Introduction
In the recent past, most customers opened cases with organizations over the
phone. Typically, as a call came in, the agent who received it would create
the case as they engaged with the customer. Today, customers might engage
and submit cases in any number of ways, often without speaking to an agent.
For example, a customer might send a request for support to an organization's
email alias like support@microsoft.com. When the request has been received,
the email needs to be converted into a case record. This approach ensures
that the request will be available for agents to work on, and that it can
be routed to a different queue based on the contents of the email or whom
it was from.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service provides the capability to automatically create records and update rules, which provide a foundation for users to consume information from different channels. Additionally, you can automatically convert customer requests into a Microsoft Dynamics 365 case record.
The following image demonstrates the basic concept of this activity flow.
As a customer engages with your organization through an engagement channel such as email, social media, or an online case request, the item is captured as a Dynamics 365 activity.
For each configured activity type, you can define record creation and update rules to evaluate details from the activity. Then, you can compare them against conditions that are stored in the rule. Based on the results of the condition, Customer Service will create a corresponding Dynamics 365 record, such as a case.
A typical update and creation rule must include the following three items:
Activity type to monitor - Defines which of the available activity types in the organization that the creation and update rule will apply to.
Conditions to evaluate - Defines what criteria the record must meet to be converted to a case. For example, you might specify that the email activity must come from a gold-level support customer.
Actions to take - Defines what actions that the rule should take when the condition is met. For example, if the email is from a gold-level customer, create a new case record and associate it with the customer whom the email was received from.
The rest of this module will examine the record creation and update rules actions in more detail and will explain the process of defining them.