Dynamics 365 – 2020 Release Wave 1 | Part 2

On January 27 of 2020 the release notes came out for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform and on February 3rd 2020 we were able to enable these features for early access. If you haven’t read the first part one of this article where I’m discussing the Dynamics 365 Sales updates, you can do so here. In today’s article I am going to discuss the Dynamics 365 Customer Service updates. Please note that since the classic interface of Dynamics 365 is deprecated since September 2019 and will no longer be available starting October 1st, 2020, most of these features will only work on the unified interface.
The topics I’ll discuss in this article are:

• Connected Customer Service
• Knowledge Search Enhancements
• Configurable Case Resolution Form
• Customer Service App for Team Member License
• Customer Service Hub App available by default
• Site
• Case Routing Rules, Automatic Record Creation & SLA’s in Unified Interface
• SLA Enhancements
• Enhancements in the queue page
• Enhanced Email
• New Work Calendar in Service Scheduling

Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Connected Customer Service

IoT is coming to customer service! I haven’t worked with IoT much, but I do understand what it does. In this release Microsoft is integrating IoT diagnotics, IoT device updates and case management. Using connected customer service we will have the ability to convert IoT alerts to case records in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. Users can also configure commands and send commands to a customer’s device.

Knowledge Search Enhancements

When I tried to look at this in my instance I was disappointed to see that this is not available as of yet. The documentation shows that this functionality should be ready for us to test this month so lets hope that date doesn’t change. Unfortunately I can’t really say a lot about it, as I wasn’t able to test this, but basically what this means is that besides improvements to search results and the layout, there is now a separate area where we can search and view knowledge base articles in the customer service hub outside of the context of a case record. This search page worked for a short amount of time in my instance, and I was able to take a screenshot before it stopped working all together. When I tried the search page (‘Knowledge Search’ on the sitemap), it was very fast and it was nice to be able to view the entire article in full screen. The search page is located in the customer service hub app, under the service area. You will find the ‘Knowledge Search’ navigation under the ‘Knowledge’ section on the right side.

Configurable Case Resolution form

I think this feature speaks for itself. Admins have been wanting this for such a long time! It looked like it was going to be here last year, but unfortunately this was pushed out to another release. Let’s hope it doesn’t get pushed out again! This is also currently not available in my instance and when I checked the Microsoft Docs site I noticed that there is not a green check mark next to this feature (yet), but it does still say it will be available for early release in February, so lets hope it stays that way! I did notice that there are configuration options for this (once it does work). You can take a look at that by navigating to the ‘Service Management’ area under ‘Service Term’ selecting ‘Service Configuration’. On the bottom you’ll see the ability to choose the style of the resolve case dialog. The options are ‘Customizable Dialog’ and ‘Quick Create Dialog’. The ‘Standard Dialog’ option is keeping the case dialog the way it has always been. I tried the two other options but neither worked.

Customer Service App for Team Member Licenses

This app is not installed by default when turning on the 2020 release wave 1 for early access and my guess is once this goes live in April this will be the default behavior. Customers who want to use this app for their users who have team member licenses can have their admin install the app from the Dynamics 365 admin center. More information can be found here.
Before you do this though make sure that you understand that the functionality in this app this is probably not what you expect. This app is not intended for customer service reps that work on and resolve cases, the app is intended for scenarios where the user is the actual customer who creates a case because they have an issue. Besides creating cases, this app will give them the ability to read and update cases they created and on top of that they can also search and view knowledge base articles.

Customer Service Hub App  available by default

Microsoft announced that the Customer Service Hub App will automatically be installed in all the environments in 2020 release wave 1. Keep in mind that users still need the Customer Service App security role in order to access the app.

Case Routing Rules, Automatic Record Creation & SLA’s in Unified Interface

If you navigate to the service management area in the customer service hub you’ll see that routing rules and automatic record creation and update rules are now accessible via the unified interface. You can find them under the ‘Case Settings’ section. SLA’s have also been enabled for the unified interface and can be found under the ‘Service Terms’ section. If you have any existing SLA’s or record creation and update rules that were created in the legacy interface, you won’t be able to edit them in the unified interface, however new rules can be created here.
While routing rules don’t use Power Automate, the configuration of actions for ‘record creation and update rule items’ does happen in Power Automate. The system creates a Power Automate flow based on the action selected in the configuration window. User have the ability to add actions or update them in Power Automate.

SLA Enhancements

When I was testing the creation of a brand new SLA and related SLA items, I noticed that we have a lot more of options available when we configure when an SLA Item is applicable and what the success conditions are. Users now have the ability to pull in 1:N , N:1 and even N:N relationships when configuring this logic. (I.E This could be handy when you want to check to see if there is an active entitlement in place for the customer related to the case.)
The actions in SLA’s are also powered by Power Automate, which makes this a very powerful feature!!! However it’s a bit different when configuring the logic: yes we work in Power Automate when we’re configuring the SLA actions, but there are parts of the predefined flow which shouldn’t be edited. These are the pre-populated tiles with the [Do not delete or update] message you’ll see when clicking ‘Configure Actions’. I’m pretty stoked about the ability to leverage Power Automate with SLA’s, as this means less workflows in Dynamics 365 using up resources!

While playing around with SLA’s I turned off all of my existing ‘web SLA’s’ and enabled my newly created unified interface SLA and then tried to test on an existing case record. To my surprise an error message popped up informing me that we can’t change from a web SLA to a unified interface SLA. I had my system configured to automatically attach SLA’s to newly created cases, which explains why the error message popped up. This might be something you want to keep in mind as you’re switching over from web to unified interface SLA’s.

NOTE: Before you can start building SLA’s in the unified interface there is a bit of setup you have to do which is mentioned here.

Enhancements in the queue page

There are some enhancements to queues, but this was also not available in my instance. When checking Microsoft’s website I noticed that this item also doesn’t have the green check mark next to it (meaning it’s not available yet) but the release date still shows February so I’m hopeful we’ll be able to see the changes this month. Since this is not available yet there is not a lot I can say about this, other than what Microsoft published on their website. As I understand it it will be easier for users to manage queues; they will be able to go through the list of queue items without having to leave the queue page and there will be less clicks when working with queues. I can’t wait to see it!

Enhanced Email

This functionality came to the Sales Hub in the previous release and I am happy that it’s going to be released for the Customer Service Hub as well. This is a much better experience for users when they are composing emails in Dynamics 365. The compose window opens in a pop-up that sits on top of the window they were working in. Users can navigate to other pages as they are composing the email, they can copy and paste formatted content in the body of the email and can make the window full screen.

New Work Hour Calendar in Service Scheduling

This feature also isn’t available as of yet but it’s my understanding that the work hour calendar (used to update resources’ calendars) will be available in the unified interface with this release. This means a new experience using a PCF control which admins will be able to utilize in their designs. (forms, apps etc.)

I hope you enjoyed this post! Be sure to check in again next week, when I will have yet another article discussing the features for release wave 1 – 2020 or subscribe here to never miss another post!