I am creating a series of blog posts that collectively are designed to help anyone preparing for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Core exam. (aka MB-200) In this post I will look at concepts around subjects.

You can see below that we have a section of the exam which covers system administration. Within this section configuring subjects is mentioned.

Subjects are a tree of categorisations used to record the subject for cases, knowledge articles and products. Below you can see that I have opened a case and on my case form I can enter a subject. This is done using a picklist that offers me a tree like structure of subjects.

Security Roles

The subject entity is shown under “Core Records”, most security roles will grant read and append to access to the subject entity. You might also need to know that the subject entity is not user owned. Meaning access is either granted or denied at an organisational level.

To maintain the subject tree you will need the correct role. Out of the box the “Customer Service Manager”, “System Administrator” and “System Customizer” security roles will grant the required permissions.

Tip: In my instance “Customer Service Manager” role is called “CSR Manager”. That might be the case for you!

Below you can see the role for my CSR manager, notice they would have full organisational access to the subject entity.

Maintaining the Subject Tree

You can maintain the subject tree from the “Customer Service Hub” application.

Open the customer service hub app and then navigate to the “Service Management” section of the sitemap.

Within the service management area, under the heading of case settings you will find the subjects option.

To add a subject select “Add subject”, a quick create form will open. Simply give your subject a name and select the parent subject. (Or select the box to signify this subject is a root subject and has no parent.)

To edit a subject simply select your subject, click “Edit Subject” and a similar dialog will be shown.

There is also a “Remove Subject” option. Using this will give you a warning that the change cannot be undone. You might need to be aware that you cannot remove a subject that is already associated to a case, product or knowledge article. Effectively meaning that you cannot remove a subject once it has been used.

Alternative Maintenance Approach

We can also maintain the subjects from the advanced settings option. If you load advanced settings and navigate to the “Service Management” option you will find a subjects option. As shown below.

This subjects option presents the same data but using the old style classic web interface. (Rather than the newer Unified Interface introduced at version 9.1 of Dynamics 365.)

Tip:
Being the older style maintenance I assume that in the fullness of time this option might be completely replaced with the newer experience shown earlier. But it exists now (Feb 2020), so I have referenced it in this post!!

Hopefully you agree that subjects is a simple subject but it is one referenced in the skills measured statement of MB 200, so don’t forget to include subjects in your revision!