Configure Parature knowledge base in Unified Service Desk

The KM Control type of hosted control exposes a bunch of events and action calls to configure an integrated experience for your agents in Unified Service Desk to easily search for knowledge base articles in Parature, from Microsoft from within Unified Service Desk, and then perform various actions on the search result items.

Create an instance of the KM Control type of hosted control to begin with your configuration. After you have created an instance of the hosted control, you can configure things mentioned later in this topic.

In This Topic

Configure knowledge base search options

Set the knowledge base article context

Associate and disassociate knowledge base article with case (incident)

Configure the pop-in and pop-out feature for knowledge base articles

Use the KM Control events to configure various tasks

Configure other tasks for knowledge base articles

Configure knowledge base search options

Use the Search action on the hosted control to define how you want the search results to be performed and displayed. For example, you can specify the number of results to be returned, the knowledge base article type to be displayed in the search result, or the sorting option for the search results. You can also use the replacement parameters to specify the query string for the search. For example, here is the data parameter for the Search action to configure an action call to automatically search knowledge bases based on the case (incident) title, display five results, and return only published knowledge bases from Parature when your agent performs a search in Unified Service Desk:

query=[[incident.title]+]
results=5
filter=3

For information about the Search action and its parameters, see Search. For information on how to define an action call for searching the knowledge base, see Step 4: Configure an action call to automatically search knowledge base using the incident (case) title in the walkthrough.

Set the knowledge base article context

The knowledge base article returned in the search result contains the metadata of the article in Parature, such as article name, private URL, public URL and unique ID. You can use this information in Unified Service Desk, through replacement parameters, in other hosted controls where the article will be displayed to dynamically set the tab name, or to provide contextual actions (copy link, associate or dissociate to current case (incident) article) for the current knowledge base article. To use the metadata information of an article from Parature, you must set the context of the article, and pass it on to the hosted control where it will be used. To do this, use the SetArticleContext action. For information about the SetArticleContext action and its parameters, see SetArticleContext.

Additionally, you must include the action in the ResultOpen or SelectionChange event of the hosted control. You must include it in the ResultOpen event if you are displaying a knowledge base article in another hosted control to be able to use the context information in the target hosted control. You must include the action in the SelectionChange event if you will be configuring contextual actions for a selected knowledge base article in the KM Control itself. Include it in both the events if you will be configuring both the functionalities in your agent application. More information: Predefined events for the KM Control

For information on how to define an action call for setting the article context and include it in an event, see Step 5: Configure hosted controls and action calls to display an article in a tab in the walkthrough.

Associate and disassociate knowledge base article with case (incident)

You can use the knowledge base article context to associate and disassociate a knowledge base article to a case record from within Unified Service Desk. Use the Associate and Disassociate actions to do so. More information: Associate and Disassociate

The following syntax shows the data parameter you can use with the Associate action on the KM Control (say KB Search) to associate an article with an incident record.

entitytypename=incident
recordid =[[incident.Id]]
articleuniqueid=[[KB Search.articleUId]]
articletitle=[[KB Search.question]]
articleprivateurl=[[KB Search.serviceDeskUri]]
articlepublicurl=[[KB Search.publicUrl]]

The following syntax shows the data parameter you can use with the Disassociate action on the KM Control (say KB Search) to disassociate an article from an incident record.

articleuniqueid=[[KB Search.articleUId]]
relatedentityrecordid=[[incident.Id]]
articletitle=[[KB Search.question]]
entitytypename=incident

For information on how to use the Associate action to associate an article with an incident record, see Step 6: Configure contextual actions for the knowledge base article in the tab in the walkthrough.

Configure the pop-in and pop-out feature for knowledge base articles

You can configure to display a knowledge base article in a tab when you click the article title in the KB search panel. You can further use the FloatingPanel in Unified Service Desk to pop-out a knowledge base article from the main panel so that users can display the article on another monitor in a multi-monitor environment. To implement the pop-out feature for a knowledge base article, use the MoveToPanel action on the hosted control that displays the article in the main panel tab, and set the data parameter as FloatingPanel. This will move the hosted control that displays the article from MainPanel to FloatingPanel. You can call this action from a toolbar button on the hosted control.

Note

In these examples, the name of the hosted control that displays the article is KB Article. You must use the appropriate hosted control name as per your configuration.

To configure the pop in feature, again use the MoveToPanel action, but set the data parameter to MainPanel. This will move the hosted control that displays the article from FloatingPanel to MainPanel.

You can call this action from a toolbar button on the hosted control. However, you must configure the pop-in toolbar button to be visible only when the hosted control is in FloatingPanel. You can do so by specifying the following condition in the Visible Condition field of the pop-in toolbar button definition.

"[[$Panel.KB Article]+]"=="FloatingPanel"

Use the KM Control events to configure various tasks

Use the following three events specific to the KM Control hosted control to configure various tasks related to the Parature knowledge base articles in Unified Service Desk.

• Use the SearchComplete event to add action calls that you want to be executed when the search for knowledge base articles is complete and the results get loaded in the KM Control hosted control (KB search pane).

• Use the ResultOpen event to add action calls that you want to be executed when the title of a knowledge base article is clicked in the search results in KM Control hosted control (KB search pane) to open the article.

• Use the SelectionChange event to add action calls that you want to be executed when a knowledge base article is selected in the search results in KM Control hosted control (KB search pane).

More information: Predefined events for the KM Control

Configure other tasks for knowledge base articles

You can configure other tasks for the Parature knowledge base articles in Unified Service Desk such as copy the link of an article or send an email with pre-populated values as the case title in the email subject and knowledge base article link in the email body. These tasks are available when you deploy the Knowledge Management sample application, and you can view the configuration for these tasks in your Microsoft Dynamics CRM instance under Settings > Unified Service Desk (How do I get there?).

See Also

Tasks

Walkthrough 8: Use Parature knowledge within your agent application

Concepts

Use Parature knowledge for effective customer engagement
KM Control (Hosted Control)

Unified Service Desk
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