Thoughts & musings from a Microsoft Business Applications Ninja!
Talking to Dani about how he recently started getting into karate, what happens when a project discovery goes wrong, & how to engage & set up for success overall!
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I know it’s taken me a week (or two) to get round to this, but I’ve had other things on the go (such as starting my new job, for instance). However it wouldn’t be this time of year without doing a summary of new features for the Wave 2 2022 release.
As with previous posts in this area, I’ll be focusing on the Customer Service side of things, and also more precisely with a focus on the Omnichannel capabilities. However, whilst previously I’ve tended to focus just on the Omnichannel items, Customer Service is now being much more tied together with the Omnichannel offering, so it makes sense to broaden things out a bit.
So let’s start taking a look at the wonders that will (hopefully!) be in store for us within a few months:
Customer Service Workspace – enhanced layout
Public Preview – August 2022. GA – October 2022
I’ve previously taken a look at some of the capabilities of the Customer Service Workspace (see Omnichannel vs Customer Service Workspace), and how they compare to Omnichannel. With Microsoft now rollowing out the ability to have multi-session capabilities within it, it’s sometimes a hard decision for organisations to decide which one to use (there are some key differences though).
With the upcoming release, there are going to be new layouts for the site map (navigation menu), sessions & tabs. Some of the key changes coming are:
These look to be quite good (I definitely wouldn’t have thought of all of them!), and I can’t wait to try them out for myself.
Single sign-on capabilities
GA – October 2022
One of the things that can be quite frustrating for customers is that if they’re interacting through live chat capabilities, and then switch over to a Power Virtual Agent, they need to re-authenticate. This is of course not quite optimal for a seamless customer experience.
Microsoft are therefore enabling single sign-on capabilities. What this means in practise is the following:
Voice channel – expansion of availability
GA – October 2022
The voice channel (which I still need to do a write up on!) is really amazing, allowing customers to call in directly via phone etc. It’s been rolled out already to several regions, but customers in other regions have been asking for it.
Microsoft has now confirmed that the voice channel will now be available in the following countries:
This is a great move – it still doesn’t mean that every country has the voice channel available, so I expect that Microsoft will keep on adding more countries for the availability of this (I know that there’s a decent amount of back-end systems that are needed, which is why it’s taking this long to get in place).
Voicemails
GA – January 2023
This one is getting me really excited. Obviously, being able to connect to a customer service agent is important. But what if the agent isn’t around? We could of course send an email, but if we’re already connected through a specific method of contact, ideally we’d like to continue with that method.
Especially when it comes to actually calling into an organisation, it can be quite frustrating to not reach the person we’re trying to get hold of, and then need to send an email.
Voicemail capabilities, coming in early 2023, will mean that customers will be able to leave voicemails for customer service agents to pick up. The agents will be able to set up welcome messages, as well as manage & playback voicemails that have been left.
This is really cool – I’m wondering if there are going to be AI capabilities included in this in the future, so as to automatically transcibe voicemails for the agents, for instance. I don’t think that it would take a LOT more technical capabilities – we already have Azure Cognitive Services that audio can be fed through to for a written transcription to be produced.
Customer Callbacks
GA – January 2023
One of the frustrations that I think is shared universally is when contacting an organisation, and being told that you’re in a queue. Not only are you in a queue, but there may be dozens/hundreds/thousands of people ahead of you…and the number doesn’t seem to be decreasing at a rapid rate.
Some organisations offer the ability to ‘reserve’ your spot in the queue, and will call you back when you’re next. To date, this hasn’t been a feature of Omnichannel.
However, coming in early 2023, this feature will be rolling out!. It will give customers the ability to keep their queue position, and to choose if they’d like a callback to happen when they’re at the front of the queue. Note that this would require a phone number to be provided, for the customer service agent to use to contact the customer.
I think that this is a nice feature, but will be curious to see how it plays out ‘in the real world’. I know that when my local doctor surgery implemented this, it was supposed to be great, but in practise actually didn’t work well.
I’ll be looking deeper into the different functionalities when they land, and will share them here. If there’s anything you think would be helpful to focus on, drop a comment & let me know!
Having a great chat with Geetha on cooking, gardening, & the ‘wonders’ of customer security requirements. Obviously security is important, but when it’s enforced in the wrong way, it can have VERY unintented consequences!
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It’s been a little while since I’ve previously blogged around developing customer solutions and the Microsoft Specialisations. Since I spoke about it last year (Apps & Microsoft Partner Specialisations) the landscape has moved on a little, and I thought that it would be good to take a look again at it.
Currently in the Business Applications space, there’s a single specialisation. This is the ‘Microsoft Low Code Application Development Advanced Specialisation’, which is covered in detail at the Microsoft page for it (Microsoft Low Code Application Development Advanced Specialization).
In essence, this specialisation is aimed at partners who are developing Power Apps (yes, this is specifically aimed at Power Apps), and has been around for a year or so.
In order for Microsoft to track the qualifying metrics against this specialisation, it’s very important to carry out the PAL (Partner Attach Link) process. The details of how to do this is in my earlier post, which includes some of my thoughts at the time around how a partner should best implement the procedure.
Since then, my blog post has gained a good amount of traction, and several Microsoft partners have engaged with me directly to understand this better, and to implement the process into their project playbook. I’m really delighted at having been able to help others understand the process, and the reasoning behind it.
Now that’s all good for a partner who is staying in place at a customer. However there are multiple scenarios that can differ from this. Examples of this are:
Now, there’s really a single answer to all of the above scenarios, but it’s a matter of how to go about implementing this properly. Let me explain.
Originally, all developers would register PAL, and this would then be tracked through the environment cadence, and associated appropriately to the partner. This would be from the developers having been the creators of the apps.
This has now changed a little bit. Microsoft now recognises the capabilities of PAL using both the Owner of the app, as well as any Co-Owners of the app. This is a little more subtle, so let’s explain this in some detail.
It is possible, of course, to change the owner of an app. More commonly, however, is the practice of adding co-owner/s to an app (I always recommend this as best practice actually, to remove key-person responsibility risks).
Note: Changing the actual owner of an app requires the usage of a PowerShell command
So what happens now is that Microsoft will track the owners/co-owners of any app that’s deployed, and PAL association will flow through this. But there are a couple of caveats which it’s important to be very aware of!
Now if a customer adds co-owners to an app, this shouldn’t be an issue (as none of the users would have registered PAL). But if there are multiple partners in place, ONLY THE LATEST ONE WILL BE RECOGNISED.
Therefore to take the three scenarios above, let’s see how this would apply.
It’s also important for both partners & customers to understand this, in the wider context of being careful about app ownership, and the recognition that it brings from Microsoft for partners delivering solutions. If a partner would go into a customer, and suddenly start taking ownership of apps that it’s not involved in, I don’t think that Microsoft would be very approving of it.
Now, all of the above is in relation to Power Apps specifically, as I’ve noted. However, the PAL article was updated last week (located at Link a partner ID to your Power Platform and Dynamics Customer Insights accounts with your Azure credentials | Microsoft Docs) and also interestingly talks about:
Reading between the lines here, I think that we’re going to be seeing more advanced specialisations coming out at some point. Either that, or else partner status will be including these as well, as I can’t think of any other reason why PAL would need to be tracked for these as well! I’m also wondering if other capabilities (eg Power Virtual Agents, Power Pages, etc) will be added at some point as well…
Have you had any challenges with the PAL process? Is there anything more you’d like to find out about it? Drop a comment below, and I’ll do my best to respond!
Discovering with Peter how he got into yoga initially, upgrading customers to the latest technologies, & the importance of focusing on the positives during projects!
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Talking to Justin about his love of Jeeping (some REALLY cool things that he gets involved in), & why it’s SO important to keep the BIG PICTURE in mind for projects!
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Chatting to Paul Slade as to why he decided to start training on an Army Medic course, recognising technology limitations, & the importance of our relationships with vendors for projects!
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Finding out from Mat as to how he got into social media creation, his time in Army training, and how the challenges along the way have taken him to where he is now!
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DLP (or Data Loss Prevention) is a very important capability in the Power Platform. With being able to bring together multiple data sources, both within the Microsoft technology stack as well as from other providers gives users amazing capabilities.
However with such great capabilities comes great responsibility. Of course, we trust users to be able to make proper judgements as to how different data sources can be used together. But certain industries require proper auditing around this, and so being able to specify DLP policies are extremely important to any governance team.
Being able to set how data connectors can be used together (or, in the reverse, not used together) across both Power Apps as well as Power Automate flows is imperative in any modern organisation.
To date, Power Platform DLP capabilities have existed that allow us to be able to categorise connectors (whether Microsoft provided or custom) into three categories. These categories specify how the connectors are able to function – they’re able to work with other connections that are in the same category group, but cannot work with connectors that are in a different category group.
So for example, it’s been possible to allow a user to create a Power App or a Power Automate flow that interacts with data from Dataverse, but cannot interact with Twitter (in the same app or flow).
With this approach, it’s possible to create multiple DLP policies, and ‘layer’ them as needed (much like baking a 7 layer cake!) to give the functionality required per environment (or also at the tenant level).
Now this has been great, but what has been missing has been the ability to be more granular in the approach to this. What about if we need to read data from Twitter, but just push data out to Twitter?
Well, Microsoft has now iterated on the DLP functionality available! It’s important to note that this is per connector, and will depend on the capabilities of the connector. What we’re now able to do is to control the specific actions that are contained within a connector, and either allow or not allow them to be able to be utilised.
Let’s take the Twitter connector as an example:
We’re able to see all of the actions that the connector is capable of (the scroll bar on the side is a nice touch for connectors that have too many actions to fit on a single screen!). We’re then able to toggle each one to either allow or disallow it.
What’s also really nice are the options for new connector capabilities.
This follows in the footsteps of handling connectors overall – we’re able to specify which grouping they should come under (ie Business, Non-Business, or Blocked). As new connectors are released by Microsoft, we don’t need to worry that users will automatically get access to them.
So too with new actions being released for existing connectors (that we’ve already classified). We’re able to set whether we want them to be automatically allow, or automatically blocked. This means that we don’t need to be worried that suddenly a new connector action will be available for users to use, that they perhaps should not be using.
From my perspective, I think that any organisation that’s blocking one or more action capabilities for a connector will want this to be blocked by default, just to ensure that everything remains secure until they confirm whether the action should be allowed or not.
So I’m really pleased about this. The question did cross my mind as to whether it would be nice to be able to specify this on a per environment basis when creating a tenant-level policy, but I guess that this would be handled by creating multiple policies. The only issue I could see around this would be the number of policies that could need to be handled, and ensuring that they’re named properly!
Have you ever wanted these capabilities? How have you managed until now, and how do you think you’ll roll this out going forward? Drop a comment below – I’d love to hear!
Chatting to Robin to find out how he got to love mountain biking, a recent biking episode, & what happened when a last-minute finance app was deployed using SharePoint lists as the datasource!
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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