Search data using entity searches in Unified Service Desk

Entity searches are FetchXML definitions that query the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web services to return data. You can also use replacement parameters within the FetchXML queries in an entity search. Entity searches can be used in window navigation rules both as a source to access data which is not displayed on the form, and as a destination to look up the data using a web service call to CRM, and then populate the Unified Service Desk context data so that it can be used in replacement parameters. You can also use entity searches in the DoSearch action for the Global Manager hosted control to search for your data.

You define an entity search in the Entity Searches area (Settings > Unified Service Desk > Entity Searches) in CRM. To define an entity search, you need to specify three things: a name, the entity that the search applies to, and the FetchXML query that represents the query to retrieve data from the server.

The following FetchXML query returns name and address details of an account based on a customer ID available from a case:

<fetch version="1.0" output-format="xml-platform" mapping="logical" distinct="false">
  <entity name="account">
    <attribute name="name" />
    <attribute name="emailaddress1" />
    <attribute name="telephone1" />   
    <attribute name="address1_line1" />
    <attribute name="address1_city" />
    <attribute name="address1_stateorprovince" />
    <attribute name="address1_postalcode" />
   <attribute name="address1_country" />
   <attribute name="msdyusd_facebook"/>
   <attribute name="msdyusd_twitter"/>
    <order attribute="name" descending="false" />
    <filter type="and">
      <condition attribute="accountid" operator="eq" value="{[[incident.customerid.Id]x]}" />
    </filter>
  </entity>
</fetch>

This is how the entity search definition looks like:

Important

While defining FetchXML queries in an entity search, you should only return the fields that are required for the purpose. This minimizes the impact on the network by limiting the size of the request and the data being returned, thus optimizing the resource usage.

See Also

Tasks

Walkthrough: Use the generic listener adapter for CTI event routing

Concepts

Use window navigation rules in Unified Service Desk
Action calls

Other Resources

Learn to use Unified Service Desk

Unified Service Desk
Send comments about this topic to Microsoft.
© 2015 Microsoft. All rights reserved.