2022 Release Wave 1 | Part 3: D365 Customer & Field Service

This is my third article on what’s new in 2022 Release Wave 1. In this article I discussing some of the most important features that are mentioned in the release notes for Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Field Service and what they mean for end-users and administrators. I was able to install the early access features on 1/31 in my sandbox so I could test some of these new features that are mentioned in the release notes. If you want to take a look at the full list of features, you can access them here. Keep in mind this is a living document and it keeps changing so I would recommend bookmarking it!

Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Lots of new features in D365 Customer Service in this release! Let’s start with the new Customer Service admin center app that will be in public preview this month (February) and is currently scheduled for GA in April of 2022. This is a brand new app which consolidates the admin experience for Customer Service Hub and Omnichannel for Customer Service. This app will make it a lot easier for admins since they can now access all of the omnichannel and customer service hub settings in one app. There is nothing you need to do (no turning anything on) because the app will automatically be installed in your org. Keep in mind that the options you’ll see in the new app will depend on what is provisioned in your environment. There is no area selector in this app, just different sections. I don’t have Omnichannel installed in this environment, the sections I see are:

• Customer Support: From here you can manage users, channels (if omnichannel is installed) queues, routing, workstreams, case settings(the ‘other settings are the service configuration settings from Customer Service Hub) and customer service settings (if omnichannel is installed).
• Agent Experience: This section allows us to manage Workspaces (agent experience profiles, session templates, application app templates, and notification templates), Productivity (Email templates, Agent scripts and Macro’s) and Knowledge (Turning tables on/off for record management, general knowledge management settings, knowledge categories, knowledge filters, portal settings, article templates and search providers).
• Operations: This section has Insights, which represent all the reporting settings, Calendar settings for the customer service calendar and the holiday calendar, Service terms (All SLA and entitlement settings), Service Scheduling and Miscellaneous has analyis jobs, ARC and SLA migration settings, and IoT settings.

Microsoft is stating that this app will become the new app for Customer Service Administration and at some point the legacy apps (meaning the existing admin experience including Omnichannel admin center, App profile manager and Customer Service Hub/Service management) will be deprecated. I don’t have an exact timeline for on this, but Microsoft will announce when this will happen. To learn about the ‘Quick Setup’ feature in the Customer Center Admin App click here.

Knowledge Base Updates

Analytics for knowledge articles and search terms

I had to poke around a bit to understand what this feature entails, since we already had knowledge analytics in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. This report is an embedded PowerBI report inside of the application. What I found is that there is now an additional tab when you open the report. (You can access the report from Customer Service Hub by clicking on ‘Knowledge Analytics’ below the insights section). The tab is called “Article Insights (preview)’ and shows key metrics and trends around views, including the top 20 of most viewed articles. You’ll also notice KPI’s on visitors and feedback ratings. Just like other embedded PowerBI reports you can drill down into the charts to get more details. This feature is in early access and is currently scheduled to go GA in April of 2022.

Knowledge Article Search

There will also be some improvements and enhancements to Knowledge Article Search in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, like the ability for agents to search for articles using terms or phrases. Users will see the results of their search if the search term matches with the article’s title, content, keywords or attachments. Just to be clear, this is the Knowledge search in Customer Service Workspace or Omnichannel for Customer Service (which is utilizing Dataverse to get search results). The search results will be shown in the side pane formally known as the productivity pane allowing agents to only view articles that are relevant to their search. You’ll also notice that agents will be able to see the article number on the results card, and a ‘More Matches Found’ area that can be expanded to show the keywords that were matched.

Knowledge search capabilities in app side pane

You can now configure the knowledge search control in an app side pane for other tables besides cases. Keep in mind this can only be done from the new Customer Service admin center (preview) app. This feature will allow us to configure knowledge search settings for each individual table when the ‘Knowledge Search’ side pane for a record of that table is opened. The actions available in the ‘Knowledge Search’ side pane configuration are:

• Linking or unlinking of articles to a record
• Copying of the article URL
• Linking the article and emailing the article URL
• Linking the article and emailing the article content

In order to configure knowledge management settings on the app side pane you need to navigate to ‘Knowledge’ under the Agent Experience section and click ‘Manage’ next to record types. Click ‘Edit’ next to any of the tables in the list. When you click edit you’ll notice a pane that opens up, which holds all the settings and configuration options for the app side pane.

SLA’s

A nice new feature is coming to SLA’s! This feature will allow us to configure the calculation of the warning times and failure times of SLA KPI’s. Microsoft states ‘Other parameters which customers can use to influence the warning and the failure times are the attributes associated with the instance of an entity, failure and the warning duration, and start time of the evaluation.’ This means businesses will be able to build their own custom plugins and dynamically determine the calendar, warning and failure time duration used to calculate the SLA KPI’s failure and warning times.  I guess we’ll have to wait for more details until this is general available which is currently set to happen in April of 2022. Another feature regarding SLA’s will be the ability to configure the actual values the SLA Timers display, for example instead of showing ‘Succeeded’ on the timer, you would change this to ‘SLA Met’. Lastly, we will be able to export and import customer service schedules and holiday schedules from one environment to another!

Dynamics 365 Field Service

There were not a lot of updates in Dynamics 365 Field Service in this wave which is why I decided to post these in this article as well. There are several updates/improvements related to the Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile app. Microsoft will clean the app up a bit by removing commands like the assistant and the Start Task Flow command. The date/time input fields in the mobile app will now use the default controls of the operating systems installed on the mobile device. The primary Account’s phone numbers will be accessible on the customer tab of the booking. Lastly, large devices (such as tablets and PCs) will have a streamlined agenda view available as part of their booking calendar. Not sure what that last one entails, but we’ll have to wait until this goes in GA which is currently scheduled for April of 2022.

Lastly the new Field Service Mobile app for Windows 10 has been in preview since October of 2021 and is currently scheduled to into GA in April of 2022. There will be some enhancements to the app, like offline support, access to the device’s camera to take pictures and scan barcodes, and an outlook-style calendar for bookings.

I hope you found this article informative! Don’t forget to check out my articles on 2022 Release Wave 1 – Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Generic Updates. Be sure to check in again next week for a new article or subscribe here to never miss another post!