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How to install, deploy, and upgrade Unified Service Desk

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Before you can install and deploy Unified Service Desk for Dynamics 365, you must identify the Microsoft Dataverse platform instance on which you want to build and deploy the configuration. While you can use a new Dataverse instance, Unified Service Desk works best when Dataverse customization is mostly complete. Unified Service Desk controls the call center agent’s view of Dataverse by manipulating windows, injecting JavaScript, and so on. If major changes occur to Power Platform environment after Unified Service Desk is deployed, it might cause your Unified Service Desk configuration to no longer work as required. While the Unified Service Desk configuration often comes later in Dataverse implementation, having Unified Service Desk in mind when designing your Dataverse platform environment is useful.

Unified Service Desk installation and deployment is done in phases where initially you set up a development environment to configure agent applications using one of the sample Unified Service Desk applications as the base. Next, you test how your configurations appear and work using the Unified Service Desk client application by connecting to Dataverse instance where you configured Unified Service Desk. Next, you use the customized Unified Service Desk configuration on to a Production instance of Dataverse, and the client application. The configuration includes the Customization Files package used to distribute any files and assemblies that are required to your agent’s computers.

Important

You can configure Unified Service Desk to integrate with third-party line-of-business (LOB) applications. However, before deploying an integrated solution (involving Unified Service Desk and LOB applications) in the production environment in your organization, you must thoroughly test your integrated solution to ensure that the performance results are aligned with your expectations. Unified Service Desk might not function appropriately if integrated with LOB applications that demonstrate user interface (UI) blocking, memory leak issues, and slow response times.

Listed below is the sequence that we recommend for installing and deploying Unified Service Desk in your organization. Before installing Unified Service Desk, ensure that you meet the system requirements: Unified Service Desk system requirements.

Step 1: Initial installation and deployment

Identify a Dataverse server where you want to deploy Unified Service Desk and a development computer that will be used for deploying Unified Service Desk packages and then connecting to the packages by using the Unified Service Desk client.

  1. Install the Unified Service Desk client on the development computer. More information: Install the Unified Service Desk Client

  2. Deploy Unified Service Desk packages to Dataverse instance. More information: Deploy Unified Service Desk packages using Package Deployer

  3. Run the Unified Service Desk client, and connect to Dataverse instance where you deployed the packages to verify that everything is working correctly. More information: Connect to a instance using the Unified Service Desk client

    Set up additional development computers

    To set up additional development computers for configuring your agent desktop applications using Unified Service Desk, install the Unified Service Desk client on the computer. More information: Install Unified Service Desk Client

Step 2: Configure and test your agent application

Use your development environment to configure your agent application by building on one of the available sample applications you deployed, and then test it by connecting to the customized package using the Unified Service Desk client application. More information: Use Unified Service Desk to configure your agent application

Step 3: Deploy the customized agent application

After you have customized your agent application through configuration or custom code, you must install the Unified Service Desk client application along with any files required for the custom functionality on your agent’s computers. Consider creating a ClickOnce application or an MSI package installer to bundle all the files together and deploy on the agent computers in your organization. More information: see MSDN: ClickOnce Security and Deployment or MSDN: Windows Installer

You might also want to migrate your Unified Service Desk configuration from a development/test to a production environment. You can use the new Configuration Migration tool to migrate your Unified Service Desk configuration data across Dataverse instance. More information: Migrate your Unified Service Desk configuration to another server

See also

Unified Service Desk system requirements

Install Unified Service Desk Client

Deploy sample Unified Service Desk applications using Package Deployer

Connect to a instance using the Unified Service Desk client