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Design Pattern for multiple case management systems

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Posted on by RichA99 5

What would people suggest as a design pattern for multiple case management systems on Dynamics?

The Case Management systems are under the umbrella of a large company but, mostly, unrelated to each other (separate business units).

I can see how a solution would work on 1 Dynamics CE Case Management instance if all the Business Units were closely (inter)related (customer service, product query, maintenance) but, in this case each BU each has a completely different BPF.

Would the best solution be to use a Dynamics instance (CE) per Case Management system (BU) or does Dynamics allow for polymorphism in the specializing of the case entity per BU?

It should also be mentioned that the Business Units use a separate SharePoint O365 site per BU; if Dynamics can link only 1 SharePoint site per instance, how would this work, while still allowing full integration with SP?

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    RE: Design Pattern for multiple case management systems

    You are right, it is not trivial but doable. Use multiple solutions and deploy them as managed to the qa and prod environments. If you have the resources, develop each solution in a separate development environment  to guarantee full separation of dependencies. This way, your target environment will contain layers of those managed solutions to compose the final one. 

  • RichA99 Profile Picture
    RichA99 5 on at
    RE: Design Pattern for multiple case management systems

    Thank you Omar :-)

    I came to exactly the same conclusions.

    The other problem I assume with multiple solutions, one for each BU, is the nightmare it creates on deployment to a single instance, when all the solutions are referencing the base case entity.

    Thanks,

    Richard.

  • Verified answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    RE: Design Pattern for multiple case management systems

    Hi Rich,

    Just before anything, I think you can have multiple sites per instance but you can't have an entity connected to multiple sites.

    Now to your question:

    This seems as non-trivial problem for sure, given that business units don't share needs. Now the question is, what do these BU's share? if nothing, why not have a separate environment for each and use the case for each of them. This seems like an overkill but environments are not expensive now and storage is OK (if you have enough number of users). If you want the one environment solution, then you need to know the boundaries of each business units and their needs and design based on that.

    If the BU's have only different fields to collect on each case, then you can use the case entity and use the case type to differentiate each case, once a case type is selected, you change the form to the proper BU. (Actually you can make forms visible for each BU based on their security). This is good enough for most needs and I worked on similar implementation. After that, use views, dashboards, security role etc to filter things based on each BU.

    If on the other hand, the differences are much bigger than what can be solved in fields and multi forms. In this scenario, using the Case entity for all of them (btw, how many BUs you have?) is an overkill, and this is kind multi responsibility that will lead to A LOT of conditioning and branching based on units. In this case, I would build custom entities tailored toward their needs only and use the case for something that is cross organization or something that needs the built in Case features.

    And you and I wish for polymorphic CRM but it is not there yet :)

  • Paul_Owen Profile Picture
    Paul_Owen 2,027 on at
    RE: Design Pattern for multiple case management systems

    HI, when you refer to Business Units you aren't referring to Dynamics 365 Business Units then? Dynamics 365 can only link to one SP site so if that is an issue I guess seperate environments is the only option you have?

    Regards

    Paul

  • Suggested answer
    ba365guy Profile Picture
    ba365guy 2,946 on at
    RE: Design Pattern for multiple case management systems

    Hi RichA99

    In one instance you can create multiple "model driven apps"

    No need of one instance per BU. 

    In OOTB Case Management Solution, user will access "Customer Service Hub" app. 

    Similarly, you (or your Microsoft partner) can create required model driven apps in single instance as per your business process.

  • Suggested answer
    ashish12 Profile Picture
    ashish12 3,079 on at
    RE: Design Pattern for multiple case management systems

    Hi,

    You need to create 1 Model Driven app per BU if your Forms, Views, BPF, Etc are different.

    So you can display only specific form, Views and BPF in that App.

    You can also use OOB Customer service Hub as one of your for a BU.

    Thanks

  • RichA99 Profile Picture
    RichA99 5 on at
    RE: Design Pattern for multiple case management systems

    Thanks for quick reply! :-)

    >> Please create one seperate model driven app per BU. You can add the required BPF for that BU in the app.

    What if each BU wanted to use the MS OOTB Case Management solution?

    Would this dictate using 1 instance per BU?

    Thanks!

  • Suggested answer
    ba365guy Profile Picture
    ba365guy 2,946 on at
    RE: Design Pattern for multiple case management systems

    Hi,

    Please create one seperate model driven app per BU. You can add the required BPF for that BU in the app. 

    Regarding SharePoint, the site should be under same Office 365 tenant for out of the box feature.

    If you want to use different SharePoint sites, the whole feature need to be developed custom.

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