Unified Service Desk (USD) for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formally called Dynamics CRM!) allows us to create tabs. These can be global tabs, available constantly or session based, available in the context of whatever session has bene opened.

Meaning one of then most common customizations you’ll want to kick off with is to create a global tab. Often we’ll want to shows a person’s default CRM page. (Normally this will contain their default dashboard.)

The steps involved are;

1. Create a hosted control to hold the starting CRM page.
2. Create an action to position on the opening CRM page.
3. Add this action to the global manager.

Step One – Create a hosted control to hold the starting CRM page

Navigate to the unified service desk area of settings, select hosted controls and add a new control. The new hosted control with the following specifications;

•  Name = CRM (Actually any name will do!)
• Display name = CRM(Global)
• Component Type = CRM Page
• Application is Global : True
• Display Group: Main Panel

Step Two – Create an action to position on the opening CRM page

Having created your hosted control you’ll need to create an action. Navigate to the actions area of unified service desk settings and create a new action with the following details.

Name = Any name will do, but I have used “Open Dashboard” in this example.

Order = 4, this isn’t essential but if you do multiple actions when USD loads then this willo drive the sequence of those actions.

Hosted Control = The name of the CRM page that you created earlier, in this example “CRM”.

Action = Navigate

Data =Here you are going to set the url you want to be displayed within the hosted control (tab). I’ve typically used one of two approaches for this. The simplest is to use “url=main.aspx”, tyhis displays your normal CRM opening page with full navigation. Or alternatively you could use “url=workplace/home_dashboards.aspx?sitemappath=CS%7cMyWork%7cnav_dashboards”. This will display your default dashboard without the top level navigation.

Step Three – add this action to the global manager

The final step is to call the action from an event on the global manager, the event this time is “DesktopReady”. This is an event which is triggered when USD first loads.

You will notice the order, as here I am triggering several events when USD loads. So in my example actions to set the theme, alter the USD title and maximize the screen run before loading my CRM page.

Now re-load USD and you’ll see the CRM “home” page load as CRM loads.

Once working, you may wish to continue with a second enhancement to create a “Home” button on the USD main menu toolbar. As this will then allow the user to re-open this tab should they require. (I will cover this process in another post.)

You can view details on how to add a home button here.