Unified Service Desk Hosted Controls
The hosted control concept is central to the Unified Service Desk implementation, and is the primary element used for building agent applications using Unified Service Desk. A hosted control in Unified Service Desk is a .NET component or a model-driven app/external webpage that is hosted within an agent application.
Predefined and custom Unified Service Desk hosted controls
Unified Service Desk provides you with various types of predefined hosted control depending on the component that you want to configure and display in your agent application. For example, a CRM Page type of hosted control is used to display a model-driven apps page in your agent application and a Standard Web Application type of hosted control is used for external web pages. Each hosted control type has a set of predefined events and actions associated with it. For more information, see Events and UII actions. You can execute an action on a hosted control by creating an action call for the action. For more information, see Action calls.
You can also create custom Unified Service Desk hosted controls if none of the predefined hosted controls in Unified Service Desk serve your purpose, and you desire some custom functionality. More information: Create custom Unified Service Desk hosted control
For information about the various types of predefined hosted controls, and the events and UII actions associated with each type, see Hosted control types and action/event reference.
Base class of a Unified Service Desk hosted control
All the predefined and custom hosted controls in Unified Service Desk are objects that are derived from the DynamicsBaseHostedControl class. This class defines the methods and properties that are applicable to all the hosted controls in Unified Service Desk.
This is important for you to know because you can also create User Interface Integration (UII) hosted controls, which are derived from another class, and host them in Unified Service Desk. For more information about the UII hosted controls, see Use UII hosted controls with Unified Service Desk.
Global and session-based Unified Service Desk hosted controls
From a lifecycle perspective, Unified Service Desk has two types of Unified Service Desk hosted controls: global and session-based. A global hosted control is started when the agent application starts and is recycled when the agent application is terminated. A session-based hosted control is started when the session starts, and is usually recycled at the end of the session.
Dynamic Unified Service Desk hosted controls
Unified Service Desk also supports dynamic hosted controls, which allow an agent to start or close a hosted control on demand, either by using the UI or programmatically in code. A dynamic hosted control can be global or non-global. Global dynamic hosted controls are loaded at the first request and hidden thereafter, and they can be requested at any time, such as during a global session, normal session, or workflow. Non-global dynamic hosted controls can only be loaded after a session has started, and each session uses a different instance of the application. If a dynamic hosted control is part of a workflow, and has not started when the workflow starts, then the workflow will start the hosted control and close it when the workflow is complete.
See also
Hosted control types, actions, and events
Create or edit a hosted control
Hosted control types and action/event reference
Learn to use Unified Service Desk
Use UII hosted controls with Unified Service Desk