The Unified Service Desk (USD) overview ability is a useful feature, sometimes it will benefit call centre operators to have a easy to access summary of the customer they are currently in conversation  with.

Obviously each organisation is different and you’ll need to customize the contents of the overview, here is how;

Steps

1. Create a session (I’ll assume you already have this!)
2. Create a session line (type session overview)

FYI: If you don’t know how to create the session see my earlier post on creating sessions.

In my example my session overview looks like this (sorry, a fishing based example again!) ….

In my random example I’ve shown the total weight and quantity of fish caught at this fishery, plus their contact telephone number. Obviously in a business situation you’ll need different information. Examples would include customer name, contact details, date last called, date of last purchase etc etc.

To create a session overview, navigate to the session lines area of the Unified Service Desk settings. Then add a new session line.

Below you can see that I have given the session line a name, this can be anything. Then selected the entity that this overview will be applied to, I’ve selected “new_fishinglocation”. You’ll probably select something more sensible like “contact”, “lead” or “account”.

It is important that the “Type” is set to “Session Overview Line”.

Finally I have set the “Display” equal to some XML used to display the session.

The XML code I have used looks like this, to get started I copied an example from one of the sample USD solutions provided by Microsoft. (They are worth a look!) I ghen altered the code to work with my custom entity and a few other minor changes such as showing the name field in large green text. If you look over this code you should hopefully get the idea on how it will need to be changed for your situation.

<Grid Margin="0"
 xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
 xmlns:CCA="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics;assembly=Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics">
 <Grid.Resources>
 <CCA:CRMImageConverter x:Key="CRMImageLoader" />
 <Style x:Key="ImageLogo" TargetType="{x:Type Image}">
 <Setter Property="Width" Value="16" />
 <Setter Property="Height" Value="16" />
 <Setter Property="Margin" Value="5" />
 </Style>
 </Grid.Resources>
 <Grid.RowDefinitions>
 <RowDefinition Height="auto" />
 <RowDefinition Height="auto" />
 <RowDefinition Height="auto" />
 <RowDefinition Height="auto" />
 <RowDefinition Height="auto" />
 <RowDefinition Height="auto" />
 </Grid.RowDefinitions>
 <TextBlock Margin="5,6,0,0" Grid.Row="0" TextWrapping="Wrap" Padding="5,0,0,5"  FontFamily="Tohoma" FontSize="18" FontWeight="Bold" Text="[[new_fishinglocation.new_name]x]" Foreground="#109109"/>
 <StackPanel  Orientation="Horizontal"  Grid.Row="1"  Margin="5,0,0,0">
 <Image Style="{DynamicResource ImageLogo}" Source="{Binding Source=new_Fish16x16, Converter={StaticResource CRMImageLoader}}" />
 <TextBlock  TextWrapping="Wrap" Padding="5,0,0,5" Text="Total Weight: [[new_fishinglocation.new_totalweight]+x]" Foreground="#262626"  VerticalAlignment="Center"/>
 </StackPanel>
 <StackPanel  Orientation="Horizontal"  Grid.Row="2"  Margin="5,0,0,0">
 <Image Style="{DynamicResource ImageLogo}" Source="{Binding Source=new_Fish16x16, Converter={StaticResource CRMImageLoader}}" />
 <TextBlock  TextWrapping="Wrap" Padding="5,0,0,5" Text="Total Qty: [[new_fishinglocation.new_totalqty]+x]" Foreground="#262626"  VerticalAlignment="Center"/>
 </StackPanel>
 <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"  Grid.Row="3" Margin="5,0,0,0">
 <Image Style="{DynamicResource ImageLogo}" Source="{Binding Source=msdyusd_Phone16, Converter={StaticResource CRMImageLoader}}" />
 <TextBlock  TextWrapping="Wrap" Padding="5,0,0,5" Text="Phone: [[new_fishinglocation.new_telephone]+x]" />
 </StackPanel>
 </Grid>