Get started with Customer Service workspace

Dynamics 365 Customer Service workspace helps agents increase productivity with a browser-like, tabbed experience. Agents can use the app to work on multiple cases and conversations. It's a modern, customizable, high-productivity application that allows agents to work on multiple sessions at a time in a single workspace.

The application uses artificial intelligence in productivity tools like Smart Assist to identify similar cases and relevant articles, which helps boost agent productivity. Features such as agent scripts and macros provide agents with guidance and resources to automate repetitive tasks to achieve a great customer experience.

For more information about licensing and system requirements, refer to Customer Service workspace system requirements.

Set up Omnichannel in Customer Service workspace

With the Dynamics 365 Customer Service Digital Messaging add-on, the service representatives who work on cases can also engage with customers via channels like Live Chat, voice, and SMS without leaving the Customer Service workspace app. More information: Set up Omnichannel for Customer Service channels in Customer Service workspace

Screenshot of the enhanced multisession Customer Service workspace

Customer Service workspace sessions and tabs

Customer Service workspace allows service representatives to work on multiple sessions at a time in a single app while keeping the work organized.

  • Service representatives can work on up to nine sessions and within a session, they can open up to 10 tabs.
  • A new session starts when a service representative opens a case from the Home session or accepts an incoming conversation.
  • If the service representative opens the customer record from a session, a new tab opens in the same session.
  • Service representatives can select the hamburger icon to access the site map.
  • When a service representative opens a page from the site map, the page loads in the current focused session.

The following table gives an overview of the multisession navigation:

Action Result
Open a record from the Home session Record opens in a new session.
Open a record from the Global search Record opens in a new session.
Open a record from the retrieved search records Record opens in a focused session.
Open a record using the Quick Create notification Record opens in a new session
Create a new record Record opens in a new session
Open a record from the timeline Record opens in a new tab in the focused session
Open a record from a form lookup Record opens in a new tab in the focused session
Open a view from the Sitemap View opens in a new tab in the focused session
Open a dashboard from the Sitemap Dashboard opens in a new tab in the focused session

Session restore (preview)

If your administrator turned on session restore, key entities in Customer Service workspace reload automatically if your browser refreshes. Without session restore, when a browser refreshes or reconnects, Customer Service workspace reloads only the home page.

Session restore automatically restores cases, accounts, and their associated application tabs without requiring you to manually reopen them. Focus is restored to the last session or application tab in view. After the presence is loaded, conversations, including calls and chats, are reinstated.

For more information, refer to Enable session restore to automatically reopen sessions and tabs (preview).

Use the Inbox

If your administrator turned on the inbox for your profile, you can select the Inbox tab to view all the cases, conversations, and activities that are assigned to you. Use the inbox to work on high-velocity tasks. You can also promote inbox sessions to regular sessions when you need more time to resolve a case or complete a conversation.

The asynchronous channels available in the conversation inbox are:

  • SMS
  • persistent chat
  • Facebook
  • WeChat
  • LINE
  • WhatsApp
  • Microsoft Teams

For more information, refer to Configure the inbox view.

Use the productivity pane with Smart Assist

When you work on a case, the productivity pane on the right side of the Customer Service workspace displays intelligence-driven suggestions to help you. The productivity pane uses Smart Assist to suggest related cases and knowledge articles that might be relevant to the case you're working on. There are also customer service representative scripts that guide you through a consistent series of steps with potentially automated actions through macros.

For more information, refer to Productivity pane.

Work with cases, activities, knowledge articles, and email templates

On the Customer Service Agent Dashboard, here are some of the actions you can do:

  • View cases and activities assigned to you
  • View cases available to work on
  • Create, delete, and filter cases and activities from the workspace

Customize the agent experience with Customer Service admin center

Agent experience profiles enable you to create targeted app experiences for agents and supervisors, and are an alternative to building and maintaining custom apps. With the agent experience profiles, administrators can create custom profiles with specific session templates, conversation channels, and productivity tools. These profiles can then be assigned to users.

For more information, refer to Agent experience profiles.

Considerations

Here are a few things to note when you use Customer Service workspace in your organization:

  • We recommend that you have only one browser instance accessing the app.
  • XRM.Navigation.openForm and Xrm.Navigation.navigateTo APIs have a similar navigation as the multisession app. For example:
    • A new session is initiated if you open a form through XRM.Navigation.openForm from Home.
    • A new tab in the focused session is initiated if you open a form through XRM.Navigation.openForm from a case session.
  • Opening a WebResource through Xrm.Navigation.openWebResource opens a new browser window but doesn't remove the navigation and command bars. You can programmatically open web resources as session tabs using the Microsoft.Apm.createTab method. More information: createTab method
  • You can open sessions and tabs using Microsoft.Apm APIs. More information: App profile manager JavaScript API Reference
  • The multisession capabilities are supported in the Customer Service workspace and Omnichannel for Customer Service apps only. You can't navigate across multiple sessions in a custom app or a copy of the Customer Service workspace app in your environment.

Limitations

The following limitations apply to Customer Service workspace:

  • When you switch between tabs or sessions:
    • Subgrid controls don't retain the filter or sort conditions.
    • Web resources, form components, custom pages, and third-party websites don't retain the state of the page.
    • When you change the status record in a tab, the corresponding record that's open in a grid or subgrid of another tab doesn't refresh automatically.
  • Customer Service workspace isn't supported in mobile devices, Unified Service Desk, Microsoft Teams, and with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises).

Deprecated Customer Service workspace layout

The legacy layout is deprecated and was removed in October 2023.

Screenshot of the default Customer Service workspace, with items labeled according to the legend in the table

Turn on legacy layout (deprecated)

You can enable the legacy layout in one of the following ways:

  1. In Customer Service admin center, select Miscellaneous in Operations.
  2. Select Manage for New and upcoming features.
  3. Clear the Multisession Layout improvements and then select Save.

Turn off the close session dialog

  1. With Customer Service workspace open, press the F12 key to open the developer tools window.
  2. In the console window, enter the following command: Xrm.Utility.getGlobalContext().saveSettingValue("msdyn_SuppressSessionCloseWarning",true)
  3. Refresh the app page.

Turn on legacy navigation (deprecated)

Note

The legacy navigation is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.

  1. With Customer Service workspace open, press the F12 key to open the developer tools window.
  2. In the console window, type the following command and press Enter: Xrm.Utility.getGlobalContext().saveSettingValue("msdyn_MultisessionNavigationImprovements",false)
  3. Refresh the app page.

Training resources

Download the Customer Service workspace in a day training. This training provides an overview of the following topics:

  • Get familiar with sessions, tabs, and productivity tools.
  • How to create agent experience profiles, templates, service representative scripts, and macros.
  • How to assign agent experience profile based on security roles.
  • How to move agent experience profiles via solutions.
  • How to use multisession APIs (Microsoft.Apm).

Migrate from Unified Service Desk to Customer Service workspace. The Unified Service Desk to Customer Service workspace Migration Playbook helps you plan and execute the transition from Unified Service Desk to Customer Service workspace.

Work with cases in Customer Service Hub
Overview of the productivity pane
View the agent calendar