Customer Service Workspace, on the other hand, allows customer service agents to be able to have a multi-session application for their work, as well as allowing communications through third-party channels. Licensing is as per the different Customer Service SKU’s, with any 3rd party add-on being licensed appropriately.
Hopefully this helps clarify the different between these two, and make them less confusing. If you have any further questions around this, please drop a comment below, and I’ll do my best to respond!
Finding out from Ryan how he became a ‘Maker’ in the first place, his professional journey, and how he actually ended up at Microsoft! Also touching on the importance of community
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Chatting to Alvin Ahnassay about his love of travelling, wildlife, & the recent trip of a lifetime. Also touching on the challenges that occur at times, how to deal with them, & finding out how porcupines have featured along the way!
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Talking to Angeliki Patsiavou around her loves of kickboxing & music (find out why she’s grown her hair so long!), & discovering the absolute curve-ball that attendees at a training session threw at her. Did she cope with it? Come listen & find out!
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Chatting to Al about squirrels, the (relaxing) sport of archery, and family time. Also touching on how #Microsoft updates might just happen to affect your day, even though you have planned otherwise!
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Talking to AJ about his interests in digital tinkering, how he got into it to begin with, and what his most ambitious project has been to date! Also covering what happens when you’re thrown in the deep end on a project, without being briefed properly, or having necessary time to prepare. How DID he manage to not only deliver, but succeed on the day…!
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We all know how much we love Microsoft specialisations as users. Studying for exams, passing the certifications, earning those wonderful badges. It’s great on a personal level, and can show that someone has (usually) been actively researching the material, and knowing what it’s about.
In the consulting space, Microsoft partners also can qualify for different specialisations. There are Silver Partners, Gold Partners, as well as other qualifications that partners can achieve as well. It’s something that partners strive towards, as they can get various benefits based on the level that they’re at, and the specialisation/s that they hold.
Some of the specialisations depend on the people that they employ. So, for example, to gain Silver status they’d need 3 people who have taken the PL-200 exam (I’m not going to list specific details around each level here, as they change semi-frequently, and Microsoft has good amount of information around it on their website).
One of the things in recent times that Microsoft has started actively tracking is something called MAU. This stands for ‘Monthly Active Users’. Ideally partners should be creating & deploying solutions that will attract more users within their customer organisations, so this should be a number that grows over time. In fact, partners are actually rated based on their customers MAU figures, so it’s something that’s actually quite important for partners to keep on top of!
So why am I bringing apps (all types!) into this, and talking about it? Well, off the back of a conversation I had with our Microsoft PTS (Partner Technical Specialist) recently, I thought it would be helpful to expand on something.
In the ‘Low Code Application Development’ specialisation, for example, there’s a section around performance. Note that this also appears on other advanced specialisations as well:
We were talking to our PTS around how exactly, as a partner, we can ‘register’ the app so that Microsoft knows that we built it, and how the MAU is measured etc. It really was quite fascinating to delve deeper into this, to gain a better understanding of such things.
Firstly, the process by which a partner registers that they’re a partner who is working in the customer organisation is by a process called PAL (Partner Admin Link). If you’re curious about the process, and wanting to know more, take a look at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/manage/link-partner-id. There’s a good amount of information there, as well as the process for it.
Now, how does this work exactly? Well, the creator of the app needs to carry out the registration. This essentially says that the creator works for a partner, and associates the partner ID. Microsoft can see who the the creator of the app is, and automatically connects all of the apps that they’ve created to the partner that they’re associating as. This is really the only step that’s needed to be done.
But how does this actually work, behind the scenes? Well, this is the interesting part!
See, every app has an ID that’s automatically generated when the app is first created/saved. This is an automatic part of the process, and isn’t something that we, as app creators, have any control over.
It’s possible to view this by going into the Maker portal, finding the app, and clicking ‘Details’:
This will then show a variety of information about the app, included the App ID:
Now what is interesting is that the underlying app code doesn’t actually show/use this App ID. It has a different GUID that’s used within it to reference the app. So somewhere behind the scenes Microsoft has something that maps one to the other:
So we’ve now seen how each app has it’s own ID. Now for the interesting part (well, I guess that’ll depend on your experience with such things). When an app is deployed through different environments (within the same tenant), the App ID remains the same! So if I have a canvas app in DEV, and then deploy it to UAT, Staging, Pre-Prod, Prod, etc, the App ID will always remain the same.
This is how Microsoft tracks the app through the different environments. This is quite important to note, because the creator of an app may not actually have access to the Production environment (or others), for example. So when we’re needing to register that we’re the owners of an app, we can do so in the Development environment, and it will counted for us across all environments.
Note: This will not work cross-tenant. It’s important to note that even when deploying across tenants, the App ID will remain the same. However Microsoft do NOT track it across tenants – it needs to be registered by the partner in the tenant that it will be used in (regardless of which actual environment). For customers therefore who have a a multi-tenant deployment approach, necessary conversations would need to be had with them as to the best way to handle this.
Now above we’ve mentioned MAU, and that Microsoft tracks this to assess if the partner (who’s created the app) is meeting necessary requirements or not.
Given that developers may not have access to the Production environment, and that some customers like to ‘soft launch’ new apps, measuring MAU at a late point isn’t going to be beneficial to the partner. After all, if you only register PAL when you have 100 users on the app, and the customer only has 120 users overall, the MAU isn’t going to be very significant.
Based on my conversations with Microsoft people around this, it would seem that the best practise would therefore be as follows for the process:
I hope that this information & guide is useful for people working at Microsoft Partners, and can help them understand how this process works.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop a comment below – I’d love to hear from you around this!
Finding out from Marty about how exactly waffles play such an important role in his life, and the extents that he’ll go to find some great places that serve them! Also covering the importance of how having a positive attitude can impact our lives, and the challenges that can come sometimes with trying to remain positive.
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!
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