On our new and improved documentation site Docs you can find guidance many Dynamics 365 subjects, including how to leverage the Voice of the Customer solution included with your Dynamics 365 system - Get feedback by using Voice of the Customer surveys
In the article on Docs you will learn how to
- Install the Voice of the Customer solution
- Plan a survey
- Design a basic survey
- Distribute a survey
- Design an advanced survey
so I won't be covering these topics much here. In the article you will also a topic called "Analyze survey data", touching on amongst other things how to work with survey responses, e.g. using custom fields and workflows in Dynamics 365 CRM.
I tried that one out and will be sharing a couple of tips with you in this blog post.
Scenario
- A fictitious surf board manufactorer, FL Surfers, works with suppliers in different countries
- FL Surfers wants these suppliers to rate themselves against a series of parameters (questions)
- The supplier will receive a link to a Voice of the Customer (VoC) survey in an email, open the survey (Azure hosted), repond to the questions, and submit the survey response
- When the survey responses comes in, FL Surfers internal auditors wants to provide their rating too as a foundation for a further discussion, so the question responses is taken into a custom entity via a workflow for the internal auditors to work with them (in any client they prefer, on- or offline)
The last bullet above can be solved in two ways, and thats what this blog post is about.
How its built
First off I built a survey with a bunch of questions in it, all requiring the respondent to pick a whole number between 0-10 using a slider.
Method #1 Response Mapping
Taking the guidance in the "Analyze survey data" topic above I then mapped each question response to a Custom Number field via the Question Form
In the Response Mapping drop down I can pick a Custom Number 1-20. The mapping enables me to leverage the question response in workflows (see below)
If I open an active survey response (a survey completed by a respondent) I can navigate to the form section Measures (data for workflows) and see the mapping in effect (2)
To leverage the responses in a workflow I create a workflow based on the entity Survey Response and have it create a new record based on a custom entity "Supplier Rating" - which I've prepared in advance with fields to receive the responses
The responses can be picked in the Look For drop-downs in the Form Assistant (3)
Method #2 Custom Workflow Step
Since method #1 above limits me to mapping 20 questions, and my survey could end up with more than 20 questions I looked for an alternative to method #1. Luckily the solution comes with a custom worklflow step VoC:Get Question Response letting me leverage an unlimited number of responses in the workflow - all it takes is a little manual effort.
I create another workflow - also based on the Survey Response entity.
For each question in my survey I create a VoC:Get Question Response workflow step
For a given VoC:Question Response step I add Survey Response from the Form Assistant to the Survey Response value lookup...
...and the related question from Question value lookup
When all the VoC:Question Responses has been completed add a new record based on the Supplier Rating custom entity...
I place the cursor in the field to set the value in (eg A5 Export Control), click the drop-down in the Form Assistant (2), and select the corresponding question at the bottom of the drop-down (3)
Having selected the corresponding question from the bottom of the drop-down, I click the drop-down below and select Value as Decimal
Having completed and activated the workflow (either method #1 or method #2) I now get the suppliers self rating in one column (1), FLS's auditors can add their ratings in the column next to the first column, and using calculated fields a third column can host values for the gap between the self rating values and the auditors values (to be discussed with the supplier)
Obviously the auditors can work with the custom entity on tablet and phone, on- or offline,
And we can add some of the new visual controls to the mix if desired
As seen you can create and send surveys to your customers to receive their valuable feedback about your products or services. The customers can take your surveys on a phone, tablet, or computer. With Voice of the Customer for Dynamics 365, you create and distribute surveys and store survey responses in Dynamics 365 along with other Dynamics 365 data, for further actions to take place there.