MS Dynamics 2013 integration

[cavagnaro]

Hi guys,
Some of you may know this already and others don't. GPlus for MS will no support MSDynamics 2013...yet they are not calling it a EOL product...funny.
Any way, now they are providing an IWS connector, the idea is to (yeah) have IWS as a FrontEnd and MS as a tab on it...the great idea of having a single screen for agents, again, is dead...
Does any of youhave some experience with this software? Lab? Have seen it?
What could had changed so drastically on MS side for them to go this way? I see no sense other than selling more IWS licenses and force the use of it...

Comments please?
Thanks as usual guys

[cavagnaro]

A little more info...
Seems Genesys is not doing this integration but Aria:
[url=http://www.ariasolutions.com/products/genesys-products/microsoft-crm/]http://www.ariasolutions.com/products/genesys-products/microsoft-crm/[/url]

Meaning maybe Genesys is outsourcing development? Not sure if a good or bad idea... 

[genesysguru]

Hi,

The problem with any IWS integration or customisation is that IWS is a constantly moving entity. Having gone fat client and working out that that is RAM hungry and doesn't work very well in virtualised environments they are now going down the path of a web based thin client IWS. Hence not sure where Genesys is going with IWS and the desktop space to be honest!

[cavagnaro]

Ouch...that (virtualization) is something I didn't think about until now...
I'm really concerned on some Genesys development aspects from some time ago but this is like going back on time like years...we sold the idea of a unique frontend for the agent and now...no more...imagine an agent working with MS or any other CRM and having to handle 2 windows...waste of time for them and seconds that could impact S.F. ...
Genesys is not thinking very well lately

[Fra]

Are you sure that the CRM would necessarily appear on a separate tab?
I suggest you to investigate with G pre-sales / custom app team, as I know that there are certain features which can be tailored when the connectors are used.

Fra

[cavagnaro]

Yes Fra, they sent me a PPT showing a IWS screenshot. Can't share it due a request made by them.

[abudwill]

I don't have experience with the GPlus Adapter, but we have IWS integrated with MSDynamics.  We are moving to 2013 soon.

The IWS (8.1.x)/Dynamics customizations I have done include putting a tab in the CaseViewSideButtonRegion that displays Dynamics via URL (obtained through attached data in outbound scenario, or providing ANI to web service call in inbound scenario) in the InteractionWorksheetRegion.  Agents can have Dynamics up and still have IWS controls on the left pane of IWS.  If the agent needs multiple tabs he can hotkey between them.  Agent gets everything he needs in one window.

This has worked well for us.  In some cases we consume some WCF web services the Dynamics guys have made available to us to do some automatic data exchange without the user knowing.

Not sure if I am missing out on a better solution since we have never used GPlus adapter.  Like I said, this has worked well for us.  We have desktops and Citrix clients with IWS.  RAM was only an issue for us when the underlying WebBrowser control we were using was leaking memory with the version of IE we were running.  Had to perform a silly work around to avoid the leak (see http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/2aea6afd-5edc-4c82-9604-82d2c98565c2/why-is-webbrowser-not-releasing-all-memory-on-dispose?forum=wpf)

Regards,
Andrew

[cavagnaro]

Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the input.

So you mean, you have to code all windows on IWS and MS side?

You'll see, with GPlus we only did a deployment on a server, then provided MS information in it, a few parameters and we handled Server vs Server integration, so we didn't had to worry on Agent side. Then MS or Siebel guys for example, just pulled off our libraries and showed them as buttons on the MS interface. All was done. They pulled Attached Data if needed. We only had one point of integration, no memory issues normally...

Would you be able to share some screenshots? That would be great.

So your agents doesn't need another window to work with back office tasks?

[abudwill]

Hi Cavagnaro,

The majority of code that needs to be written is on the MS Dynamics side.  They need to expose or create views accessible via URL.  From the IWS perspective, there is just an embedded web browser that loads the MS Dynamics URL - then the agent can navigate through MS Dynamics and do whatever it is they need to do by way of the Dynamics web page embedded in IWS.  If a screen needs to change - no IWS code changes (since you are simply displaying a web page in a .NET WebBrowser control), the MS guys update their views/web pages.

No problem on the screenshots, give me a couple days (I am pretty busy at the moment), I will capture some, scrub them of sensitive data and will PM them to you.

Regarding our agents not needing another window for back office tasks - our agents in question here are dedicated to front office tasks (interacting with customers all the time).  If however you had a system that delivered back office tasks as interactions to your agents using IWS as their agent desktop (from IWD maybe?) and their associated back office work takes place in MS Dynamics - sure you would still be working in 1 window for your telephony and work related tasks - well 1 window per interaction delivered.

Regards,
Andrew

[marlx]

abudwill hello, I'm in the same situation, I get to load the login of MS Dynamics, but after entering the credentials throws an error, which does not happen if I do it from Internet Explorer.

you would've added some security parameter or something special to WebBrowser control?

[abudwill]

Hi marlx,

I did not have to do anything special in terms of security/authentication with my WebBrowser control.  In our environment, dynamics is setup to use authentication pass through based on the user logged into the system accessing dynamics.  I can hit the dynamics pages by loading a browser and navigating to specific URLs without being prompted for authentication - whether I am using a browser or the WebBrowser control.

At a high level, this post explains how I implemented the WebBrowser control (it is very rudimentary):

http://www.sggu.com/smf/index.php/topic,8645.msg38211.html#msg38211

Regards,
Andrew

[marlx]

Thanks Andrew, had already tried this solution but Dynamics keeps throwing error, I will raise the case with the Microsoft team that supports us in the implementation.

Thank you very much in advance.

[abudwill]

If you mind sharing what they say it may be helpful for someone else (or me in the future, which is my real motivation  )

Regards,
Andrew

[maulikadhia]

Hi Andrew,

Could you please share some architectural docs or high level design docs of the same? I tried searching on the internet but hardly could find any documentation on the same.

Kind Regards,
Maulik Adhia

[abudwill]

Hi Maulik,

This is a pretty old topic, you may want to consider starting a new thread or PMing me.

There is not much to share -

Through IWS customization it is possible to embed a WebBrowser control within IWS.  In the WebBrowser control you can navigate to a CRM.  Also through IWS customization you can attach to events as the interaction window appears which will query web service methods that the CRM team has built and exposed in order to pass contact identifying data to CRM and receive the URL to navigate to within IWS.

Regards,
Andrew