With the upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016, a new version of Unified Service Desk (USD) will also be released. There are a bunch of brand new features that are sure to make USD better than ever, and in today’s blog, we will showcase some of those features. Let’s take a look!

Configuration Entity Enhancements: Groups of related settings are combined to create a configuration that can be used as an agent profile, such as telephony agent configuration or chat agent configuration. Typically, the difference between different agent types is minimal, but the effort needed to duplicate was to create another configuration. With the addition of a cloning feature, these configurations can now be easily duplicated without requiring you to create a new profile.

Default Profile: Currently, when a user is assigned to USD but not to a specific configuration, they get all of the settings for all of the configurations. With the new version, you now have a default configuration for users that are not assigned to a specific configuration.

Seamless Deployment: Customizations, including dll, exe and data files, can now be packaged as a zip file, uploaded to CRM, and assigned to a configuration. The USD client will download the customizations automatically, which will make desktop administration significantly easier. These files can also be versioned and they can co-exist in CRM.

New Installer: USD 2016 features a brand new installer which can be used for 44 languages and can download and install pre-requisites (.net framework and Windows Identity Foundation) automatically instead of having to stop an installation if pre-requisites are missing.

Silent Installation: System administrators can now deploy USD via a group policy without presenting the user with an UI to interact with.

Audit and Diagnostic Settings: These settings are moved from an agent’s desktop to CRM so that they can be modified centrally without needing to access the agent’s computer.

New Browser Control: The new browser control uses an Internet Explorer process, which will reduce crashes and freezes. As an added benefit, this control guarantees that any application running inside IE will also run in USD.

What is Unified Service Desk (USD)?

After reading the content above, you may be wondering what is USD? Unified Service Desk for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the interface that makes it possible to configure the necessary applications for call centers. This common management of call center applications gives agents immediate access to customer data from CRM and helps guide their actions along the way to improve the customer experience. An advantage of USD is that simple agent applications can be setup and deployed along with your CRM in very little time.

With call center CRM solutions, agents have real-time access and data at their disposal to provide immediate telephone call support. Enhancing the customer experience by having the history of the customer and other data at hand is key. USD can be configured through CRM or integrated with other applications by writing code extensions.  USD provides Microsoft Visual Studio templates to help with that task. Modules and applications are developed to easily integrate with data in external applications.

Here are just a few of the features and advantages provided by USD:

• Users have a single application to learn and use for performing customer related tasks.
• Configuring through CRM reduces the need for custom code and the cost of building agent applications.
• Security within USD uses the same security model within CRM.
• USD leverages UII framework to build applications based on CRM or other software.
• Call scripting is easily configured based on content that can pull-in data from CRM.

Where can you find USD and how do you install it?

Many videos and guides are available online for information on installing and deploying USD. Check out the Unified Service Desk Administration Guide and Install and Deploy Unified Service Desk.

That’s all for the blog today! Want to learn more about what Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 has in store? Check out the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Release Preview Guide.

Happy CRM’ing!