Azure Cognitive Services and Dynamics 365 - Part 1

Microsoft Cognitive Services is a collection of APIs, which can be used to add artificial intelligence capabilities into applications. You can see see the full list here and play with the demos by clicking on the links therein.

Important

At the time of writing, the integration of Cognitive Services with Dynamics 365 is in preview mode and the preview is only available for North American instances.

1. Activate Text Analytics

In order to enable the integration follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Settings | Administration | System Settings
2. Go to Preview tab
3. Select Yes on Enable the Dynamics 365 Text Analytics Preview
4. Click OK

2. Create Text Analytics Endpoint in Azure

We need to create a Text Analytics service in Azure:

1. Login to Azure Portal
2. Click Create a resource
3. Search for Text Analytics
4. Click Create, which will take you to the wizard (of sorts)
5. Fill in:
• Name
• Subscription
• Location
• Pricing Tier
• Resource Group

Once the resource has been created we will need endpoint URL and an access key to access it from Dynamics 365, which we can get from the resource itself on the azure portal, as shown below:

3. Configure Dynamics 365 to use Text Analytics

The final configuration step is to add the details from section 2 to Dynamics 365.

1. Navigate to Settings | Administration | Azure Machine Learning Text Analytics Service Configuration
2. Fill in with details from the previous section: 
• Azure Service Url
• Azure Account Key
3. Click Test Connection
4. Click Activate
5. Tick Activate existing text analytics models and Click Activate

Note that the results of Test Connection will be displayed on the Connection Test Information section.

4A. Create Knowledge Search Model

1. Navigate to Settings | Service Management | Knowledge Search Field Settings
2. Click New
3. Fill in details
4. Click Save

4B. Create Keyword or Key phrase Determination Field

On the same record as section 4A, we click the plus sign as shown below and we add some rules

The rules determine which fields will be used to generate the default search strings for Knowledge Based articles.

In the example below we  have set up, perhaps somewhat redundantly the subject of regarding Tasks, Activities, the case description field and the title of any regarding notes as relevant keywords/phrases.





5. Add Knowledge Base Search Suggestions to Case

1. Navigate to Settings | Customizations | Customize the System
2. Expand Entities | Case | Form
3. Click on the Default Form: Case
4. Double Click on the Conversation Tab
5. Go to Web Client Properties | Knowledge Base Search
6. On Additional Options, tick Turn on Automatic Suggestions 
7. On Give knowledge base (KB) suggestions using, ensure you select Text Analytics
8. Save Form
9. Publish Entity.

6. Testing it

The feature will use Text Analytics to extract meaningful keywords to search for from the fields set up on section 4B

As mentioned on section 4B, in this example we  have set up,  the subject of Tasks, Activities, the case description field and the title of any notes as relevant keywords/phrases.

So in an example case, where we have a description and a task like this:



If we click on KB Records this is the result



It's used the fields to suggest the search words

I have to admit that I expected it to search the KB articles, but this is not what the feature is about.


7. Enable Knowledge Management on Other Entity

It is possible to do the same for pretty much any entity

1. Navigate to Settings | Customizations | Customize the System
2. Expand Entities | Account 
3. Tick Knowledge Management
4. Click on the Default Form: Account
5. Add Knowledge Base Search
6. On Additional Options, tick Turn on Automatic Suggestions 
7. On Give knowledge base (KB) suggestions using, ensure you select Text Analytics
8. Click Ok
9. Save Form
10. Publish Entity.

We will then need to create a Knowledge Search Model as per section 4.