D365 Customer Service: Configure Knowledge Search Filters & Default Authoring Language

These are another couple of the new features of the 2021 Release Wave 1 that finally became available in my region around April 23rd! As you might know, before this update administrators were not able to configure filters for knowledge base articles, which makes it tricky if you have added your own custom fields to the knowledge article table. (For example I added fields to the case table and knowledge article table so that I could use that to automatically filter on knowledge base articles that have the same value in the field as the case record, which makes for more relevant articles surfacing on a case. If you’re interested in this type of functionality you can read the article I wrote about it here.)
Before I get started I wanted to mention that any of these configurations will apply ANYWHERE in the application where the knowledge search is setup, so this includes the knowledge search page in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, the knowledge search control on forms, the productivity pane knowledge search control, etc. Now lets take a look at where we can turn on the use of these custom filters and how we can add custom filters to the application!

Turn On Custom Knowledge Article Filters

In order to turn on the custom search filters you need to open the Customer Service Hub app and change the area switcher to ‘Service Management’. Then need to click on ‘Settings’ on the sitemap, which is located under ‘Knowledge Base Management’. On the settings page you’ll notice there are a few extra options that you can now configure. We have two additional settings: Knowledge Article Search Filters and Knowledge Articles Authoring Language. In order to turn on the custom filters you can set the ‘enable custom filters’ to ‘yes’.
Once you do that, you’ll notice a second option is now visible, where you can allow customer service agents to personalize the knowledge article search filters in the application. I choose to set this to ‘yes’ as well. Once the admin has turned on the custom filters, they can now add their custom filters by navigating to ‘Filters’ (also under the Knowledge Management section on the sitemap).
From this area admins have a few different options to update the existing filters. In order to make changes to the existing filters, the admin needs to click on the ellipse on the right side of a filter. From here they can select to turn the filter off (deactivate), to select the preselected options, and add filtering options. If an admin clicks ‘visibility’ they can add additional options to the filter. If an admin clicks ‘Preselect’, they can set the preselected options of the filter. When they’re done with their selections they can click ‘Done’. Don’t forget to click the ‘save’ button in the bottom right corner! In order to add new filters, and admin needs to scroll to the bottom of the page, where they will see the option to add a new filter by choosing a field from the knowledge base article table. Once the field has been selected, click ‘Add’ to add it as a filter. Don’t forget to save! (corner bottom button) It’s important to note that if you’re adding a lookup field as a filter, you’ll need to select the records that will be used in the filter. If an admin needs to delete any custom filters, they can do this by clicking the ellipse (…) of the right side of the filter. Please note the existing system filters can not be deleted, but they can be deactivated.

Turn On Knowledge Articles Default Authoring Language

In order to turn on the knowledge articles authoring languages you will need to set ‘Set default knowledge article authoring language for the users’ to ‘Yes’. When the field is set to ‘Yes’, a few additional options show up. You can set the default knowledge authoring language for all users by setting the ‘Set the default knowledge authoring language for your organization.’ field to yes and you can choose to set the organization’s UI language as the default, or select a language from the drop down ‘select a language’ field. Lastly admins can allow users to set their own default language for authoring knowledge articles.

Personalize Knowledge Article Search Filter

Initially I thought in order to personalize the knowledge article filters, I would need to go to to ‘Personal Settings’ (by clicking the gear icon on the top right), but this is not the case. Users can configure their filters by navigating to the ‘Service’ area in the Customer Service Hub. You’ll notice another item on the sitemap under ‘Knowledge’ called ‘Knowledge Personalization’. When a user clicks here, this is where they can edit, existing filters, or deactivate filters. New filters that were setup by an administrator can also be added from here. In order to edit an existing filter, a customer service user needs to click on the ellipse (…) and click on ‘Preselected’. (Preselected values are values that will automatically be applied to any knowledge base search.) This will open a small menu where a preselected filter can be configured. Multiple values are allowed to be preselected. In order to turn a filter off completely, users can click ‘deactivate’ after clicking the ellipse next to the filter they want to turn off/deactivate. Once the filters have been configured, the user will see the appropriate filters appear on the knowledge search controls.

Personalize Default Authoring Language

Customer Service agents can set their default authoring language from the same personalization page as where the filter personalization. You’ll notice an additional tab on the top of the personalization form called ‘Authoring’. NOTE: The settings need to be enabled for users to personalize these settings. Yes can select to reuse the organization’s language, but if they set the value to ‘No’ they have the ability to select a different language from the drop down field. What this setting does is set the language field for newly created articles to the language that is selected as the authoring language.
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