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Configure outbound messaging

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Omnichannel for Customer Service offers a suite of capabilities that extend the power of Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise to enable organizations to instantly connect and engage with their customers across digital messaging channels. An additional license is required to access Omnichannel for Customer Service. For more information, see the Dynamics 365 Customer Service pricing overview and Dynamics 365 Customer Service pricing plan pages.

Outbound messaging enables organizations to send messages to their customers through supported channels, based on system-triggered or user-defined events. You can configure message templates for SMS and WhatsApp channels only.

As an administrator, you can do the following tasks:

  • Create message templates that can be adopted for outbound messages.
  • Configure outbound messages to be sent for events that are triggered for an entity, such as creation of a case.
  • Configure outbound messages to be sent manually based on nonsystem events, such as a shipping delay due to weather.

Prerequisites

Set up message templates

Set up templates to send outbound messages. To create a template, consider the scenarios that require your organization to send outbound messages.

  1. Sign in to the Customer Service admin center or Omnichannel admin center (deprecated) app.

    Important

    Omnichannel admin center is deprecated. Use the Customer Service admin center app for admin tasks across Customer Service.

  2. Create a template for your outbound message.

Set up outbound configuration

You can set up the outbound configuration in the Customer Service admin center or Omnichannel admin center app.

  1. Go to one of the apps, and perform the following steps.

    1. In the site map, select Customer Settings in Customer support. The Customer settings page appears.
    2. In the Outbound section, select Manage.

    The Active Outbound Configurations page is displayed.

  2. Select New, and on the New Outbound Configuration page, enter the details for the settings mentioned in the following table.

    Field Description Sample value
    Name Name of the case Case create message
    Show in timeline The Show in timeline field displays the outbound message in the customer's timeline and activities. Set the toggle to Yes for event-based messages that apply to the support journey of a specific set of customers. For bulk messages that need to be sent to a high volume of customers, we recommend that you leave this setting at No, to conserve resources in your Omnichannel for Customer Service environment and storage. Yes
    Channel type Name of the channel for which the configuration is being set up. SMS
    Channel Channel number The preconfigured channel number
    Message template Name of the template Your previously created template

    The Configuration ID is generated when you select Save. Use it later to identify this outbound configuration when you set up the flow in Power Automate.

    You can choose a message template for the outbound message. The default message language and other localized message versions are part of the message template configuration and apply to outbound messages.

    Configure outbound messages.

Set up a Power Automate flow

Power Automate provides a low-code platform for workflow and process automation. Outbound messaging in Omnichannel for Customer Service relies on flow-based business logic. For more information, see Power Automate documentation. You can download and import the following sample flows to get started:

  • Case Creation flow (.zip file): This template sends an automatic outbound message when a case is created.

  • Case Resolved flow (.zip file): This instant-type template sends an outbound message manually to all customers who have a case in the resolved state.

To set up a Power Automate flow

  1. Go to one of the apps and perform the following steps.

    1. In the site map, select Productivity in Agent experience. The Productivity page appears.
    2. In the Message templates section, select Manage.

    The Message template view page is displayed.

  2. Select Flow at the top of the screen, and then select Create a flow.

    or

    Go to https://us.flow.microsoft.com/, sign in to your account and select My flows.

  3. In Power Automate, set up a flow that aligns with your outbound messaging scenario:

    • Automated: Send an automatic message triggered by a system event, for example, case creation.

    • Instant: Send a message manually about a nonsystem event, for example, a shipping delay or a sale on products.

    • Scheduled: Send a message at a point in time, at one or more times, or after an amount of time that you specify.

    For more information about the current limits and configuration details for flows, see Limits and configuration in Power Automate.

  4. Add the action, incident_msdyn_ocoutboundmessages. This action enables outbound activity tracking and reporting in Omnichannel for Customer Service.

  5. Initialize a ContactList array variable, which can be used as contact information.

  6. Get the required customer contact records that contain phone numbers and other contact details, which can be used as slugs in outbound messaging.

  7. Fill in the values for the ContactList in the Append to array variable template.

    Field Requirement Description
    tocontactid Required The customer's phone number that the outbound service uses to send messages.
    channelid Required The customer's preferred social channel: SMS or WhatsApp.
    option Required The customer's preference to be contacted by phone. This field can be set to true or false.
    locale Chosen by default Enable dynamic message languages, by replacing the default variable with a locale column reference, such as the customer's preferred language. If the locale value is missing, the fallback locale in the omnichannel message template is applied.
    context items NA Contains values to be processed with individual messages as they're sent.
    entityrelationshipname Not required This field refers to the ActivityRelationship that was previously defined. Although this field isn't required, it's essential for being able to track outbound activities in the timeline. So, if show in timeline in the outbound configuration is set to Yes, this field has to be added to the flow for it to work.
    msdyn_ocoutboundconfigurationid Not Required To fill the config ID in the outbound message activity records. The value should be the same that's used in msdyn_InvokeOUtboundAPI.
    CustomerName Required The name of the customer. This value isn't case-sensitive and can throw an error if the customer name values are different.
    CaseName Required The name of the case.

  8. In the Perform an unbound action window, enter the outbound message configuration ID that you generated. When you add the ID to the msdyn_ocoutboundconfigurationid field, the field references the correct outbound configuration for a flow run.

  9. Add the output from the compose action.

When the customer responds back to the outbound messages, the customer's message is treated like any other incoming conversation that exists today in Omnichannel for Customer Service. The conversation is routed and assigned to an agent, and the agent can respond back to the customer.

Note

Outbound messaging imposes limits of 100 contacts per request and 30,000 requests per org per hour. Where higher loads are expected, we recommend that you implement batch processing logic in flows to limit contacts per request to 100.

Video

Outbound messaging in Omnichannel for Customer Service

To view more videos about Omnichannel for Customer Service, go to Videos.

See also

Create message templates
Channels in Omnichannel for Customer Service
Configure an SMS channel for TeleSign
Configure an SMS channel for Twilio
SMS FAQ