Embedded Knowledge Article Search Widget in CRM
As Bob Stutz mentioned in his blog post, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 introduces a new knowledge management solution. With this solution, you can embed the Knowledge Article Search on any entity in the Dynamics CRM.
How to Configure Knowledge Article Search with Dynamics CRM
You can activate Knowledge Search on different entities, which means that users can search and view knowledge articles from any entity. Out of the box, the Knowledge Search is already activated on the Case entity. To activate it on any other entities, follow the steps below.
1. Navigate to Settings > Business > Service Management
2. Under Knowledge Base Management, click Embedded Knowledge Search. This will open the knowledge Base Management Settings wizard.
3. In Knowledge Base Management Settings wizard, select the record types (ex: Account) that you want to place Knowledge Article Search on. By default, Case is selected.
4. Dynamics CRM supports the use of the CRM knowledge articles as well as the Parature Knowledge articles. To configure it with CRM Knowledge articles, select Dynamics CRM from the Knowledge Solution dropdown.
5. If user has support for portal then turn on the portal and provide the external URL format. Otherwise, you can skip this step.
6. Click Next to go to the Knowledge Base Management Settings summary page.
7. Click Finish to complete the setup wizard.
How to add Embedded Knowledge Search control to the Form
Once you’ve activated the knowledge search on different entities, you can add the KM Control on those entity forms.
1. Open the form editor and click on the form’s section (example, Social Pane) where you want to add this control. Now click the Insert tab, and then click Knowledge Base Search. The Set Properties dialog box opens where you can set the properties of the Knowledge Base Search control.
2. Set the display and formatting settings by entering the name, label, filter criteria and additional options and then click Set.
3. Now go to Home and click on Save and then click on publish. This will complete the setup.
Now open the entity record and check the section where you have added this control. The Knowledge Base Search pane (control) should show up there.
The Knowledge Base Search pane on a case record form in the web application looks like below:
The Knowledge Base Search pane on a case record form in the interactive service hub (in Main Interaction Centric form) looks like below:
