I come from an ‘on-premise’ background. I’ve spent years in organisations with on-premise systems such as Dynamics 365. Take me into a server room that’s alive with whirring fans, and I get quite nostalgic. Those were the days…well, in some ways, anyhow. But having recently discovered some quite helpful functionality, I thought I’d share it with others!
See, when it came to Dynamics 365 security, there was no way to automate things. Yes, users had to be created in Active Directory (and also, in a folder that the Dynamics install could refer to within AD!), but they had to be manually added to Dynamics 365. There was no way to automate this (from recollection – then again my memory grows dim with the fog of time).
So what the system administrators needed to do was to manually go to Settings/Security within the system, and there they could either add a single user at a time, or multiple users. They would then assign role/s (for multiple users, all of the users would need to have the same role/s – it wasn’t possible to modify individual users within this process).
One way to slightly speed up time in handling different security roles was to have teams, relating to the business needs. The security role/s would be created, assigned to a team, and then any user added to the team would automatically get all of the permissions that they needed.
Then came the heady world of Dynamics 365 being online! Well, nothing much changed really, at least not for a little while.
But then, things really did change, in May 2019. Functionality for security teams within Dynamics 365 was increased. Notably, there was now something called a ‘AAD Security Group Team’:
So what was this magical new item?
When we create a team, and we set the Team Type to ‘AAD Security Group’, we’re now able to set an AAD Object ID. In fact, it’s required! After we’ve created this object within Dynamics 365, we can then apply security role/s to it directly (as we could to any other team records beforehand):
Let’s take a moment to reflect & think on this. Until now, we’ve had to handle security directly within Dynamics 365. Now, we have the ability to have an Azure Active Directory (for that is what AAD stands for) group, and reference it within Dynamics 365.
Suddenly new possibilities open up. As part of the on-boarding process (for example) we can users to specific AAD security groups, which will then give them access with appropriate permissions within Dynamics 365. We’re also able to have multiple AAD groups, each inheriting a different set of Dynamics 365 roles, and thereby create a multi-layering approach to different business & security needs.
We’re also able to use tools such as PowerShell, LogicApps, Power Apps & Power Automate to carry out automation around this. There’s an Azure AD connector (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/azuread/) which gives the ability to set up & administer these.
We’re actually using this functionality now in some of our COVID-19 response apps. Instead of needing our own support desk to manage the (external) users, we’ve provided an interface where client IT departments can quickly log in, upload a list of users, and assign them to the relevant AAD group/s. It’s very quick, and allows the users to onboard to the Power Apps within minutes!
So with knowing this, how do you feel it might help benefit you? Comment below – I’d love to hear!
Chatting with Thomas Sandsør about his celebrity status as one of the National Beach Football team, how he got there, and his experiences from the game. Also talking about starting on projects as a junior consultant, & why it’s SO important to ask questions & not just blindly follow instructions.
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One of the really nice things about the Omnichannel Agent experience is that it uses tabs. The conversation itself is in the left side of the screen, with the Customer Summary open in the right side of the screen. However this isn’t fixed into place – it’s possible to open additional tabs next tot he Customer Summary tab, and navigate to various places in the system.
This allows agents to easily look up additional information on records such as contacts & cases, as well as other places.
Agents are therefore able to quickly flip between different system records, getting the information that they may need to satisfy the customer interaction.
So that’s great. Clicking the + icon on the tab allows new tabs to be opened, and the agent can select which record type they’d like to see:
The system allows movement between these if they disappear off the screen with arrow buttons being available:
So all of this is really good, and is provided as system default behaviour, without any customisation or configuration being needed to be done.
So let’s now think about several other types of scenarios, and see what could be done to enable them:
You want the agent to see a dashboard showing how long the production line is currently taking with different order types
You want to be able to look up an item in another stock system
You want to carry out a custom search in your distributor network
All of the above items (and many more) are things that aren’t native within Dynamics 365. It’s therefore not possible to display this with native system functionality…or is it?
Well, it is! Omnichannel has something called ‘Application Tab Templates’. These allow you to specify custom tabs to open when a chat start. With these, you’re able to point to any web-based resource, even if it’s not within Dynamics 365!
Note: It’s not possible to point to a bespoke desktop application using Application Tab Templates. The resource that you’re wanting to point to needs to be web-based. This is one of the main differentiators between Omnichannel & Unified Service Desk – USD allows you to point to a desktop/server application within the window.
Setting up a new Application Tab Template is not too difficult, thankfully:
We’re able to select what the Application Type should be. There are various options here, including web resources, ‘third party’ websites, entity lists, etc:
When we save the record, we can then input the necessary parameters for that type. These parameters are system-defined, so we have to work within these, and can’t add any additional ones (at this point in time). We can also use values from pre-chat surveys based on information that the customer has provided before the chat starts. Imagine being an agent with a new conversation, and you already have the entire purchase history for them open, or their billing records!
Once this has been created, the next step is to associate it with a session template. Session templates govern the following items:
The behaviour of the chat by default (Docked, Minimized or Hidden
The name of the session
The application tab/s that open (you can add as many as you want to)
The agent scripts that are available to be used.
To do this, open the relevant session template, and then add the application tab/s to it that you want to appear:
Save & close the session template record, and refresh the agent interface. When a new chat session comes in, Hey Presto!
Using the ability to have different chat widgets, it’s possible to customise each one in a different way. So for example:
The Sales team could have the distributor system open, to know how long it’ll take to fulfil an order
The Billing team could have their invoice/finance system open, to have the customer billing history
The Motorbike Servicing team could have their system which tracks all work done on your motorbike open, to see the entire service history
It’s really up to you how you choose to best make use of this. I feel it’s really quite helpful, and will cut down on the time that agents need to spend to pull up different pieces of information to help the customer.
How do you think you would use it in your company? Comment below to share 🙂
With all of that, I thought it would be helpful to take a further look into how sentiment analysis actually works, so that we can understand it a little better.
Now, the actual nuts & bolts for sentiment analysis are provided by Azure Cognitive Services. There are a wide range of tools available through this, but we have no need to go into Azure to configure this. It’s a simple setting within Omnichannel to get it working, rather than needing to fiddle around with many different things:
However, what’s actually going on during a conversation, and how is the sentiment analysis worked out/calculated? We see the pretty little face icons (with the different colours), but how are these actually being set?
Well, there are two ways in which algorithms are used to calculate the sentiment that’s shown:
Natural language processing (NLP)
Machine learning (ML) algorithms
With these two ways methods, it’s possible to not only see what the current interactions are showing, but also to enhance the model to understand sentiment better.
Note: In a session that I presented recently, one of the attendees asked if it’s possible to train the model, to result in a custom algorithm. Unfortunately this isn’t possible to do – the machine learning that takes place is the general Azure one, rather than one for a single company or customer
The following diagram shows the sentiments that are used. They’re nicely colour-coded, for ease of reference as well:
When a customer interacts through Omnichannel, the sentiment shown is based on the last 6 messages received from the customer. As a result, the sentiment shown can very well fluctuate & change during the conversation, based on how it’s going.
Obviously, customers aren’t just going to use English to communicate. Companies are based around the world, and will use their native/local language when providing support. Omnichannel allows for this without an issue, utilising the Azure Text Translator API behind the scenes to provide this. If you’re interested to see which languages are supported for this, head to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/translator/language-support which is the latest source of information for this.
There are some interesting things to know around how this actually works:
When a language other than English is used, the Text Translator API translates the text to English, and then it’s analysed/scored for sentiment
If a language isn’t supported by the Text Translator API, it won’t be scored
If profanity (eg a swearword) is detected, the sentiment will automatically be shown as Negative or Very Negative, regardless of the rest of the last 6 lines of conversation
Some people have expressed their concern to me around how accurate the Azure translation actually is, but to date I haven’t seen any major concerns resulting out from it. As with the other Azure services, Microsoft is continually refining & improving it. That being said, there are several languages with very nuanced terms. I’d like to think that these would be supported without issues.
There is, however, somewhat of an interesting behaviour when starting off the analysis at the beginning of the conversation:
If the initial language is detected as English, it’s assumed that all of the subsequent conversation will be in English. As a result, if the customer switches away from English, the system won’t recognise this, and a Neutral sentiment score will be shown
If the initial conversation is not in English, then the system will check every conversation line & re-detect the language as necessary.
This seems somewhat strange to me, as I’d have thought that the system would automatically check the language for each conversation line. I can think of plenty of scenarios where different languages are used in a single conversation, even if it does start with English being used. I’d like to think that this will be updated at some point, to make the experience better.
Going into Matt’s love of films, and why we think we should set up a ‘Quiz Supper Night’ team as a service to others. Discovering the story of the first data migration that he ever did, and his discovery of the special fields to use when uplifting data into a system.
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This is about some interesting behaviour around workflows & managed solutions, which I’ve recently discovered. Let me give a bit of background first.
Currently I’m working on several COVID-19 apps for local authorities, to be able to help them assist people in need. As part of this, each local authority has a portal within the solution. The portal itself is a Power App Portal, and I haven’t really had exposure to them before.
Default portal view, not the one we implemented!
Installing a Power Apps Portal comes with quite a large number of solutions in order to get it to work. More on this below.
Due to the way in which we’re engaging with our clients, the solutions are built in a single tenancy (different environments, of course!). We’re then inviting the users in as guests through Azure Active Directory, to be able to access functionality etc. This works well – we don’t need to worry about managing user accounts, AAD permissions, etc. However it also means that we don’t have any Office 365 licenses within the environment itself.
Now we have workflows that are sending emails out around the portal – registrations, password resets, etc. These are being generated automatically by the system, but as there’s no Office 365 mailbox for the user, they’re queuing up.
It’s not possible to authenticate a mailbox belonging to an external user (we tried!), as the system needs a native (full) user with an active mailbox to be able to send out emails. This is of course unlike Power Automate, where you can create a Send Email action and use specified credentials for logging in to send an email.
So, we did what any normal system administrator/configurator would do. We opened up the relevant (managed) solution, and from there opened up the workflow that we needed to modify. Things looked normal at first – we deactivated the workflow, and started poking around it to see what made it tick.
We came across the part that actually took user credentials to send the email that was being generated, and modified this accordingly. Then we saved the workflow, which was successful. However, upon trying to then reactivate the workflow, we got the following error message (helpful, isn’t it!):
Nicely it gives the option to download the log file around the error. This can usually be quite helpful (at times), so we thought we’d take a look at it. Behold the following (I’ve had to shrink the screenshot to allow it to fit on the screen!):
Isn’t that ‘beautiful’. Don’t worry if you can’t actually make out the error information – none of it makes any sense, at least not in a practical sort of way.
Being stuck at this, I thought to reach out to one of the community Power App Portal champions, Mario Trueba. I’ve known him for a while, and he’s just simply amazing. Having asked if I could jump on a call with him for 15 minutes to diagnose (& hopefully find an answer!), we spent almost an hour!
He suggested trying to use the classic interface, as I had been doing all of this through the new UI. So off I went to open up Classic (I’ve missed this, I will freely admit). Through there, we opened up the solution, opened up the workflow, and re-activated it. Or not, as it happens – even through the Classic UI, we weren’t able to do so. We tried a variety of things, but to no avail. It just simply wasn’t happening!
I was slightly concerned that there was an underlying issues with Portals, perhaps from some legacy CafeX code. I had tried searching with Mario for error details contained within the log file, but we couldn’t find anything that would fix it.
The next morning on waking up & checking Twitter, I noticed someone tweeting around Portals, and engaged with them. They turned out to be on the Portals development team, and told me to shoot them over an email with the details, which I did. They then replied to me, saying that it wasn’t anything specific to Portals, and that I should raise a support ticket. That crossed one item off my list (a Portals issue), but I was still needing to get things resolved.
So I went off & raised a support ticket. A few hours later, a very nice tech support person called Siva gave me a call to discuss the issue. We hopped into Teams, and in what I can only describe as the SHORTEST period of time that I’ve ever experienced, the issue was resolved (it took 7 minutes in total. Yes, I know…). Don’t worry – I’m not going to leave you hanging here!
See, what the ‘issue’ (and I’m deliberately putting it in quotes) was turned out to be something quite simple, yet quite strange.
Essentially opening the workflow from the managed solution somehow (& I don’t know HOW) inherits the ‘managed’ property. This is whether we open it from the new UI, or the classic UI. As a result we’re able to deactivate it, but we CAN’T reactivate it due to the system thinking that we’re modifying a managed component (as an aside, it is interesting how I did manage to save it though?). This was what was causing things to fall over, and the error message was really not helpful at all.
It’s also not a matter of being a Microsoft (or ISV) managed solution. I’ve replicated this happening with a solution that I’ve built, exported as managed, & then imported.
So how did we do it? Well, there are two ways in which this can be dealt with:
Either we can go to System/Processes, find the workflow there, open it up, and then reactivate it:
Or we can open up the Default solution, navigate to processes, select the workflow, and then reactivate it:
Both methods work just fine, and as mentioned earlier on, I’ve since replicated this on workflows in other managed solutions.
To me, this is somewhat strange, and should work regardless. According to Siva, it’s the desired system behaviour, though I have no idea why someone should want it to work in one way, and not in another.
So if you’re reading this, and you might just happen to know someone in the necessary Microsoft engineering/development team who’d be able to answer this, could you point them my way? I’d love to engage them to find out why, how, and if they could pretty please change this?
Finding out what Ramon misses about Spain, and the wonders that he’s discovered in London. If you’re ever in the mood for a stroll along South Bank, drop him a line! Going into details around his background as a pure .Net developer, and what happened on a project for a contact that didn’t go through proper requirement gathering. Quite an interesting story.
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Talking through Ben’s love of cars & sound systems (he has friends who have been on Pimp My Ride), how he actually really respond to long emails (and the outcomes from that), and what he really thinks of Outlook-reminder style app. Also touching on the important of empathy in the workplace, and getting better from mistakes.
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This post is going to be somewhat different & out of the norm for the usual sort of topics that I talk about. It’s also going to be somewhat personal, and mention a special person who’s been an absolute rock for me.
So, where to start? Well, there’s been a lot that’s happened in my life over the last year or so. I touched on things briefly in my post at the end of last year. Several deaths in the family (father & grandmother), some sicknesses, etc. I’ve also started one job, decide it wasn’t right for me after almost a year, and then needed to look for another job. Thankfully I managed (even with all the craziness going on in the world currently), which I started in March 2020.
We’ve also expanded our own family (again), and been dealing with all of the usual things that come with children etc.
Now, why am I mentioning all of this, and specifically, why am I mentioning it now? Well, there’s one specific reason for me doing so, and that’s to mention Alison Mulligan. Otherwise there wouldn’t really be any point in this post at all, in my opinion…
Now, for those who don’t know Alison, let me try to summarise her as best as I can in a few words.
Created by LittleArtistRo at ScottishSummit ’20
Well, to start off with Alison works in the recruitment industry. Woah…hold on. Yes, she’s a recruiter. But she’s the FIRST recruiter that I’ve come across in over a decade who has what I would consider to be proper (& correct) principles. Now I’ve dealt with many recruiters & recruitment companies over my professional career. Some are better, some are worse, and some are truly dreadful (no, I’m NOT going to mention who they are).
However, Alison absolutely & totally bucks the trend. This isn’t just my opinion, it’s the opinion of everyone who I’ve met who’s ever known Alison. See, Alison doesn’t just want to fill roles with people. Her purpose (which she’s said time & time again, in private as well as public), is to find the right role for someone. That doesn’t stop at roles that she has to offer though. For her, it’s not about the money side of things; it’s about the person being happy & fulfilled in the role that’s right for THEM. To this end, she’ll connect someone who’s looking for a job with OTHER recruiters, or people within the industry who are looking to fill a role, even if she doesn’t make anything off of it.
I started The Oops Factor series last year. I had been bouncing ideas & concepts off several people, Alison being one of them. She was highly supportive of the project, and told me that I had to have her on as one of my first guests (which of course I did!)
When I was looking for my next role at the end of 2019/beginning of 2020, she was there at the end of a phone (and occasionally in person, when possible), whenever I needed to talk. She updated me constantly on the state of the market, & opportunities that she had, as well as those that she was aware of that OTHERS had. She was there as an absolute rock, without asking for anything specific in return. When I needed a laptop to present at PowerPlatform UG London in November 2019, and I didn’t have one available, she told me to come along to her office. When I got there, she handed me one of the office ones, told me to set it up as I needed, and to use it for as long as I needed to. How many people do you know who’d do that?
When I landed a new role (which incidentally wasn’t through her), she called me up immediately to congratulate me, and spent time on the phone asking about it, how I was feeling, etc. She truly cared about what I had been going through, and was happy & celebrating with me the success in finding something.
Now that was my own personal experience, but I know that it’s not unique to me. I’m aware of others who she’s helped in the same way, and who she’s continuing to help in these critical times. I constantly recommend Alison as the first point of contact to anyone who’s going to be looking for a new role – she’s that amazing.
Things don’t stop there though. Oh no. See, Alison is also active within the (technical) community. She comes along to the User Group sessions, knows the technology, & participates. She doesn’t even just confine herself to ones that are local to her – she goes to others that aren’t as near. As a result, people know her, and get to see that she’s not just pretending in order to get clients. She loves the technology that we all love, and can hold her own (usually) in conversations!
So for most people, that would usually be enough. They’re participating, getting known within the community, etc. Alison doesn’t just do that. She also gets involved in organising & hosting.
Let me give an example of this, to provide some some context. There was a SUPER special community Lego hackathon earlier this year.
The location for it had issues at the last moment, and it was going to be cancelled. Alison heard about this, told the organisers to leave it with her for a few hours, and she’d call them back.
Within that time, she organised to host it in her office building (remember – this is at the last minute, and not an easy thing to do!). She helped get things ready, participated throughout the day, helped pack things up, and finally joined everyone for the ‘after-event’ drinks. It’s not the first time that she’s done this, and highly unlikely to be the last.
Most people who are involved in recruitment tend to be looked at cautiously (at best) by the community. Honestly, we’re tired of them turning up, trying to get people’s details, and/or entice them away from current jobs without really considering what’s best for them. It’s happened time & time again, and we don’t like it. In fact, there was an offer last year from a recruitment firm to host a community event, and it was turned down due to this.
Alison doesn’t fall into this; she’s trusted (and absolutely adored, if you want the truth) by the community. Events without her there aren’t the same , though we understand of course that it’s not always possible to commit the time/travel to attending (we all have times that this happens).
Some years ago, a community organisation that I was helping out with told me that in every community, there are one or two people without whom things wouldn’t function at all. They may not be prominent, may not be paid much (or even at all), but they’re the crucial cog & lynchpin. If they weren’t around, things would fall apart.
In my opinion, Alison is one of these crucial cogs & lynchpins. I really don’t know how the different London technical communities would manage without her input, advice & help. I consider myself blessed to know her, count her as a friend, and to chat about motorbikes whenever we’re able to!
If you don’t yet know Alison, I humbly suggest that you try to come along to one of these events (which are virtual at the moment, making it somewhat easier), and get to know her. Her Twitter is https://twitter.com/AMulligan365, and she’s on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amulligan365/.
You’ll appreciate her sense of humour, her experience in life, and the joy that she also has with seeing how the technology works to make everything better.
Finding out from Matt as to how he got into vlogging (video blogging) to begin with, and the special test that he uses when explaining technology concepts. Matt shared with us about his special ‘love’ of Sharepoint content types with inheritance, how he occasionally does a spot of ‘pruning’ with Sharepoint forms, & the absolutely important of community!
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