D365 Customer Service: Setting up search providers (preview)

I stumbled across another preview feature in Dynamics 365 customer service the other day, which I will discuss in this article. Please note that a preview feature is not ready for production yet because it’s not finished, but Microsoft allows access so that customers can get early access and review the functionality and provide feedback. Ok now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about what this exactly is! This feature will allow us to search content like articles, documents, files, etc. from sources that are outside of Dynamics 365. For example your organization could have knowledge base related documents and files stored on a SharePoint site, or maybe your company has another org setup where some of these knowledge base articles are stored (maybe because they don’t want to store those articles in two orgs). With this functionality we can now setup access to those docs, files and articles! Keep in mind of course that the users who are searching for content will need to have access to these SharePoint sites and orgs to get search results back.

There are 3 different types of search providers that can be setup in the Dynamics 365 Customer Service Hub:

• SharePoint Search: As the name already indicates, this allows users to search sharepoint for files and documents.
• Cross-Organization Search: This options allows you to select a different org to be searched for knowledge base articles. Keep in mind the organization needs to be under the same tenant.
• Microsoft Search Connector: This is for organizations who use Microsoft Search to make data searchable for users. More information found here. Keep in mind that not all the connectors will work in this preview release, only the MediaWiki connector and enterprise websites are enabled for the preview. With the enterprise connector you have the ability to allow users to search for content that is posted on internal-facing company websites. The MediaWiki connector to connect to MediaWiki, which is third party software. There are other connectors Microsoft has like Service Now, which allows you to search those articles as well, however for this preview release this is not enabled.

Configuration

The configuration to set up search providers is very easy. You need to open the Customer Service Hub app and navigate to the ‘Service Management’ area. Here you will see ‘search providers’ under the ‘Knowledge Base Management’ section. Click the ‘+New’ button on the command bar to add a search provider. You’ll notice there is an ‘Is Default’ slider that allows you to set a search provider as the default search provider. Keep in mind you can only select one search provider to be the default one. The search type option set allows you to choose from the three different options I mentioned above. If you pick the cross-organizational search you’ll notice another option set that has all of the related orgs under this tenant. This is where you can select the org you want to enable for search. (Please note you don’t have to set this up for the current org)
When you select ‘SharePoint’ as the search type, you will need to enter the SharePoint URL. You need to make sure that SharePoint is enabled for search, which I believe by default it is.
When the option ‘Microsoft Search Connector’ is chosen, you’ll need to enter the connection id for the service you want to connect to. That is all you have to do!

Customer Service Agent Experience

Now let’s take a look what the experience is for the customer service agent who will access the search. There are two different places where users can take advantage of this feature. The first place is from within a case in Dynamics 365. You need to have the knowledge article control on the case form to access this. If you want to learn how to setup the knowledge article control on a case form you can read about that here.
When a case is opened by a user, (and the knowledge base control is configured on the case form) the user will be able to see a drop down control allowing them to see the different sources and to select one. The number of total matches for the search for each source is listed. When a source is chosen, the content is loaded into the knowledge article control.

The second place where users have the ability to access these different search providers is on the knowledge search. Users can access the knowledge search page by navigating to the ‘Service’ area. You’ll find Knowledge search is located under the knowledge section. You will see the same drop down arrow that will show the different search providers and the ability to view the results for each provider.

I am very excited about this new feature, this just shows how Microsoft keeps expanding Dynamics 365 and how it’s really one true platform with tight integrations between other Microsoft applications like SharePoint.
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