Interactive Experience Dashboards

In this article I am going to talk about interactive experience dashboards in Customer Service. These dashboards were introduced to us as part of the interactive service hub in the customer service area. I can’t tell you how much I like them, and honestly I think they are kind of a hidden gem, specially since they have been around for a while! They have similarities with ‘regular’ Dynamics 365 Dashboards, like the ability to assign security roles to them so that only users with that role will have access to them, but there are also a lot of differences! So how are they different from a ‘regular’ Dynamics 365 dashboard? Well for starters we can put more than 6 components on an interactive dashboard, but there are several additional features too! Let’s dive in and I’ll tell you all about it!

Unfortunately end users can’t create a personal interactive experience dashboards. These dashboards can only be created as system dashboards. When you create a new interactive experience dashboard you will have the option to choose different layouts, just like with ‘regular’ dashboards. You will have the option to create a single-stream or a multi-stream dashboard but each dashboard has different configuration options and different components that can be used. Before we get into all of that, let me first explain what a ‘stream’ is. A stream is nothing more than a list (view) of records inside the dashboard. For example if you use ‘opportunities’ as the entity, the views you can use in the stream could be ‘my open opportunities’, ‘open opportunities’ or any other opportunity view you have in your system. Keep in mind that streams use card forms to display the data. If you want to learn more about case forms, take a look at this article I wrote. Depending on what type of dashboard you choose (single-stream or a multi-stream) You’ll have different stream options which I will explain below.

Multi-Stream

As the name indicates, you can add multiple streams to this type of dashboard. When you add a stream, you have to select the entity for which you want to see data in each individual stream. Any entity that is supported in the unified interface can be used for this. When you pick an entity, you’ll also need to pick a related view which will be used in the stream to display the data. You also have the ability to use a queue instead of an entity in any of the streams. When you select ‘queue’ in the ‘add stream’ step, you’ll need to select a queue, a queue item view and a queue record type. (I.E Case)

Single-Stream

When you add a stream to this type of dashboard, you don’t have the ability to pick which entity the stream is for. This will be set in the dashboard level. You will also not have the ability to use a queue in the stream. As the name indicates, you can only have one stream in this dashboard.

If you want to see the difference, take a look at the 2 out of the box dashboards that are already configured. The Tier 1 dashboard is a multi-stream dashboard and the Tier 2 is a single-stream dashboard.

Once you picked the stream you can add other components in the dashboard. Lets take a look at the fields on top of the dashboards which are required before saving it. These fields are present on both the multi-stream and single-stream dashboards and work the same:

• Name: The name field is obvious, this is the name of the dashboard.
• Filter Entity: Pick the entity the dashboard is based on. All of the data in the charts and global filters in the dashboard will be based on this entity.
• Time Frame: This is the default time frame the data in the dashboard will be filtered on. Users have the ability to select a different timeframe
• Filter By: The field that will determine if a record falls in the time frame selected in the time frame field.

Once you entered this data you can start adding components to the dashboard. I noticed that depending on what type of dashboard you choose, you’ll have different component options. If you choose a multi-stream dashboard you only have access to Charts and Streams, but if you choose a single-stream dashboard, you’ll also have the ability to add Tiles.
A tile shows the entity, the name of the entity view it’s tied to and a total count of records in that view. When a user clicks on a tile they’ll see the associated view pop out so they can view more details. When you create a tile you’ll need to pick the entity and related view. We also have the ability to create tiles for queues, which is important because we weren’t able to do this for streams in single-stream dashboards.

Visual Filters

An other difference between multi-and single-stream dashboards is that multi-stream dashboards have visual filters. These are the charts on the top section of the dashboard. When users open a multi-stream dashboard they will see the ‘show visual filter’ button on the command bar which they can use to show or hide the charts on the dashboard. Users can filter the dataset by clicking inside of any of the charts. This button is not present on the single-view dashboards.

Switch to Tile view

Multi-stream dashboards also have a ‘switch to tile view’ button on the command bar, which allows them to change all of the streams in the dashboard to a tile view. These tiles behave the same way as described earlier. Users can toggle between stream views and tile views easily this way. This ability is also not present on single-view dashboards.

Global Filters

Both dashboards have a ‘show global filter’ button on the command bar. This allows users to filter the data in the underlying data set. Data in charts will be filtered by using the global filters, but also streams and tiles that have are based on the entity that is selected in the ‘Filter Entity’ field of the dashboard will be filtered.
Admins can disable or enable fields for use in the global filter. You can do this by opening the field’s advanced options section where you will see the checkboxes to allow the field to appear in the global filter and to allow users to sort on this field in the interactive dashboards.

Dashboard Colors

If you take a look at the screen shot of the dashboard above, you’ll notice that the case records in the stream have a colored line on the left hand side. In the screenshot above the color shown is based on the value selected in the priority field of the case. The priority field is an option set field, but we can also configure two option fields with colors.

In order to configure the values of option sets or two option fields, you’ll have to define a color for each value. This is not available in the new configuration interface yet, so I did this in the ‘legacy’ configuration screen by opening the priority field, selecting each drop down value and adding a color code. NOTE: Any charts that use an option set or two option field that has colors configured will also show these colors.
After I configured the colors in the field, you need to put the field on the card form of the entity you’re working with. You’ll notice a section called ‘ColorStrip’ on the left side of the form. This is where you need to put the color configured field. Out of the box the priority field shows in the ‘ColorStrip’ section on the case card form.

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