CRM Customer Portal - External Access for Customers to CRM

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We currently use Dynamics CRM to manage support calls and contracts via entitlements. This is a manual process where customers send in an email with a problem and we log this in CRM and get a unique case number like CAS-123456-ABCDEF

However, we never then moved to where the customer could see the calls logged or even log the calls themselves. This was because 99.9% of all customer calls back and forth use screen shots. So customer will send in a mail with scree shot showing the screen they accessed the button they pressed and the error or screen that didn't display whatever.

We would respond with, you need to select this filter with this options as in screen shot.

However, Dynamics CRM Notes section can't handle the screen shots, but I was very surprised with the Unified interface to see screen shots are now showing :-)

I just copied the customer mail as I normally do and then pasted, and normally it juts put in the text, but it now includes the screen shots just as in mail. Whereas before if there were 5 screen shots, I'd have to save each screen shot as 5 separate attachments

So now this is working, ideally I'd like to say to customer just go to this url and login and you will see your CRM ticket and the notes and the screen shots all embedded as this now works

Currently this CRM is all internal and we can access this, but is there a plugin or something that allows customers to then access our CRM and see these tickets ? I rang Microsoft CRM sales support on 0800 028 3409 but they said they couldn't help !

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CRM Customer Portal... 5 on at

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RE: CRM Customer Portal - External Access for Customers to CRM

Thank you so much :-)

Yes, you got it !

We haven't used this CRM helpdesk facility specifically because 99.9% of customer calls and in fact customer correspondence back and forth is via screen shots. I don't actually know any customer or even developer that in customer helpdesk doesn't have multiple screen shots ,whether that is error messages or just instructions of what they did to get the error. So to have to manually then attach multiple screen shots is so last century . So when the unified interface then showed the screen shots embedded in the notes, this was perfect

We could at last allow customers to use this system rather than emails back and forth. Its easier and more intuitive when you can see the screen shots rather than have to open 5 attachments, and so developers would just mail the customers or customers would mail directly to the support team. This then meant when you tried to pick up a thread on CRM of a support call it was impossible as correspondence was via various mails, where ideally you would want this all as notes in any CRM helpdesk system

So i wanted to then add the portal, which I had been holding back on . Problem was when I went to add the portal , it was a simple process of using Dynamics admin centre and selecting the applications and doing a portal add on and selecting customer self service

But when I went there its all disappeared and there is just a link how to use power apps !

Then when you google or you tube power apps there's loads and load on power apps and everything but customer self service portal

Never having used power apps i was worried I'd then break CRM as it is trying to do something I'm not familiar with

So I so much appreciate your reply. Yes all I was looking for was that notes in the portal would have this rich text feature and we could ask customers to now use and correspond via the portal, but if the portal doesn't have rich text then it makes it worse as myself adding the notes with the screen shots will mean customers using the portal without rich test will just see what's to them a load of spurious text

Thanks again

Brian
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Fubar 2,752 on at

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RE: CRM Customer Portal - External Access for Customers to CRM

You can setup a fully functional Trial CRM instance and install a Trial Portal into it to see what it does first before putting it into your main environments..

The Customer Self-Service Power Apps Portal, is what you will want to install. However, just be aware that the attachments, screen shots will probably not be the same as what you are seeing in CRM - believe what you are describing in CRM is from the new Rich Text for Notes and I don't think this will render the images the same on the portal (for the portal you can make notes attachments available but this is like the old CRM where you open the note or Portal Comment activity andthen click on the link to download the file).
CRM Customer Portal... 5 on at

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RE: CRM Customer Portal - External Access for Customers to CRM

Thanks so much Leah Ju

Yes, all I'm trying to do is set up a method to allow customers to access our CRM externally. I've no clue how to even begin this. I did see this on googling

Create a portal in an environment containing customer engagement apps - Power Apps | Microsoft Docs

docs.microsoft.com/.../create-dynamics-portal

I'm assuming that this "portal" is a way to allow customers to access our CRM externally and then see the helpdesk tickets directly

However, when I went to that link, it said

More information: Provision a portal using the older portal add-on

If you have provisioned a portal using the old ...

I'm assuming that's the way to go, and I found this you tube video

Problem is I'm nervous that in doing this I don't then somehow break my existing CRM. So I'm assuming this is the way to proceed and add this "portal" so that I can then allow customers to access CRM

Regards

Brian
Community Member Microsoft Employee on at

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RE: CRM Customer Portal - External Access for Customers to CRM

Hi Partner,

You should know about power app portal, it is external-facing websites that allow users outside their organizations to sign in with a wide variety of identities, create and view data in Microsoft Dataverse, or even browse content anonymously.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/portals/overview

and you can refer following link to know how to manage case in portal:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/portals/case-management

Regards,

Leah Ju

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