USD – Enhanced Forms, Views etc.

Microsoft’s Unified Service Desk (USD) is a great product but I do often find I like to enhance the views and forms for editing my USD configuration. In this post I provide a link to a managed solution designed to give an improved experience when editing hosted controls, actions, toolbars etc.

My USD solution is pretty big! Meaning I often find benefit in these improvements, as they help me navigate my solution and make changes quicker. Below you will find a link to the solution I’ve created to give me that enhanced navigation.

This is a managed solution, meaning you can import it, try it and remove if you’d like to return to the out of the box navigation.

To install it, first ensure you have USD installed and then simply import.

Note: The solution below is for Dynamics 365 v8.2;

NeilsUSDConfig_1_3_0_10_managed

I have detailed some of my UI enhancements below.

Enhanced Views

On most of the USD entities I have created views which include additional columns. Also I have enabled editable grids, making quick changes easier. Below you can see an example of my view for Window Navigation Rules.

Enhanced Forms

I have “improved” most of the forms we use for editing the Unified Service Desk entities.

I have also added sub-grids for other entities. For example, on the hosted control form we can see all the action calls that use this hosted control. Or on actions I show all the toolbar buttons that use this action etc.

Below you can see my hosted controls form and how I present actions on the form. (Also notice that they are in an editable grid!)

Tip: By default you will see the out of the box information form. Use the form selector to select my form.

Quick Create Forms

I have enabled several of the USD config entities for quick create. Below you can see an example of how I have a quick create form for actions. (In the example below I am adding a new action whilst editing a toolbar button.)

Charts

I make use of charts, as an aid to filtering. For example when viewing window navigation rules I use a chart to quickly filter based on action. Or, as shown below, I filter hosted controls based on the hosting type.

Configurations

Anyone who works on a USD implementation with multiple configurations will know that their flexibility comes with a maintenance overhead. To help with this I have added configurations sub-grid on all USD entities.

For example, below you can see configurations sub-grid on my entity search form.

I have also added details and editable grids on all of the USD entities shown on the configuration form.

Hopefully you will gain some benefit from this simple solution. If you have any suggestions for further enhancement please let me know. I might try to include them!!