NEIL PARKHURST

Anyone who has worked on Unified Service Desk (USD) for any length of time will have no doubt hit an annoying problem which they can’t explain, when that happens it is time to turn to the debugger. In previous posts I have described how to configure the debugger and also how to make it only available to named users.

In this post I am going to discuss some of the features available in the debugger.

Having loaded the debugger you’ll be presented with a screen something like the one below. Hopefully (if you are lucky) without the red lines I’ve shown!

Action Calls Tab

The first tab Action calls lists details of each action call executed. Any that have warnings or errors are shown in red or amber.

The X is normally the first thing I click when I look at the debugger! As the list of action call information will grow quite long. So I use the X to clear the current details. Then I try the actions I have a problem with before returning to the debugger to view the results.

Debug Output Tab

Should you be unlucky enough to have any actions that give a fail or warning state, you can use the Debug Output tab to see additional information which MIGHT help you diagnose the problem.

Data Parameters Tab

The next tab is data parameters, one I find very useful!

Notice the icons in the toolbar, the first is to refresh the contents of the tab. Something you should typically do before examining the contents of the data parameters, just to be confident you are viewing current information. The next icon is used to copy details to the clipboard. More on that in a second.

As you open sessions (or anything) in Unified Service Desk the data parameters available will change. (If you remember to click refresh!) Below you can see how the screen might look like having started a contact session. With the contact collection opened you can start to examine all of the available parameters.

I have the line highlighted that reads “address1_city (string) Renton”. This enables me to see the name, type and content of this field within the contact. Now if I click the copy icon, and past the results. The result I get is [[contact.address1_city]]. This is useful as what is returned is the reference I’d need to include in actions to access this field.

Direct Action Calls

The next feature that is the ability to execute actions directly from the debugger.

To start this process navigate to the Action Calls tab and click the down arrow. (Highlighted in the screen shot above.)

You can now use the Action Calls dropdown to select any existing action. Pressing the green play button will execute the action. Below you can see I have selected an action that creates an opportunity for the currently open contact. In the action calls tab below you can then observe the results of running that action.

Adjacent to the play button you will see a pencil icon this allows you to edit the action call by opening the action in the Direct Action tab.

Direct Action Tab

As mentioned above you can open an existing action in the Direct Action Tab. Or you can create ad-hoc actions, something that is really useful when you are playing around trying to get something new to work.

When the direct action tab is selected you can see the hosted control, action, condition and data which applied to this action. You can then change any of these parameters and click the green play button to execute the revised parameter.

Below I’ve added an extra line to the data portion that will default the description on the opportunity. Pressing the green play button will run the revised action. I can then review the results. I can even click the save icon to update the action call directly back into the USD configuration.

Tip: This save button is useful but might be one of many reasons that you need to limit access to the debugger!

I often find having the ability to edit the actions directly and examine parameters really useful. As it makes the process of finding field names and refining the data portion of actions so much easier.

I hope this post has given you a flavour for what is possible with the Unified Service Desk Debugger.