What's new in Unified Service Desk for administrators

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Applies To: Dynamics 365 (online), Dynamics 365 (on-premises), Dynamics CRM 2013, Dynamics CRM 2015, Dynamics CRM 2016

This topic contains information about changes in Unified Service Desk for system administrators available in this version. For the new features in Unified Service Desk for system customizers and developers, see MSDN: What’s New in Unified Service Desk for developers.

In This Topic

What's new in Unified Service Desk 2.2.2

What's new in March for Unified Service Desk

What's new in Unified Service Desk 2.2.1

What's new in Unified Service Desk 2.2

What's new in Unified Service Desk 2.1

What’s new in Unified Service Desk 2.0

What's new in Unified Service Desk 2.2.2

Administrators will be able to leverage the following enhancements and new capabilities in this release.

Error diagnostics reporting and rollover logging features

Having detailed and comprehensive logging and reporting that occurs during a component, application, or system fault can help identify when and how the fault occurred. In addition to standard diagnostics logging, now there is application memory dump creation and expanded diagnostics reporting to include system and application state information, which can be collected in the event of an exception in the Unified Service Desk client. Error diagnostics reporting

Configurable rollover logging support that determines the maximum number of diagnostics logs to keep before the oldest log is deleted to minimize hard disk consumption. Configure Unified Service Desk client diagnostic logging

What's new in March for Unified Service Desk

Public Preview: Introducing Live Assist for Dynamics 365 Powered by CaféX

The capability for your customers to connect with your agents is a fundamental feature when you deliver leading service and support. Agents can conduct multiple, live chat sessions within Dynamics 365 (online) or Unified Service Desk by using Live Assist for Dynamics 365 Powered by CaféX, which can be installed from the Dynamics 365 Administration Center. More information:Install or remove a preferred solution

Live Assist for Dynamics 365 Powered by CaféX is developed by CaféX as a third-party solution. Administrators configure Live Assist for Dynamics 365 Powered by CaféX from within Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Unified Service Desk to provide a rich immersive experience for agents that includes presence control, chat indicators, and visual engagement with customers through co-browsing.

Important

  • This feature is currently available in North America (NAM), Canada (CAN), and Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) regions.

  • We are making this preview available so that you can try it and let us know what you think. Your feedback will help us prioritize work to include the capabilities you need most. We ask that you give us your suggestions and report problems by using our publicly available feedback site: Microsoft Connect

More information: Live Assist for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Powered by CaféX

What's new in Unified Service Desk 2.2.1

Administrators will be able to leverage the following enhancements and new capabilities in this release.

Diagnostics and error handling enhancements

Unified Service Desk now provides enhanced diagnostic information that lets you more easily identify and troubleshoot issues that may occur. Also, Unified Service Desk now prompts you to restart the Unified Service Desk client in case of non-fatal exceptions and automatically restarts the client in case of fatal exceptions. Diagnostics logging has been further enhanced to eliminate recording the entire JavaScript code that caused the exception. Now, only the faulty code along with exception description are recorded. More information: Configure client diagnostic logging in Unified Service Desk

Accessibility improvements

Tab key and Shift + Tab key sequence have been streamlined in the Unified Service Desk client for efficient and reliable keyboard navigation between controls within a panel. More information:  Help & Training: Accessibility in Unified Service Desk for Dynamics 365

What's new in Unified Service Desk 2.2

Administrators will be able to leverage the following enhancements and new capabilities in this release.

Accessibility improvements

Unified Service Desk now provides the following key accessibility improvements:

  • Keyboard access for IE Process hosted controls. To move out of the current hosted control tab, a user can press the CTRL + Up Arrow keys to take the focus out of the hosted control to the tab name. Administrators can use the IEProcessKeyboardShortcut option in Unified Service Desk to assign a different key combination for moving out of a IE Process hosted control. More information: Manage Options for Unified Service Desk

  • Keyboard access for splash screen. Users can now use the keyboard to navigate to the Change Credentials link in the Unified Service Desk client splash screen by pressing the TAB key to view the sign-in page.

  • Support for high-contrast mode. The Unified Service Desk client enables high-contrast mode when Windows has the high-contrast setting enabled.

For more information about accessibility features in Unified Service Desk, see Help & Training: Accessibility in Unified Service Desk for Dynamics 365.

What's new in Unified Service Desk 2.1

Administrators will be able to leverage the following enhancements and new capabilities in this release.

New sample demo packages

Included are sample demo packages for new Unified Service Desk environments, existing Unified Service Desk environment upgrades, Interactive Service Hub integration, and Dynamics CRM 2013 or later web clients. More information: Deploy sample Unified Service Desk applications using Package Deployer

Support for Windows Update

Windows Update is an easy, free way to keep Microsoft applications, like the Unified Service Desk client, safer and running smoothly. All you have to do is turn it on, and you'll get the latest security and other important updates from Microsoft automatically, or you can choose to apply them manually. More information: Install or upgrade the Unified Service Desk client

Interactive service hub integration

Interactive service hub is designed to simplify a service agent's day-to-day job, and is specifically optimized for customer service. It shows vital information in one place, and lets agents focus on things that require attention. More information: MSDN: Interactive Service Hub Page (Hosted Control)

Help improve Unified Service Desk

Help improve Unified Service Desk by sending usage data to Microsoft anonymously. Usage data lets Unified Service Desk transmit important computer and Unified Service Desk-specific information to Microsoft. More information: Help improve Unified Service Desk

What’s new in Unified Service Desk 2.0

Administrators will be able to leverage the following enhancements and new capabilities in this release.

  • Installation and deployment improvements

  • Configuration feature improvements

  • Auditing and diagnostics

  • Easily distribute and update custom components

  • Enhanced browser control for improved stability and performance of hosted webpages

Installation and deployment improvements

You’ll see the following changes in the Unified Service Desk client that will help make installation and deplorment easier:

  • The Setup Wizard UI has a more modern appearance.

  • Silent Setup is supported. You can run Setup without interfacing with the UI, which provides for an unattended install or uninstall.

  • There’s a prerequisite installation of Microsoft .NET Framework and Windows Identity Foundation as part of the Unified Service Desk client Setup.

  • There’s an in-place upgrade from a previous Unified Service Desk client version.

  • There’s a single installer for all supported languages.

More information: Install or upgrade the Unified Service Desk client

Configuration feature improvements

The following improvements to the Unified Service Desk configuration feature are now available.

  • You can clone a configuration. This lets you quickly copy an existing configuration and corresponding relationships to use for a different configuration.

  • You can identify a configuration as a default by using the Is Default attribute of the configuration record. Then, any user not assigned to a configuration will have only the Unified Service Desk components associated with the default configuration cached when they sign in to Unified Service Desk.

  • Configuration form and grids now display related entities.

  • Auditing and diagnostics can be enabled for each configuration.

  • Similarly to auditing and diagnostics, a customization file can be associated to a Configuration. More about Easily distribute and update custom components below.

  • Add to Configuration command lets you associate multiple records to a single Configuration.

More information: Manage access using Unified Service Desk configuration

Auditing and diagnostics

Auditing and diagnostics includes these new features.

  • Auditing and diagnostics are now managed centrally for easy enablement and selection of what to audit or what level of diagnostics to log.

  • Unified Service Desk administrators can build their own audit and diagnostic sources to capture user event and activity streams.

More information: Configure auditing and diagnostics in Unified Service Desk

Easily distribute and update custom components

  • Customization File records let you attach a compressed (.zip) file that includes custom hosted controls. Then, you associate the customization file record with a configuration. All users associated with the configuration will have the custom controls pushed to their computer during Unified Service Desk client application sign-in.

More information:  Distribute custom hosted controls using Customization Files

Enhanced browser control for improved stability and performance of hosted webpages

The IE Process browser control has been redeveloped to facilitate better memory management and improved stability and performance of webpages hosted in Unified Service Desk. A new monitoring process service, Unified Service Desk Monitoring Process (usdmp.exe), is also introduced to monitor the health of Unified Service Desk and terminate any browser process instances that are unresponsive and cause Unified Service Desk to freeze or stop responding. If a browser process instance isn’t responding, but Unified Service Desk is responsive, the browser process instance won’t be terminated. More information:  MSDN: Select a hosting method for your controls

See Also

Overview of Unified Service Desk
Install, upgrade, and deploy Unified Service Desk
MSDN: Unified Service Desk Developer Guide
MSDN: What’s New in Unified Service Desk for developers

Unified Service Desk 2.0

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