Microsoft Dynamics Employee Self-Service: New Version Released

Employees can save time with better access to information on how to do their jobs.

Microsoft has released a new version of their Employee Self-Service (ESS) solution, updated to be based on Dynamics 365. Dynamics ESS is a knowledge management tool based on the Knowledge Base features of Dynamics 365 Customer Service. In December 2015, Microsoft released a prior version of Employee Self-Service based on Dynamics Parature, a product whose planned retirement in 2020 was announced in 2016. The latest version incorporates significant enhancements based on Parature technology which has been incorporated into Dynamics 365.

Information technology departments are likely to be the first adopters of Dynamics ESS, to supplement their intranets and help desks in order to reduce the number of trouble tickets and provide 24-hour coverage when their help desk resources are limited.

Dynamics ESS works in Office 365 to look up answers in Word or Outlook

Users can access the information in the Dynamics Knowledge Base through Office 365, such as looking up an answer directly inside Outlook when responding to an email inquiry, or even in Microsoft Word.

Dynamics Employee Self-Service can complement your SharePoint intranet. The solution is simple to deploy, but the main challenge, as with most knowledge management projects, is to populate the knowledge base and make company rules and guidance more explicit and accessible.

Dynamics ESS works on mobile devices

If you already are a subscriber to Dynamics 365 Enterprise, you can enable Dynamics ESS from the Dynamics 365 Administration Center (which is accessed from the Office 365 admin page:

When you initiate Dynamics ESS, a new Dynamics Portal will be created, and the link will be displayed which you can share with your users. Users in your company can access ESS with the affordable Team Member subscription for Dynamics 365.

For more information, download the overview document or contact my company InfoStrat for our Dynamics ESS Quick Start or watch the video demo.

PowerApps Portal: The Successor to Microsoft Dynamics Portal

In case you have been reviewing Microsoft's new pricing for its Dynamics products which was released this month and have been unable to find Dynamics Portal, it has been rebranded as PowerApps Portal and shifted to the PowerApps side of the Microsoft product family.

Rebranding the portal product underscores the importance of app scenarios involving external users such as customers and suppliers. It also provides a simpler interface than Dynamics 365 for occasional users.

The new portal pricing is based on the number of unique users who log into the portal each month (for authenticated users) and on the number of page views for anonymous users. "A login provides an external authenticated user access to a single portal for up to 24 hours. Multiple logins during the 24-hour period count as 1 billable login. Internal users can be licensed either by the PowerApps per app or per users plans, or a qualifying Dynamics 365 subscription."

Pricing starts at $200/mo. for 100 dail…

ScreenMeet Remote Support Tool for Dynamics 365 Customer Service

I met Lou Guercia when he was president and CEO of Scribe Software, the leading CRM integration tool. Scribe was acquired by TIBCO Software in 2018. I recently reconnected with Lou and learned about ScreenMeet, the company he joined as chief operating officer. The following is a description of the product provided by ScreenMeet:

ScreenMeet is a cloud-based remote support tool designed to integrate with Dynamics 365 Customer Service. By enabling customer service and IT support organizations to address critical technical issues directly from their CRM or ticketing platform, it streamlines the process and provides a fully browser-based support experience.

You can also use ScreenMeet with other CRM products or even on its own without a CRM.

Here is a short video demo of ScreenMeet with Dynamics integration:

ScreenMeet - Cloud-based Remote Support Integrated with Dynamics 365 Customer Support Once integrated with a Dynamics 365 CS organization, the ScreenMeet widget appears on Case pa…

Microsoft PowerApps and Microsoft Flow Licensing for Beginners

NOTE: Since this post was written, Microsoft has updated pricing. For current pricing, see https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing

Next month marks two years since Microsoft announced the preview of its Flow workflow automation product. Since then, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow have been gaining in popularity.

We at InfoStrat are receiving more questions from customers on how PowerApps and Flow are licensed by Microsoft. This is a brief overview with links to authoritative Microsoft resources with all the details.

What are PowerApps and Flow? Microsoft PowerApps is a framework derived from Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) that allow you to build apps either with or without a form interface. PowerApps works with Microsoft Flow.

Microsoft Flow is is a cloud software tool to build automated workflows that connect to many Microsoft and non-Microsoft systems and services. For instance, you could write a workflow which would create a record in Dynamics 365 whenever a new file …

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