Well, to start off with, I wasn’t actually planning on writing this blog post – I was going to continue looking at the setup for Queues, but that’s going to have to wait until later on this week!
The subject of this post has come out of several conversations that I’ve been having with the lovely Tricia Sinclair on Omnichannel, who’s also extremely knowledgeable about Customer Service and DevOps.
This situation was regarding a company based in Australia. Their main tenant was set in the North America region (when you set up your tenant, you choose where the default should be).
They had also set up one of their organisations within the Australian region (ie not in their default tenant region), and were trying to install Omnichannel for it. However, they were running into an interesting error, and couldn’t get it to work, no matter what they tried to do.
In the end, the decision was taken to reach out to the Microsoft Product Team for Omnichannel, in order to try to solve the issue. Thankfully the product team identified the sticking point, which is actually a VERY important lesson to keep in mind when setting up Omnichannel.
The answer was that the organisation (environment) HAS TO BE in the same region as the tenant itself. Ie it MUST be in the default region. If it’s not, then it won’t be possible to set up Omnichannel!
This hadn’t helped with troubleshooting the issue, as these needed to be carried out as well.
So in summary:
It’s vitally important to ensure that the Organisation is set up in the same region as the tenant default region
It’s also vitally important to carry out all of the installation/configuration steps correctly (as per the above links) to ensure a successful Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 installation
Pavlos Vasileiadis coming on The Oops Factor. Talking about jumping out of planes, Minimum Viable Product, the Power Platform, and Agile Methodology. Also find out who Pavlos recommends to come onto the show!
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.
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:
Customer service app access
Omnichannel administrator
Omnichannel agent
Omnichannel supervisor
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
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!
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.
Having recently completed several exams, including the new MB-900 Fundamentals for Dynamics365, I thought it would be useful to set out how the new exam structure works, and what paths can be taken within it. This post is meant to be for D365 CE, not for F&O (I’m hoping to do a separate post on that another time).
The first question that usually comes up around certifications is ‘why should I take the exams – I know how to use/configure/deploy the system!’.
The answer to this is actually quite easy – if you know the stuff, then the exams won’t be too hard for you. They’ll also give you a better overview of things, especially due to the new curriculum (eg including cloud offerings, etc).
Not only is it rewarding for you to take (and pass!) them, it shows that you’re able to do so (and you get cool badges…thanks Microsoft for gamifying things lol). Additionally it can also help your company to qualify for different Microsoft Partner tiers, which can be quite important in the grand scheme of things (I am NOT going to talk about the recent IUR situation…)
It can also help when applying for a job position, as recruiters will check to see if you’re current with the latest exams. Experience is great of course, but they’ll want to know why you may not have any (recent) exams to show your knowledge.
The first exams in the series that I’d recommend to take are:
The MB-900, as per the name, goes over the fundamentals of Dynamics 365, and also gets you used to the new format (it’s now 60 minutes, with approx 25 questions). There are now drag’n’drop questions, multiple choice answers, and ‘journey style’ questions (these are when the question presented depends on the answer given for the previous question)
The MB-200 exam covers the different deployment types, configurations and integrations, and click-based customisations. It expands on the base that’s set out in the MB-900.
The next question usually asked is ‘what area/app should I specialise in’? That’s ALSO quite simple to answer – there are (currently) 4 options available for exams (after the MB-900). These are:
So, pick which one you think would be most suitable to your role, and take them. Of course, that’s not stopping you taking some of the OTHER exams as well – why not try to get the whole set in!
Study tips:
Read the syllabus! Microsoft doesn’t just draw them up randomly – they cover the material needed. They’ve also been through Beta phases where feedback has been given (which Microsoft usually take some note of). It will give you an idea of where the focus is, what’s needed to check, etc
Practise – hands on experience. You really DO need this now. Fire up a trial, start playing around. Use the syllabus as a guide for this – if it says that you need to know about cases (eg case management, case routing, case rules, parent/child cases), then make sure that you DO know how to do these!
Talk to others who are studying at the same time – perhaps try to make a study group. I was fortunate enough to join twice-weekly session for one of my exams, hosted by an amazing Microsoft Trainer.
When taking the exam, if you come across something that you don’t know, and are guessing the answer to – DON’T CHANGE THE ANSWER LATER ON. In this sort of scenario the gut reaction is usually 85% correct, and it’s better to leave it than try to second guess yourself.
Also, don’t stress out about the exams. They’re not the Big Bad Wolf – once you do them, you’ll see that they’re not absolutely crazy. Sure, you may have to guess a question or two, but even very experienced people do that.
As as tech guy, I immediately know what someone is referring to when they’re talking about environments (within a technical context, of course). However there are a large number of (non) technical people who have absolutely no idea what the word ‘environment’ means, leaving aside how they are used.
The aim of this post is therefore to demystify what environments are, the different types, how they’re used, etc.
Caveat: There may be specific circumstances in which these may differ, eg for Dynamics F&O
So firstly – what is an environment?
This is simple to answer – an environment is a full (technical) system. There may be multiple different systems contained within the same environment (or they could be split out). There will be different environments used (more details below) in any company
Incidentally, people may also use the word ‘instance’ instead of ‘environment’.
The next question is – how are environments used?
Thankfully this is also simple to answer – environments are used to enable different parts of the technical system roll-out process. Each environment is unique (and should usually not be connected to each other
Types of environments
There are quite a few different types of environments needed. Listed below are the ones that are usually considered to be MVP (no, not Microsoft Valued Professional….in this context it means Minimum Viable Product)
Development This is the environment that the development team will use for coding and configuration, as well as initial testing of code Once code is stable, it will be promoted to the next environment
UAT (User Acceptance Testing) This environment is where the client/business will access to test the system. Each development item will have a logged story, and these will be tested against. They will either pass (and then be signed off) or not pass (with explanations given as to why they haven’t passed) and be sent back to the development team
Note: It may be possible to use the UAT instance for training, and all client/business users to access it. This will depend greatly on the resources needed, project timeline/progress, etc. It is not usually advised to do this though
Staging This environment is where data migration is tested out, to ensure that all data from the previous system/s are successfully migrated (with any transformations that may need to take place).
Note: It may be possible to combine the UAT and Staging instances, if the proposed system is very simple and not complicated/large
Production This is the actual LIVE system for the company
Customisations, code etc are promoted through the different environments with releases. It’s important to ensure that these are carried out properly and scheduled in, especially when applying a release to a production environment. I’ll cover how this should be done, and what things to bear in mind, in a future post.
There are also several other types of environments that may be being used, depending on the type/scale/scope of the project:
Training This is an instance with all customisations and code (to date) along with data that is used to train all client/business users. Any updates in functionality to test environments would need to be replicated to this environment as well
Integration Depending on the other system/s that D365 will be exchanging data with (both in and out) it may be necessary to have a specific instance set up to test out the integration with these other components
Support A clone of the Production environment for use in support cases eg attempting to recreate issues/bugs that have been raised
If you’ve come across any other types of environments, please do comment!
Dynamics 365 is Microsoft’s business application suite, combining in a single system its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) capabilities. It includes four main applications: Customer Engagement, Finance and Operations, Talent and Retail.
Microsoft allows organisations to pick and choose the specific
applications they want to use to achieve their needs and objectives. This
allows organisations to use only the applications that they need, rather than
purchasing licenses to applications that may be left unused.
Dynamics
365 for Customer Engagement
Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement is Microsoft’s CRM system. It
contains a collection of separate applications that make up its CRM system,
including: Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Field Service and Project
Service Automation.
Dynamics 365 for Sales
This application enables organisations, and the users within these
organisations, to track sales across the entire sales lifecycle from beginning
to end, build and maintain close customer relationships through effective
management of customer accounts and gain valuable insights on the sales
process. The application also includes tips, suggestions and insights which
help to maintain customer relationships with ease.
Functionality includes:
Contacts/Accounts
Leads
Opportunities
Quotes
Orders
Invoices
Dynamics 365 for Marketing
Dynamics 365 for Marketing is an
application which seeks to optimise the way in which organisations generate
sales opportunities and turn them into business relationships. The application
seeks to bring together sales and marketing strategy to create a unified
approach for managing the whole sales lifecycle. Companies can use the
Marketing application to create a personalised marketing strategy which uses
data on previous activity to target specific individuals and deliver
personalised advertisement messages.
Functionality includes:
Event Management
Portals
LinkedIn Integration
Lead Management
Surveys
Email Marketing
Behaviour tracking
Customer Journeys
Dynamics 365 for Customer Service
This application provides
companies with the ability to provide personalised, high quality customer
service on a range of platforms. The Customer Service Hub within the application
provides a centralised GUI and includes many tools that companies can use to
improve and optimise the service they provide to customers. These tools provide
a complete view of customer cases and enable companies to provide personalised
support for customers. Users can create and view customer cases, record and
monitor progress, view previous customer interactions and see an overview of
all open cases, which can be broken down into categories, such as product,
priority and incident type.
Functionality includes:
Contacts/Accounts
Queues
Cases
Contracts
Knowledge Base Articles
SLA’s
Dynamics 365 for Field Service
The Field Service application focuses
on businesses’ operations in the field and provides companies with tools they
need to successfully operate and deliver high quality service to customers when
on-site. The application optimises the efficiency of resources through improved
scheduling, increasing the effectiveness of staff on-site and utilises Internet
of Things to identify and diagnose customer issues early on.
Functionality includes:
Resources
Bookings
Work Orders
Inventory
Agreements & Billing
Universal Resource Scheduling
Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation
Project Service Automation is an
application targeted towards companies that provide project-based services and
includes tools to increase productivity, efficiency and the quality of the work
being delivered. The application includes tools to assist these organisation
through the whole project lifecycle and allows users to plan projects, track
progress, forecast price and profitability, monitor the scope, review and
assess costs and time, optimise resource scheduling, amongst other things
Dynamics
365 for Finance and Operations
Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations is Microsoft’s integrated ERP
system. It includes a variety of features such as supply chain management, intelligent
analytics, financial management, operations support and human resources
management. One of the central features of Finance and Operations is its
financial management capabilities. This platform allows organisations to use
features such as general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable,
banking, budgeting and forecasting, fixed asset management and tax management.
Finance and Operations also includes a number of capabilities which aid
organisations to manage and optimise their supply chain operations. Some of
these capabilities include sourcing and procurement, inventory and warehouse
management, materials requirements planning (MRP), and manufacturing
management. These capabilities enable organisations to optimise and automate
their supply chain at every point throughout the process.
Dynamics
365 for Talent
Dynamics 365 for talent, Microsoft’s human capital management
application, provides organisations with the tools they need to optimise the
way in which they manage and engage with their workforce. Talent is made up of
three central parts:
Attract
Onboard
Core HR
Attract focuses on the all parts of the recruitment process, from
finding suitable candidates to submitting offers to successful applicants. Once
successful applicants become new employees, the Onboard part of Talent helps to
assimilate new joiners into the organisation. Finally, Core HR is designed to
enrich the experience of employees and managers in organisations by creating a
self-service portal. Within this portal employees can request time off, set and
track performance goals, receive feedback and monitor skills and capabilities.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest talent database and often the primary
system that recruiters use to find, communicate with, and source candidates for
the jobs that recruiters are looking to fill. LinkedIn Recruiter integration
with Dynamics 365 for Talent (Attract) makes it easier for users to hire, and
to keep the data in sync between the two systems
Dynamics
365 for Retail
Dynamics 365 for Retail works to bring together both front and back
office function to assists businesses in optimising inventory, merchandising,
store operations and hardware to create a unified multi-channel sales approach
that delivers a high-quality shopping experience.
Retail shares functionality with both Finance and Operations, and
Talent.
Dynamics
365 for Business Central
Microsoft Dynamics 365
Business Central is a cloud-based, all-in-one business management solution
which enables customers to upgrade from their entry-level accounting software
or legacy ERP system to one single, comprehensive solution to manage finances,
operations, sales and customer service. Helping organisations streamline their
processes, improve customer relations and enable growth through:
Business without silos—connecting
businesses and boosting efficiency with automated tasks and workflows, all
within the familiar Microsoft interface of applications such as Word, Outlook
and Excel.
Actionable insights—achieving more
and gaining a complete view of the business with connected data, business
analytics and guidance delivered by Microsoft’s leading intelligent
technologies.
Solutions built to evolve—get
started quickly, growing and adapting in real time with a flexible platform
that makes it easy to extend beyond Business Central based on evolving business
needs.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business
Central Essentials includes the following functionality:
Financial Management—general
ledger, workflows and audit trails, bank management, budgets, deferrals, bank
reconciliation, dimensions, fixed assets and currencies.
Customer Relational Management—contacts,
campaigns, opportunity management and built-in integration with Dynamics 365
for Sales.
Supply Chain Management—sales
order management, basic receivables, purchase order management, locations, item
transfers, and basic warehousing.
Human Resources—employees and
expense management.
Project Management—resources,
estimates, jobs and time sheets.
Other—multiple languages, reason
codes, extended text, Intrastat reporting, scheduled tasks and Outlook
integration
Microsoft Dynamics 365
Business Central Premium will include the above functionality, plus:
Service Order Management—service
orders, service price management, service item management, service contract
management, planning and dispatching.
Manufacturing—production orders,
version management, agile manufacturing, basic supply planning, demand
forecasting, capacity planning, machine centres and finite loading
Microsoft’s Common Data Service (CDS) is an Azure-based application which stores and manages the data that is used to create applications on PowerApps and explore insights on Power BI.
CDS is the collective name for two different services offered by Microsoft, CDS for Apps and CDS for analytics.
The former is built into PowerApps and it brings together and stores the data from Dynamics 365 applications and databases to enable users to create business applications.
The latter, on the other hand, is similar to a data warehouse or data lake. It pulls, aggregates, cleans, integrates and stores data from multiple sources which can then be used by organisations for analysis to produce visualisations, dashboards and reports.
Using CDS has a number of benefits, including:
Effortless data management: the data is stored in the cloud, so users can benefit from the lower costs associated with cloud storage, scalability. data redundancy and high availability.
Security: role-based access allows organisations to easily control who has access to the data
Dynamics 365 integration: users can easily utilise data on Dynamics 365 to create business applications
Data quality: business rules, workflows and process flows are used to ensure the quality of the data that is stored.
Common Data Model (CDM)
When using multiple sources to create
business applications or explore business data, each source may have a specific
way in which it categories, formats and structures the data. In order to aid
the development of business applications and data analysis, CDS uses the Common
Data Model to create standardisation and consistency across the data. The CDM
is shared data language that allows different business applications and
databases to communicate in the same language, so to speak.
The CDM contains a set of standardised schemas and semantic metadata that creates a standardised structure and format for data coming from different sources. It does this through the set of entities that standard across businesses, as well as the relationships between these entities. Entities are a set of individual data records.
Think of entities as tables within a database and records as specific rows within those tables. It is common for entities to share the same data and thus have a relationship.
For example, the entity “Discount” will likely share data with “Quote”, since businesses will quote a discounted price to attract customers. If a business requires an uncommon, specific entity they have the option of creating their own. Some of the standard entities included in the CDM are listed below.
