Interact with Dynamics 365 records in Teams Chat(Preview)

I feel like I’ve been repeating myself, since this is yet another article where I talk about additional functionality in the Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365 integration. As a recap, previously I wrote two articles on the embedded Teams chat in Dynamics 365 which allows users to access Microsoft Teams chat from the Dynamics 365 application (if you haven’t read the articles yet you can do so here and here), which by itself was a game changer when it comes to streamlining collaboration and productivity for all Dynamics 365 users. Last week I wrote about another (preview) feature, which takes it even further by allowing users to view and update Dynamics 365 records from within a Microsoft Teams meeting (article can be found here) and the week before I wrote about the new swarming preview feature which can be a gamechanger for Customer Service reps while working cases in Dynamics 365 Customer Service (here is the link to that article).

So all and all there has been A LOT of functionality that has been added to the integration over the past few months. As I stated before, I am yet reporting on additional functionality today, where users will be able to interact with Dynamics 365 records while chatting in Microsoft Teams. This feature was pushed out last week and should be available in most instances today. You don’t have to enable this feature as we did with some of the features mentioned previously, the only thing you need to do if you haven’t done so yet, is install the Dynamics 365 app in Microsoft Teams. You can do this by opening the Microsoft Teams app and clicking on the three dots on the left side of the screen and searching for the Dynamics 365 App, opening it and clicking ‘Install’.

That’s all you have to do, now you can start taking advantage of this functionality! Ok, so what is it exactly, what does it look like and how does it work? As the title suggests, users will be able to send information from Dynamics 365 records in a card while chatting with others in Microsoft teams. There are several ways to do this, but the easiest way is to simply paste the link of a Dynamics 365 record into the chat! You’ll notice that the data related to that card will now show as an adaptive card and all you have to do from here is hit ‘send’! I think this is a good way to quickly identify records, because if we would use the mention functionality in team to find a record, this might get convoluted when organizations have account or contacts with the same name in the system. Using a URL resolves issues like this. And don’t we all know how to copy the URL?

Now having said that, you might not want to have to open Dynamics 365 first, to find the record in the application copy it’s URL to then have to go to chat and paste the URL into the chat, so there is another way of doing this. When you’re in an active Microsoft Teams chat (with the Dynamics 365 app is installed on Teams as mentioned above) you will see the Dynamics 365 app icon in the toolbar below the chat. If you don’t see it you can click on the ellipse and locate it this way.

When you open the Dynamics 365 app from the chat, you’ll notice a search bar on the top of the app, allowing users to start searching for Dynamics 365 records from within the Microsoft Teams chat. This search allowed me to search across several tables so it looks like this search is powered by Dataverse search! Another thing to note is that you will see recently accessed records pop below the search, which is the same behavior we see when we access Dataverse search in the Dynamics 365 apps. This will definitely make finding records a lot faster and more streamlined and will improve user productivity even more! Wow, I really like this!

I did notice that the first time I tried to use this, that the application was asking me to sign in, please note that Microsoft is aware of this and they are working with the Microsoft Teams group to get single sign-on working so users will not have go through this process. Granted, it’s only the first time of using this feature that you’ll see the sign in page, (and then maybe again when the session expires) so to me it’s not that big of a deal.

Creating D365 Notes or Tasks from a Microsoft Teams chat message

Sending and viewing cards is not the only thing we can do with this new functionality! Let’s say that someone is starting a chat with you, asking you a question about an opportunity or a case, but you are in the middle of an important meeting! You need to pay attention so you don’t have time to answer the chat right this second! What a user can do, is click on the ellipse on the top corner of the chat message, select ‘More actions’ and select ‘Add to Dynamics 365’. This will open the Dynamics 365 ‘Note’ form, allowing users to complete the note, set it regarding a record, with a view to the chat in the note’s description field! I think this is another great addition to the Teams integration, think about the things we discuss on our chats, while often forgetting to update the related account, contact, or opportunity in Dynamics 365. This will allow users to very quickly add this information to these records without having to put in a lot of effort! Another option the users have is to change the note to a task, allowing them to set a due date on the task that will act as a reminder to follow up on the chat message.

The first question you’re probably want to ask me is if we can configure which fields to show in the adaptive card, and the answer is yes! The fields on the card are coming from the quick find view, so if there are additional fields you want to show on the card, you can add them to the view! Once you made changes to the view, this can take up to 24 hours to take effect in Teams. Keep in mind that if you are sharing a record in the teams chat that DOES NOT have any data in a field, this field will be HIDDEN on the card! If another record DOES have data in the field, the field WILL show on the card! Well, that’s all folks! Keep in mind that this is just the first version of adaptive cards showing Dynamics 365 records in Microsoft Teams! They are working on a lot more functionality which will come out over the course of this year and next year, but for starters I think this is pretty cool stuff! I hope you found this article informative! Be sure to check in again next week for a new article or subscribe here to never miss another post!