D365 Customer Service: Swarming using Teams(preview)

Anyone who attended Microsoft’s Business Application Launch event has seen the new swarming functionality in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. This feature is currently in preview, but you can start testing it in your sandbox environments very soon! This feature takes advantage of the Microsoft Teams integration with Dynamics 365 Customer Service. So first… let’s discuss what this feature does! Swarming, or case swarming is a streamlined approach, allowing users to quickly and effectively collaborate with specialized subject matter experts with the main goal to solve a problem. In this instance a case in Dynamics 365. For example, a customer service agent receives a case regarding a possible fraudulent transaction and there are several things that need to happen to solve the issue quickly and to stop any additional fraudulent charges. With Swarming, the system automatically invites individuals with the required expertise to join a swarm teams chat to help solve a problem. The new swarming feature allows them work on several different items related to the issue. Since they are all part of the same Swarm chat in Microsoft teams, they can keep each other updated in real time. For example if a customer calls in with a possible fraud complaint, one team member can temporarily block the customer account, while another team member reviews the transactions. Once the problem has been solved, a solution can be entered and the swarm can be closed.

Setup

As I mentioned above, this is a preview feature and therefor needs to be enabled in your Dynamics 365 Customer Service application. Before you turn this feature on, you need to make sure that you have the ‘Embedded chat using Teams’ preview feature turned on as well. Click here to learn more about Embedded chat using Microsoft Teams. You can enable this feature by opening the Customer Service Hub and navigating to the Service Management settings area. Below the Collaboration section on the sitemap you’ll see ‘Embedded chat using Teams’ and ‘Swarming using Teams’ on the left side of the screen. Make sure you turn the ‘Embedded chat using Teams’ on first. When you’re ready to enable swarming, you can do so by setting the ‘Swarming’ toggle on the top of the screen to ‘on’. There are a few other things you need to do before you can start testing this. There is a new case form that the Swarm table uses in order to show case details within the swarm record, so you’ll need to activate the swarm case form and publish the form first. On the swarming setup page you’ll notice a link that reads ‘Activate case form for swarming’ below the Case Details section on the page. When you click the link the case table in PowerApps will open in a separate window. Click on the ellipse next to the ‘Case for swarming form’ and select ‘Activate’ from the menu. After this step you need to open and publish the form. NOTE: Keep in mind you have the ability to configure the swarming case form if you want additional information from the case shown when the swarm is created/viewed.

Resources & Skills

The swarming features takes advantage of the bookable resources and characteristics (skills) tables which are already part of the application. If you’re using Omnichannel for Customer Service or Field Service, you should be familiar with these tables and how they work. If you’re not, then let me explain it to you. We have the ability to create resources in the system, which are called ‘Bookable Resources’ in Dynamics 365. Bookable resources can be tied to a system user or (if you’re using Dynamics 365 Field Service) contact or account records. The bookable resources represent resources who can be scheduled for work. In this instance, the bookable resource represents users who work in the Dynamics 365 application. In order to create bookable resources, you can open the ‘Resource Scheduling’ App and navigate to Resources in the Resource Scheduling area. Resources can have 1 or more skills associated with them. The swarming feature will these to find resources that have the skill(s) needed for a swarm. NOTE: Skills can also represent certifications, specific product knowledge, etc. To create skills, you’ll need to select ‘Settings’ in the area chooser of the Resource Scheduling app. You’ll notice skills on left side on the sitemap. Once you created skills and bookable resources, you can add the skills to the resources. Open the resource record and click ‘Related’ on the form. Select ‘Resource Characteristics’ and create a new record. Select the skill in the Characteristic field (optionally you can select a ration but this is not required) and click save and close. Repeat these steps to add more skills.

Condition Rules / Swarm Rules

Another section on the Swarming setup page is the ‘Condition Rules’ setting. By creating condition rules (aka Swarm rules) you can automatically have the system add required skills to a swarm request. For example, if an issue is related to a bill you might want to get someone added to the swarm who is a billing specialist or an accountant. These rules are not required for swarming to work, but will make it easier as they will automatically suggest skills when a new swarming request is created.

When you click on ‘See more’ and ‘+ Create rule’ a window will open up where you can configure the condition for the rule and the skills that should be suggested if the condition is true. In the conditions section of the screen you have the ability to use data from the swarm request, and data from the swarm related record, which in this instance is the case record. Other tables (related to the case table) can also be added to the condition. Once the conditions have been successfully created, you’ll need to enter the skill or skills that need to be suggested for the swarm that meets these conditions, and you’re done! Keep in mind that the conditions are listed in order of importance.

Automatically add to swarm

You’ll also notice the section that reads ‘Automatically add to swarm’. This represents Dynamics 365 users who have a relationship either with the customer or the agent who is working the case. You can edit some of the users who will automatically be added to a swarm. Managers will automatically be added to the swarm, but Team Admins and Account owners are optional and can be turned off.

Swarm Expert Notification

On the bottom right side of the screen you’ll notice the ‘Swarm expert notification’ section. This gives you access to the Power Automate flow, which is part of the swarming feature. In order to start using the swarming feature, you’ll need to turn this flow on. You can do this by clicking the ‘Edit flow in Power Automate’ link. This flow will manage the swarm invitations that are sent out to the subject matter experts based on the skills requested on the swarm. After the SME accepts the swarm request, they will be added to the swarm. It’s good to note that the application will try to get the minimum number of people to cover the maximum amount of skills needed to join the swarm. Example: A swarming request is created and the skills required are Skill A, B and C. In the organization we have 4 people with the following skills:

• Person 1: Skill A
• Person 2: Skill B
• Person 3: Skill C
• Person 4: Skill A & B

Based on this information, person 3 and person 4 will be asked to join the swarm, since person 4 has both skill A & B and therefore satisfies the A & B skill requirement. By choosing person 4, we only need to invite 1 person vs 2 different people with skills A & B.

Create a swarm from a Case

Now that we have enabled all the functionality let’s take a look at how this works! You can create a new case, or open an existing case in Dynamics 365. Once you open the case record, you’ll notice the ‘Create Swarm’ button on the command bar. This will open the swarming form, and you’ll notice the case form with details on the left side of the screen. (NOTE: This is the case form you activated earlier.) You can enter a short description in the swarm request field, and the steps that were tried, or other details. If you created swarm rules, you should see some skills already populate below the ‘What skills do you need’ section on the form. You can add additional skills/characteristics if needed.

Once you click the ‘Save and send invitation’ button a Microsoft Teams chat will be created, related to this swarm. The system will also query for resources that have the requested skills at this point, and send them an invitation to join the chat (. Users can accept or decline the invitation. When they accept the invitation, they will be added to the Teams chat. From here everyone can collaborate and keep each other posted on what is done. At anytime the swarm can be closed and details on how the problem was resolved can be entered and captured in the system. Check out the video below to see a full demo of the functionality.

Lastly I wanted to mention a more few things that you want to keep in mind:

Today swarming only works in Customer Service with the case table. I am sure Microsoft will expand swarming to other tables at some point, but today this is only related to cases.
When a swarm request is created, the system only queries for resources that own the skills requested, the system currently is NOT looking at Microsoft Teams statuses. So if a resource if offline, or not available the system will not take that into consideration when sending out the invitations. (If we’re lucky this might also be added at a later time. I hope you enjoyed this article! Be sure to check in again next week for a new article or subscribe here to never miss another post!