Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Interactive Service Hub and USD

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by Community Member

Hi Experts,

Currently we are using USD (Unified Service Desk) for agents, Is Interactive Service Hub is replacement for USD?.

Can we use Interactive Service Hub for agent facing application?.

Thanks,

*This post is locked for comments

I have the same question (0)

All responses (11)

Answers (0)

Suggested answer

Alagunellaikumar 6,212 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi

No it is not exact replacement of agent facing application.

www.microsoft.com/.../interactive-service-hub-user-s-guide.aspx

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Nithya Gopinath 17,078 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi rathin,

According to me interactive service hub cannot be used as a replacement for USD. Please refer my blog on interactive service hub for more details about interactive service hub.

nithyagopinath.wordpress.com/.../building-interactive-service-hub-dashboards-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2016

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Thank you. What is the benefit of Interactive Service Hub?. I heard it is desktop like interface/application similar to USD, which user base it is useful?. for agents, employees or managers?.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

ansrikanth 3,115 on at

Like (1)

Report

The first paragraph in MSDN for USD : Unified Service Desk for Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides a configurable framework for quickly building applications for call centers so that agents can get a unified view of the customer data stored in Microsoft Dynamics 365. You can aggregate customer information from different areas in Dynamics 365 into an integrated desktop that provides a 360° view of the customer interactions. This gives your customer service agents immediate access to business critical information so they can quickly engage with customers and address queries and issues.

Where as the Interactive service hub, only deals with data that is present in your CRM system and not specifically about one customer rather about what is happening in the whole organization.

Finally, the answer for your question : No, Interactive service hub no way replace USD.

Hope this gives basic understanding. refer MSDN for basic understanding about USD.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Thanks Srikanth for update. Let me explain you the background of why I bring up this question.

1. USD works only with IE browser

2. USD is unstable, while working it crashes

3. Performance is slow

Above is the real life deployment scenario, NOT from MSDN,

So, I am curious to know if Microsoft has any plan to upgrade USD or plan to replace USD with new technology.

Thanks,

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

ansrikanth 3,115 on at

Like (0)

Report

#1, Yes it is supporting only IE at this moment ( and I didn't heard of any such plans on extending it with other browsers - correct me if I'm wrong MVPs) and the reason , IE being a MS product, USD team will have a free hand to make the changes if required in IE as well to give greater support for Automation which is the key advantage of USD.

#2 & #3, Its not entirely true. So far I have delivered 4 projects purely on USD. Though there are minor glitches but believe me its been improved a lot when compared with USD1.0. And one key thing that every one forget all the times is, It is not USD that is unstable rather it is the applications that we are hosting inside the USD and making the whole USD unstable at the end. (at least that is what my experience with USD).

So to give you more insight on USD, It is just an umbrella where you can place all your LOB applications under one roof and make all of them Context sensitive applications using USD automation capabilities. For ex, take a customer care center of Telecom business, Where whenever a customer call comes agent should open Billing application, customer information application, contact history, customer verification etc applications and navigate to the particular customer page in all these applications. It will definitely take considerable amount of time for the agent. But USD - Will automatically finds out who is this customer based on CTI integration and automatically opens all these applications as Tabs with in USD and automatically navigates to the related customer page in these applications. Now, think of from Agent point of view how much benefit it can give.

Where as interactive service hub- I would simply say it as a "Dashboard" but a bit more intelligent one. Btw, Interactive service hub (ISH) is not a Windows app, its a web based app and in fact we will host ISH inside the USD and do automation on it if required :)

I hope it helps you in understanding basic usage of USD.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Neil Parkhurst 10,727 User Group Leader on at

Like (1)

Report

ISH and USD are quite different products. Both can be used in client facing situations but both has a different focus.

USD is great if you need line of business system integration or CTI integration. Also it will work with all entities in CRM.

ISH is very much focused on service scenarios. Meaning it isn't so useful if you want to work with opportunities etc. But it can be useful when working with cases / knowledge base.

With each release Microsoft adds new capabilities and performance improvements into USD. I would expect this to continue.

It is possible to use ISH and USD together. I have written several blog posts on this topic.

https://neilparkhurst.com/2016/06/16/usd-interactive-service-hub-dashboard/

https://neilparkhurst.com/2016/06/18/usd-interactive-service-hub-entity-navigation/

https://neilparkhurst.com/2016/06/18/usd-interactive-service-hub-page-not/

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Thanks Neil.

Our requirement is to use USD purely for service purposes, We are not upsell/cross-sell in agent call (ie we will nor bring up other LOB applications).

We will go through your blog for integrating ISH and USD.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Srikanth,

How many call center agents in those 4 projects?. I am talking about 10000+ call center agents across the world. We are in first release and first phase 2000 agents Microsoft itself implements our project , yes, 2.2 is better, but still cannot meet our benchmark, so we heavily customized using WPF.

Can you share with us best practices to be followed on USD customization?. I have some bits and pieces gathered from MSDN, and other blogs. Recently I found Neil Parkhurst blogs has some good info on USD. Thanks Neil. It is very useful for us to begin with.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
ansrikanth 3,115 on at

Like (0)

Report

[quote user="rathinp2016"]How many call center agents in those 4 projects?. I am talking about 10000+ call center agents across the world. We are in first release and first phase 2000 agents Microsoft itself implements our project , yes, 2.2 is better, but still cannot meet our benchmark, so we heavily customized using WPF.[/quote]

That's a massive implementation, I'm no way close to that implementation ever. What makes me surprised is, when you are implementing with such a huge team - how come the question arises on USD vs ISH ?

[quote user="rathinp2016"]Can you share with us best practices to be followed on USD customization?. I have some bits and pieces gathered from MSDN, and other blogs. [/quote]

That's in my todo list. I'm gathering inputs from other colleagues as well on this, Looking for some sort of "help" from MS as well on this (if they can hear me over here :)) !!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No