I’m currently working towards my second Microsoft CRM exam and thought it would be a good practice to record my notes as I go along. Hopefully these prove valuable to others hoping to take MB2-714 CRM Customer Service exam.

This post is part of my MB2-714 exam series of articles and contains my notes relating to case management in CRM 2016 which is an important element of the MB2-714 exam for CRM.

This post covers the following required areas –

• Work with the case list and views
• Search for case records
• Create a new case record
• Understand fields on a default case form
• Analyze business process flows
• Convert activities to cases
• Understand the case resolution process
• Use case routing rules
• Use case creation rules

For a more in-depth article on Case Management in relation to MB2-714 I would suggest reading Neil Parkhursts excellent blog, specifically “MB2-714 (Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Customer Service) : Case Management”

Cases are the CRM equivalent to a ticket or issue raised in other software such as Kayako or SalesForce. In CRM a single case refers to a single issue, there can be multiple active cases per user/company. Cases may only be closed when all related activities have been closed.

Different Ways to Create a Case

• Converting activities to cases
• Creating a new case directly in the cases area.
• Creating a new case using quick create
• Record creation rules can be used to automatically create cases.

Main Components of a Case

• Case form
• Subjects
• Knowledge Base Articles
• Products and/or Entitlements
• Activities
• Contracts (deprecated but available)

Required Case Fields

• Case Title
• Customer (contact / account)

Creating Cases from Activities

• Cases can be created from all default activities using the CONVERT TO button found in the command bar of activities. Depending on the original activity different information will automatically be fed into the new case.
• When converting an activity to a case the following information must be provided –
  • Customer – Contact or Account by default although I believe this can be extended.
• The following information can be provided –
  • Subject – Used to categorise cases.
  • Open the new case – Yes or No to toggle whether case is active
  • Close Task – Yes or No toggle.

Case Business Process Flow

• The stages involved in a case business process flow are –
  • Identify
  • Qualify
  • Research
  • Resolve

Identify – deals with gathering details important to the case such as who the customer is, confirming contact details, what product the user is having an issue with etc.

Qualify – determine who can action the case, this is where the case can be escalated or assigned to others.

Research – deals with finding similar cases and possible solutions.

Resolve – records whether user has been sent a survey and if so whether case is resolved.

Resolving Cases

Cases are generally resolved by clicking RESOLVE CASE in the command bar of a case but a case may also be resolved by selecting RESOLVE CASE in the cases view, to resolve a case all related activities must be closed, the following information must also be provided –

• Resolution type – dropdown containing “Information provided” and “Problem Solved”
• Resolution – a text field which covers what action was taken.
• Total Time – Automatically calculated based on time of all activities.
• Billable Time – Manually inputted amount of billable time.
• Remarks – Any comments by the case owner.

Cases can also be deleted which removes all associated activities including notes, attachments and related activity records.

Case Routing

• Case Routing Rules are configured within Settings > Service Management. By default, there are no defined case routing rules.
• Rule Sets are made up of individual Rule Items which themselves are simply a collection of if conditions similar to advanced find.
• When a new or existing case matches the defined conditions the rule set then routes the case to either a Queue or a User/Team.
• Only a single Routing Rule can be active in CRM, attempting to activate a second will disable the first.

Merging Cases

Cases can be merged by selecting two or more cases in a view, then selecting MERGE CASES in the command bar.

This brings up the Merge cases dialog whereby you will have to select the case which any other selections will be merged into. I tested up to 3 records merging however that would seem to indicate there is less limitations to this than in CRM 2013. The biggest limitation was there was no option to select what information is merged.

Notes

• Case views can be sorted by more than a single column simply by holding Shift and clicking the column you want to do a secondary sort by.
• Multiple cases cannot be Closed or Resolved at the same time, although individual cases can be closed or resolved from a view.
• By default, the case search only searches “Case Title” and “Case Number”, although system customizers can change this by toggling the ‘Searchable’ value of the Case fields.
• Although not suggested any case can be set to resolved at any stage, however all related activities will be set to cancelled.

 

Image - Alberto G.