Unified Routing – Agent Capacity / Availability Issues
Oct09

Unified Routing – Agent Capacity / Availability Issues

Whilst using Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Unified Routing is used to route conversations to agents. A process which needs to leverage the agents availability. From time to time, I have experienced an issue that the agent availability can become out of step with reality. The Issue The problem I have occasionally seen is that the agent has some (or all) of their availability… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Customer Service Workspace – Multiple Browsers
Sep26

Customer Service Workspace – Multiple Browsers

Have you tried loading Microsoft’s, customer service workspace in multiple browsers? If you are working with Dynamics 365 Contact Center and haven’t tried recently you might want to experiment with it! In the past, if an agent loaded customer service workspace in a second browser, they would see a “friendly” yellow notification bar warning them that it was open in multiple places…. Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s Article...

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Unified Routing – Queue Priority
Sep23

Unified Routing – Queue Priority

I’m using Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Contact Center to route cases and I have multiple queues …. but what if I want one queue to have priority over another? This requirement has been expressed in several of my projects! And until recently I would have explained that routing based on queue priority was not possible. As we could prioritize work items within a queue, but we had no ability… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Dynamics 365 Contact Center – Voice Upgrade Date
Sep17

Dynamics 365 Contact Center – Voice Upgrade Date

Are you using the voice channel of Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Contact Center (aka Omnichannel for Customer Service)? If you are … you need to be aware that you must  upgrade your voice channel by 31st Dec 2024. Below you can see that Microsoft is sending confirmation of the need to upgrade to all customers using the voice channel. Until recently customer’s would have been… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s Article on their...

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Dynamics 365 Contact Center – Chat Widget Domains
Sep17

Dynamics 365 Contact Center – Chat Widget Domains

Recently I noticed that a couple of my customers hadn’t set the options on their chat widgets to only show on certain domains. If you are using the chat channel within Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Contact Center …. I would like to suggest that restricting your widget to known domains is important! Therefore, in this post I will explain the option. Obviously, this is a simple feature. But if… Continue Reading Neil...

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Unified Routing – Diagnostics in Azure
Sep16

Unified Routing – Diagnostics in Azure

You may (or may not) be aware that the diagnostics option in Unified Routing has been deprecated. It is being replaced by diagnostics in Azure Application Insights. As of September 2024, I believe the existing routing diagnostics are too due to be deprecated in October. But you may need to check for the latest details. You can check out the details here. Maybe you should first understand… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Dynamics 365 Contact Center – Audio Files in IVR
Aug28

Dynamics 365 Contact Center – Audio Files in IVR

Within Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Contact Center (aka Omnichannel for Customer Service) we create an IVR using Copilot Studio. It is possible to add audio clips into your IVR, in this post I will look at how and why. Within an IVR we can use Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) to control how Copilot Studio says certain phrases. For example, we can control the accent used by the BOT, add… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Personal Numbers
Aug15

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Personal Numbers

Within Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Contact Center (aka Omnichannel for Customer Service) we can define personal numbers that can be used for incoming and outgoing calls. In this post I will complete a deep dive into this feature. Within in a contact center environment it is common to have one phone number that is linked to many agents. Possibly even several virtual agents, as we’ll have… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – The Importance of Wrap up
Aug12

Omnichannel for Customer Service – The Importance of Wrap up

Within Omnichannel for Customer Service (aka Dynamics 365 Contact Center) we can define what happens after conversations end. In this post I will describe how the wrap up options impact agent productivity. The concept of wrap up is simple enough … it is the period after the conversation ends and the agent becoming ready to engage with the next customer. Many contact centers have strict… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Unified Routing – Capacity Profiles and Work Classification
Jul08

Unified Routing – Capacity Profiles and Work Classification

I recently had a requirement to route conversations differently to agents based on the skills we’d classified for the work item. In this post I will explain this concept. There may be many scenarios when you’d like to apply the logic I am going to explain. A few are below; Maybe live chats requiring a particular skill take more concentration. Meaning agents can handle up to 3 regular… Continue Reading Neil...

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Copilot Studio – DTMF Only Mode in IVR
Jun23

Copilot Studio – DTMF Only Mode in IVR

Recently one of my LinkedIn contacts reached out with an excellent question about Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service and Copilot Studio BOTs …. “With a new style Copilot Studio voice enabled BOT, can we disable voice input?”. In this post I will address this question. This question means “Can we operate an IVR using only Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF … aka keypad… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s Article on...

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Copilot Studio – New Style Voice BOTs
Jun22

Copilot Studio – New Style Voice BOTs

Microsoft have recently published updates to the voice channel which allow us to use the newer style Copilot BOTs in voice scenarios. In this post I will explore some of the voice specific extensions. Classic Copilots are great! But the newer approach includes many capabilities that will make it much easier for us to create ever more complex IVRs. FYI: After you have upgraded your voice… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Voice Upgrade
Jun14

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Voice Upgrade

Microsoft have recently started to roll out a MAJOR update to Omnichannel voice! In this post I will explain how to upgrade your phone numbers within the Dynamics 365 Contact Center. In this post I will explain the upgrade process and then I will explain how we create a voice enabled IVR BOT within Copilot Studio. (As after the upgrade any existing PVA classic IVR BOTs will need to be… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Copilot – Create Knowledge Articles From Resolved Cases
Jun04

Copilot – Create Knowledge Articles From Resolved Cases

There is a new feature in Dynamics 365 Customer Service that will aid the creation of knowledge articles, agents can now use copilot to generate a suggested knowledge article based on the case content. In this post I will explain how this new feature operates. Setup First off, you will need to enable this option. You do that in your “Customer Service Admin Center” app. You will find… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Copilot – Filters
May27

Copilot – Filters

Within the Dynamics 365 Customer Service apps we can search knowledge articles using copilot. This is a great feature but what if you want to filter the results. Recently Microsoft have added the ability for us to define filters that agents can use to tailor copilot answers. Maybe you only want results to include published articles or possibly you want to ensure only the latest version… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Resizable Communication Panel
Apr30

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Resizable Communication Panel

Within the customer service workspace app of Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service we have a communication panel. When agents are chatting with customers the conversation displays in this panel. Did you know we can resize that panel? In this post I will explain how. Below you can see that I have my customer service workspace open and I’m talking to a customer. In… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Enhanced Outbound Dialer (April 2024)
Apr30

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Enhanced Outbound Dialer (April 2024)

The April 2024 wave for Dynamics 365 has included some additional features in the outbound dialer of Omnichannel for Customer Service. In this post I will explain how to enable searching for contacts directly from the dialer. Before you can get started with this new feature an admin might need to enable it! Enable Enhanced Outbound Dialer First of all, you may need to ensure the April… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Consult, filter by skills
Apr29

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Consult, filter by skills

A recent enhancement to Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service has enabled the ability to filter agents by skills when starting a consult. In this post I will explain this feature. Imagine (as an agent) you are talking to a customer, maybe you’re in a web chat conversation or maybe a voice call. The customer asks you a difficult question and you don’t know the answer. (They do… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Test Speaker / Microphone
Apr23

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Test Speaker / Microphone

Agents using Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer for voice calls can now test their speaker / microphone. I explain how in this post. Until recently agents could select the devices to use for speaker and microphone but they couldn’t test them directly in the customer service workspace app. I am really pleased that we have this feature …. In my setup (for example) I have multiple… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s Article...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Call Quality Surveys
Apr23

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Call Quality Surveys

We have a new feature in Omnichannel for Customer Service, the ability to collect feedback from agents on call quality. In this post I will explain this new feature. Monitoring call quality might be useful to spot any trends connected with how effectively your environment is performing. Before you can enable the surveys, some setup will be required. The concept here is that we first… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Store AI Created Case Summary Data
Apr09

Store AI Created Case Summary Data

I have recently been working on a requirement to store case summary data. In this post I will explain how I created an approach to store a “snapshot” of an AI generated summary as cases are resolved. My RequirementIf you have experimented with the copilot case summary option, you’ll already know how useful an AI summary can be. Quickly being able to view a short paragraph about a… Continue Reading Neil...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Conditional Agent Scripts
Apr04

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Conditional Agent Scripts

When using Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service we can use agent scripts to offer prompts to agents or trigger productivity macros. In this post I will explain how (and why) we might want to automatically start different scripts in different scenarios. Note: In this post I will give some background on agent scripts and macros. But the focus will be how we can conditionally load… Continue Reading Neil...

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D365PPUG Birmingham – April 2024 Event
Mar07

D365PPUG Birmingham – April 2024 Event

We have another amazing free Dynamics 365 / Power Platform event planned for April! Our next in-person meeting will take place on Thursday 11th April from 18:00 at the Wesleyan Building in Birmingham. You can register on meetup.com here. Regular attendees will already know that parking is available close by at the B4 Car Park or it’s a short walk from any city centre train station.

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Dynamics 365 – Knowledge Base Filtering
Mar05

Dynamics 365 – Knowledge Base Filtering

I was recently asked how we can control the filters available to agents when using the knowledge articles. I needed to research this feature; in this post I explain the filtering options. We can search the knowledge base from several points in Dynamics 365. You might, for example, be using the customer service hub and search for solutions directly from the case form. Or you maybe using the… Continue Reading Neil...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Phone Number Formats
Feb16

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Phone Number Formats

When using Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service you may need to ensure phone numbers held on your accounts and contacts are in a specific format. In this post I will explain why and how I validate my numbers. There are several times when the phone number format may be significant. I will list a few examples below. Outbound CallsBelow you can see I have entered a phone number in… Continue Reading Neil...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Change Agent Presence
Feb12

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Change Agent Presence

Within Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service agents can manually change their presence / status to be available, do not disturb etc. Supervisors can also change this status for individuals from the real-time conversations dashboard. But what-if you wanted to quickly change the status of multiple agents. In this post I will explore the challenge of updating the status on all… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – v2.0 Chat Widget Customizations
Feb09

Omnichannel for Customer Service – v2.0 Chat Widget Customizations

I recently explained how we can customize the appearance of chat widgets within Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service using data tags. In this post I will expand on that theme by looking how with the v2 chat widget code snippet we have additional customizations options. You can read my post about data tags here. Data tags are great! They are simple to use and offer a quick way to… Continue Reading Neil...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Data Tags and Chat Widgets
Feb08

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Data Tags and Chat Widgets

When we create a chat widget using Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service we can customize its appearance in several ways. In this post I will explain how “data tags” can be useful (and simple). When we create a chat channel, we can customize several aspects of the widget. (As shown below.) Including some control over colours, position and more. These customization options are… Continue Reading Neil...

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Copilot Studio – Hide Fields in Adaptive Cards
Feb07

Copilot Studio – Hide Fields in Adaptive Cards

I have recently been experimenting with adaptive cards within my Copilot Studio BOTS. (Previously known as Power Virtual Agents!) In this post I will explore how we can hide (and show) fields based on variables passed into the cards. In my previous posts I have already tackled several challenges (I guess this is turning into a mini series of adaptive card post!) … Toggle… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s Article on their...

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Copilot Studio – Adaptive Cards Toggle Visibility
Feb06

Copilot Studio – Adaptive Cards Toggle Visibility

I have recently been experimenting with adaptive cards with my Copilot Studio BOTS. (Previously called Power Virtual Agents!) In this post I will explore how to toggle the visibility of fields within my cards. In my previous posts I have already tackled several challenges, including … Dynamic Choices Variables Using a card as a pre-chat survey My latest challenge has… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s Article on their blog...

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Copilot Studio – Adaptive Cards, Dynamic Choices
Feb01

Copilot Studio – Adaptive Cards, Dynamic Choices

I have recently been experimenting with adaptive cards within my Copilot Studio BOTS. (Previously called Power Virtual Agents!) Recently I explained how we could use variables to customize our cards, in this post I will take that concept further by exploring how we can make the options in a choice field dynamic. You can read how to use variables in adaptive cards here. In this post I… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Copilot Studio – Adaptive Cards and Variables
Feb01

Copilot Studio – Adaptive Cards and Variables

I have recently been experimenting with adaptive cards within my Copilot Studio BOTS. (Previously called Power Virtual Agents!) For example, I have replaced my pre-chat survey with an adaptive card. To aid reuse of these cards I’ve needed to pass variables from my BOT into the card. In this post I will explain how this is achieved. You can read how I created my first adaptive card to act… Continue Reading Neil...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Role Persona Mapping
Jan22

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Role Persona Mapping

When using Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service or Unified Routing “Role Persona Mapping” can come into play. In this post I will explain how and why. If I’m completely honest, until recently I hadn’t given persona mapping much thought! And therefore, I admit I hadn’t fully appreciated why I might amend these settings or considered the implication of the persona! You will find…...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Copilot Studio, Transfers to Agent Message
Jan15

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Copilot Studio, Transfers to Agent Message

Whilst using a Copilot Studio BOT with Omnichannel for Customer Service I recent had a problem adding variables into the transfer message. I will explain the challenge and how I resolved it in this post. I guess you might know that we now have two authoring experiences for CoPilot Studio BOTS! The original approach is now called “Classic”. You can see below that with my classic BOT, I have… Continue Reading Neil...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service Training – March 2023
Jan11

Omnichannel for Customer Service Training – March 2023

I am very pleased to announce my first Microsoft Omnichannel for Customer Service training course Omnichannel for Customer Service is part of the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform, a comprehensive solution for contact centers. This is a “must attend” course for anyone implementing Dynamics 365 into contact centers. It is fair to say that all contact center projects… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s Article on...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Adaptive Cards as Pre-Chat Survey
Jan10

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Adaptive Cards as Pre-Chat Survey

Within Omnichannel for Customer Service, on the chat channel we can configure a pre-conversation survey. This functionality works well but I’ve recently been experimenting with using an adaptive card instead. In this post I will explain why and how! Newer style copilot studio BOTs support adaptive cards. These give us the ability to prompt the customer with questions, validate the… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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D365PPUG Birmingham – Jan 2024 Event
Jan03

D365PPUG Birmingham – Jan 2024 Event

The first in-person meeting of the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform User Group for Birmingham will take place on Thursday 25th Jan from 18:00. I can’t believe we are entering our 8th year of hosting events! As usual the event will be at the Wesleyan Building. Parking is available close by or it’s a short walk from any city centre train station. Please arrive early (6pm) to meet others… Continue Reading Neil...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Store Voice Surveys
Jan02

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Store Voice Surveys

Within Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service we can enable post-call surveys. I recently published a post explaining this feature. In this second related post I will explain how I have enhanced my post voice call surveys. You can read my original post here. (You might need to read that post before digesting this one!) In my original post I explained how we can use a Copilot… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Voice Channel Surveys
Dec06

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Voice Channel Surveys

Within Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service we can enable post-call surveys. In this post I will investigate how we can configure these surveys on the voice channel. With the chat / messaging channels we can use a Customer Voice survey as a post conversation survey. Voice channel surveys operate differently, for these we create a copilot studio Bot (PVA). At the end of voice… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – IVR BOTs and Languages
Dec04

Omnichannel for Customer Service – IVR BOTs and Languages

I recently created a blog post which explained the options we have in Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service and Unified Routing around languages. In this post I will continue that content and explain how an IVR might operate in multiple languages. You can read my original post here. In my original post I explained that we can implement a “no code” approach to our IVR by leveraging the… Continue Reading...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – New Dialer
Dec03

Omnichannel for Customer Service – New Dialer

When we make outbound telephone calls used Microsoft’s Omnichannel for customer service a new dialer is now available. I will highlight its features and explain how to enable it in this post. You can read about the new dialer experience here The old dialer worked fine but I admit it did have some limitations. My main frustration was around the way we were forced into entering the country code… Continue Reading Neil...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Languages
Nov26

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Languages

Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service supports multiple languages. In this post I will describe the options we have around channel language. I’m going to document this subject in the context of a phone call. (As this is probably the most common use case.) But you could obviously tailor these concepts to work with web chat and other conversation channels. Focusing on voice also allows me… Continue Reading Neil...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Agent Specific Capacity Profiles
Nov11

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Agent Specific Capacity Profiles

Microsoft have recently released a change to capacity profiles within Unified Routing. As we can how have agent specific capacities. Meaning in Omnichannel for Customer Service one agent might be able to handle 3 conversations at once, while another agent in the same profile might be able to handle less. Why is this important? Well often in contact centers we might say that senior agents can… Continue Reading Neil...

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Omnichannel For Customer Service – Identify Customers
Nov11

Omnichannel For Customer Service – Identify Customers

Within Microsoft’s Omnichannel for customer service we can automatically identify customers based on their phone number. (Or email for web chat!) But what logic is used and how can we customize it? In this post I will try to answer this question. Say you are an agent using the voice channel …. often contact or account record will be automatically linked to the conversation based on the… Continue Reading Neil...

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D365PPUG Birmingham – 2nd Speaker Announcement November 2023
Oct24

D365PPUG Birmingham – 2nd Speaker Announcement November 2023

Registrations are open for our next Dynamics 365 / Power Platform event in Birmingham. And this time I am very pleased to announce another amazing guest speaker. You can find more details and register on meetup.com here. Our next in-person meeting of the year will take place on Thursday 23rd November from 18:30 at the Wesleyan Building. Parking is available close by, at the B4 Car… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s Article...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Complex Conversation Routing
Oct22

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Complex Conversation Routing

Microsoft’s Omnichannel for Customer Service allows a single agent to handle conversations from multiple channels. Unified Routing is used to configure how those work items are distributed. This is a great feature but brings with it the opportunity for some complex routing requirements. In the post I will explain one such scenario. Possibly the easiest way to route things like webchats is to… Continue Reading Neil...

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D365PPUG Birmingham – Speaker Announcement 23rd November 2023
Oct18

D365PPUG Birmingham – Speaker Announcement 23rd November 2023

Registrations are open for our next Dynamics 365 / Power Platform event in Birmingham. And this time I am very pleased to announce a very special guest speaker. You can find more details and register on meetup.com here. Our next in-person meeting of the year will take place on Thursday 23rd November from 18:30 at the Wesleyan Building. Parking is available close by, at the B4 Car Park. Or… Continue Reading Neil Parkhurst’s...

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Omnichannel for Customer Service – Assignment Priorities
Sep20

Omnichannel for Customer Service – Assignment Priorities

Within Omnichannel for Customer Service we use Unified Routing to assign conversations to agents. Out of the box we have several assignment methods including round robin, highest capacity and longest idle. We’ll typically assign work items in the order they arrive based on one of these methods. But what if you want to prioritize certain conversations? In this post I will explain how we can use… Continue Reading Neil...

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Dynamics 365 Field Mappings to Quote, Order and Invoice
Sep14

Dynamics 365 Field Mappings to Quote, Order and Invoice

In Dynamics 365 it might be common to add custom fields to opportunity products, quotes lines, order lines and invoice lines. As we progress from an opportunity into a quote, or a quote into order etc, we’d want these custom fields to carry forward. But the relationship between these tables is (for some crazy reason) hidden. In this post I will explain how to resolve this challenge. I’m… Continue Reading Neil...

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Birmingham D365 and Power Platform User Group – September 2023
Sep13

Birmingham D365 and Power Platform User Group – September 2023

Our next Dynamics 365 / Power Platform user group meeting is fast approaching! On 21st September, if you are in Birmingham why not come and join us? As always, our event will be free and open to all. Our next in-person meeting of the year will take place on Thursday 20th July from 18:30 at the Wesleyan Building. Parking is available close by at the B4 Car Park or it’s a short walk from… Continue Reading Neil...

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