Software + Imagination
Option Sets are used in Dynamics CRM to allow a user to select a value from multiple selection options. We will go through an example where we will add a field, Favorite Color, to Accounts. First, create a new solution in Dynamics CRM. Add the accounts entity to the solution. Then, go to fields and select new field. Give the field a display name and set the data type to Option Set: You can … Continue reading Dynamics CRM Create Option Sets
Power BI, Microsoft’s cloud based business intelligence service, is a must-have component for companies running any of the products in the Microsoft Dynamics suite, whether it is CRM, AX, GP, NAV or Project Madeira. As a modern intelligence tool, it enables companies to rapidly get insight into their data and interactively find trends to make informed business decisions. Without BI, companies lack visibility and may be running with the wrong roadmap. Businesses already have basic reporting into their data, such as what last month’s sales were, who … Continue reading Microsoft’s Power Couple: Power BI and Microsoft Dynamics
In Unified Service Desk, there is the concept of sessions. When a user logs into USD, they are in a global session. The user can then, say, click on a record for a customer or a case and it will open it’s own session. Let’s follow our previous example to see how this is done. From the USD dashboard, click to open a case: The case opens in its own session, as … Continue reading Unified Service Desk Sessions
There will be cases where you need to deploy USD from one environment to another, e.g. when you are moving customizations from your development environment to your production environment (or environments in between!). We will go through the steps to do this. Firstly, we will need the Configuration Migration tool, which is located in the CRM SDK. If you do not have the CRM SDK installed, you can download it here. In … Continue reading Unified Service Desk Customization Deployments Across Organizations
To install, go to the Dynamics CRM SDK download link at Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=50032 Select the UII download link: Launch the installer: Extract to a folder. Note the USD Develope Guide.chm: And UII Developer Guide: And UII Deployment Guide: Under the folder UII\USD Developer Assets\USD Configuration Tool Schema you will find the USDDefaultSchema.xml.
Adding a submenu to a USD hosted control is simple. To do this, first create a menu. Go to the USD configuration and go to Toolbars. Create a new toolbar and save to unlock the Buttons: Add a new button and name it Save. Add a new Action and name it Test Hosted Control Save. The Action here on the Test Hosted Control will be Save. We now have: A toolbar with … Continue reading Adding a Submenu to a USD Hosted Control
In my previous post I discussed created custom hosted controls in USD. Now I will discuss creating custom actions for those controls. When the USD custom code runs, it calls the DoAction procedure. Within the args passed is an Action property: As can be seen from the sample code, we can check for which action is called from USD and write code accordingly: The action needs to be set up in … Continue reading Custom Actions in Unified Service Desk
USD has the flexibility to create custom hosted controls. Here are the steps to do this. Download and install the Unified Service Desk templates for Visual Studio from the Microsoft website here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=DynamicsCRMPG.MicrosoftDynamicsCRMSDKTemplates Open Visual Studio. Create a new project, and under the CRM SDK Templates, select Unified Service Desk. Select UII WPF Hosted Control: This will create a project in Visual Studio like below: Expand the references. Note there are … Continue reading Creating and Debugging a Unified Service Desk Custom Hosted Control
When USD is installed, by default it installs the client in the location: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM USD\USD Here you will see the executable file to launch USD – UnifiedServiceDesk.exe: Opening the UnifiedServiceDesk.exe, you will firstly see the USD version screen: Followed by the login screen:
Global Manager is a hosted control that is core to USD. When USD is started, the global manager reads all the configuration settings required to run USD. There are some events that run with Global Manager: DesktopReady SessionActivated SessionClosed SessionDeactivated SessionNew The DesktopReady event runs when USD is opened, and it runs only one time. As such, it is common to put code here to initialize the application. In CRM under USD->Events, … Continue reading Unified Service Desk – The Global Manager