Hire Microsoft Dynamics 365 experts
Hire Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service consultants
In short
MS Dynamics Guys provides Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service consultants who change how cases arrive, route and close while your desk keeps taking new cases. The consultant configures email intake, queues, routing, entitlements, service-level agreements (SLAs) and knowledge, and tests each change outside production. Your service manager ranks the requests and decides when each release reaches the live desk. When a requirement needs code, we say so.
When a Customer Service consultant from MS Dynamics Guys fits
The role suits a service desk that already runs Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, one of Microsoft's customer relationship management (CRM) apps. The consultant changes how the desk handles cases while new cases keep arriving. These are the usual signs:
Signs that your desk needs this role
- Duplicate cases. Customers write to two shared mailboxes, and one email can open two cases.
- Hand-picked work. Service representatives choose their own cases from many basic queues, so urgent cases wait behind simple questions.
- Timers that ignore your hours. Response timers run through nights, weekends and holidays, and reports count breaches when nobody was working.
- Entitlements that nobody checks. Customers without a support contract get the same handling as premium customers.
- Knowledge without owners. Articles have no owner, and drafts wait a long time for review.
Choose another role or service when
- Most requests need code: plug-ins that run when a case is saved, custom controls on the case form or integrations with other systems. A CRM developer builds that work.
- You are rolling out Customer Service for the first time, or you want one provider to be accountable for redesigning the whole desk. A Customer Service implementation project gives that work one accountable owner. If a partner already runs your rollout, a CRM consultant can join beside it.
- The work spans Sales and Customer Service, with shared data and security. A CRM consultant covers both apps together.
- Your gap is work orders, dispatch and technicians on site. A Field Service consultant fits that work.
- Your gap is voice or chat in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, or Copilot features. This role covers cases and knowledge; ask, and we confirm in writing whether we can staff other work.
- Nobody on your side has time to make decisions and run tests. Every model needs that time from your team, including a project.
What the consultant changes, and what your service team decides
Each row is one change area. The consultant designs and configures it outside production. Your team makes the decision in the third column and runs the release test before the change goes live.
| Change area | Consultant delivers | Your team decides | Release test |
|---|---|---|---|
| Case lifecycle | Case types, subjects, status reasons, parent and child case settings, merge guidance for duplicates and the Phone to Case Process business process flow | Which statuses mean that a case waits for the customer, and when a parent case may close | Resolve, cancel and merge test cases, then try to close a parent case that has an open child |
| Intake | Record creation rules for the monitored queue, with rule items in a set order and settings for unknown senders and recently resolved cases | Which mailboxes create cases, and whether email from unknown senders opens one | Test emails, including one message sent to both mailboxes |
| Queues and access | Queues for each support tier, and the security roles, business units or teams that decide who can open each case | Who may open, work and reassign which cases | Sign in as each tier's test user and try to open a restricted case |
| Routing | Workstreams with intake, work classification and route-to-queue rules in unified routing, or basic routing rule sets where you keep them | Support tiers, skills and the order of priority | Replay past cases, with personal data removed, and check where each one lands |
| SLAs | Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as first response, SLA items with their conditions, pause statuses and customer service schedules | Response and resolution targets, and what happens at warning and failure | Run timers across a weekend and a public holiday |
| Entitlements | Entitlements and templates: allocation in hours or cases, channels, products, contacts and the linked SLA | The support terms you sell, and whether a case may open when no terms remain | Open a case for a customer whose entitlement has expired |
| Knowledge | The review path for articles: the Needs Review status reason, the Author, Review and Publish stages, and an owner for each subject | Who owns each subject area, and who may publish | Check which security roles can open draft articles |
Every change also gets a test script and a line in the release list, which your administrator follows in production.
Customer Service keeps cases in Microsoft Dataverse, so Dataverse security decides who can open a case: security roles, business units, teams and sharing. Queue membership does not. Microsoft states that private queues do not restrict access to the records they hold. Business units, teams and privileges on shared tables such as account and contact are not limited to Customer Service. They also apply to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and any other app in the same environment. If other apps share it, decide before work starts who approves changes to them: a CRM consultant who owns the shared design, or your administrator.
Knowledge follows the same rule. Draft is a stage in an article's life, not a visibility setting. Users whose security roles give them access to articles can open drafts too. Microsoft advises keeping secrets and regulated personal data out of draft and internal articles.
The consultant configures most of these areas in Copilot Service admin center, Microsoft's app for Customer Service settings. The consultant edits security roles in the Power Platform admin center, and status reasons, case types and business process flows in Power Apps. Your service team sees the result in Copilot Service workspace, or in Customer Service Hub where your organization still uses it. For automatic routing, Microsoft recommends unified routing over basic routing rule sets.
Everything in the table assumes Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service online. On-premises, the intake row does not apply as written. Microsoft does not support the modern rules for creating cases from email in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises). Other settings in the table can differ there too. Name your version in the role brief, and we confirm in writing before any introduction whether we can staff it.
Your team keeps the business decisions, user administration in production, Microsoft licenses and user acceptance testing (UAT). The consultant also needs time from your service manager and a tester from each tier.
Two steps need administrator roles that a configuration account does not carry. Turning on unified routing needs a Microsoft 365 administrator role and the System Administrator role on the root business unit. By default, Microsoft Dynamics 365 processes email for a queue only after someone approves the queue's mailbox. With Exchange Online, that approval needs the System Administrator role together with a Global Administrator, Exchange Administrator or Delegated Mailbox Approver role. Your administrators do both steps in each environment, and the release list shows when. Environments, data loads and integration settings around the desk are work for a technical consultant.
How we assess a Customer Service consultant: one service desk scenario
Before any introduction, each candidate works through a written scenario. Its service desk has two support tiers, a premium entitlement and two shared mailboxes. Where the CRM consultant exercise maps one process, this scenario starts from a desk that is already running. A reviewer from MS Dynamics Guys asks the candidate to explain each choice, then changes one condition and asks what changes.
| Skill | How the reviewer tests it | Evidence you receive |
|---|---|---|
| Case lifecycle | A sandbox walkthrough: the candidate resolves, cancels and merges test cases, and explains why a merged case shows as canceled and where its activities go | A status table: each status reason, what it means and whether it pauses the SLA timer |
| Intake | One customer writes to both mailboxes. The candidate designs rules that open one case, and explains the settings for unknown senders and entitlements. | A rule list in the order the rules run |
| Routing and escalation | The candidate routes ten sample cases from the scenario through intake, classification and route-to-queue rules, then escalates one case to tier two | A routing matrix: where each case lands, and why |
| SLAs and access | The candidate plans timer tests over business hours and a holiday, and access tests with a tier-one and a tier-two test user | Test scripts that your team could run as written |
The reviewer checks two points in every answer. A private queue must not stand in for security. No SLA Applicable When condition may depend on a field that representatives change while sorting new cases. The demonstration further down this page shows why both points matter.
The reviewer's written summary reaches you before your own interview. It shows the rule order the candidate chose, where the ten sample cases landed and which answer changed when the reviewer changed a condition. It ends with the candidate's strong points and the gaps to probe. With the candidate's consent, you can also see the status table, rule list, routing matrix and test scripts.
Example first work package: one product line moves to unified routing
Ways to add Customer Service capacity
On a service desk, the model depends on who can rank change requests while cases keep arriving. Each model has its own page with the details.
| Model | Who directs the work | Choose it when |
|---|---|---|
| One consultant inside your service team (staff augmentation) | Your service manager, through your own backlog and change process | Your service manager can rank requests each week and accept releases one case type at a time |
Allocation, the hours shared with your desk, minimum term, notice, replacement and the rate basis are agreed in writing for each engagement. Our guide to staff augmentation and project delivery compares the models side by side.
How a Customer Service consultant joins your team
Each step has an owner on your side or ours. We set no start date until you choose a candidate and the agreement is signed.
Role brief
Describe your Customer Service version, the app your service team uses, the mailboxes and queues in scope and how cases are routed today. Add your SLA terms, who approves changes, the hours to cover and the expected duration.
Fit review
We read your brief for three facts that shape this work. Do you route with basic routing rule sets or unified routing? Do representatives use Customer Service Hub or Copilot Service workspace? Does any request touch voice or chat? Before any introduction, we tell you in writing whether we can staff the role, or which role or project fits better.
Assessed candidates
We send you a profile only for a candidate who passed the service desk scenario and agreed to be introduced. The reviewer's written summary comes with it.
Your interview on a service scenario
Your service manager leads it with a case from your own desk, with personal data removed. You decide who joins.
Written agreement
Role, allocation, hours, term, notice, replacement, confidentiality and ownership of documents are agreed before anyone receives access. Cases and emails hold your customers' personal data, so also agree which environments may hold copies of real cases.
Access
Your administrator creates a named account with configuration rights in development and test environments first. A guest invited through Microsoft Entra business-to-business (B2B) collaboration also needs a license from your tenant and a security role before the apps open.
First accepted change
A small, real item, such as a new status reason or a queue for one case type. Your team tests it and releases it through your process, and your service manager accepts it.
Prepare the accounts, environments and first tasks before the start date, so the first change does not wait for access.
Proof you can check: the scenario and a demonstration answer
This page shows no client names, reviews or case studies.
The table below shows what a strong answer to the service desk scenario contains. Your service manager can compare it with each candidate's summary and your own interview notes. MS Dynamics Guys wrote it for this page from Microsoft's documentation. It is an original demonstration, not a client case and not a candidate's answer.
| Scenario element | What a strong answer does | The mistake the reviewer looks for |
|---|---|---|
| One customer writes to both mailboxes | Sends mail from both mailboxes to one dedicated queue that a single record creation rule monitors. Your Microsoft 365 administrators can set this up with mail-flow rules. | A rule on each mailbox's queue, so one email can open two cases |
| Standard customers have no entitlement but still get email support | Leaves the valid-entitlement requirement off the shared rule | Turning that requirement on for all mail, so email from customers without an entitlement opens no case |
| Premium cases go to tier two | Route-to-queue rules that check the entitlement on the case. A system setting fills it in from the customer's default entitlement when the case is created. A named person watches the fallback queue. | No owner for the fallback queue, where cases that match no rule end up |
| Tier one must not open premium cases | Security roles with business unit or team access, because a private queue does not restrict access to its records. A tier-one test user then tries to open a premium case. Only representatives who can open premium cases are members of the premium queue. | Tier-one representatives left in the premium queue. Unified routing stops each assignment to a representative who cannot open the case. |
| Timers follow business hours and a holiday | A customer service schedule that observes a holiday schedule, set as the business hours of each SLA item | No schedule on the SLA item, so time counts all day, every day |
| The timer stops while the case waits for the customer | Pause and resume switched on when the SLA item is first created, with the on-hold statuses chosen in the service configuration settings | Planning to add pausing later, which a saved SLA item does not allow |
| The premium target applies only to premium cases | An Applicable When condition on data that representatives do not change while sorting cases, such as the default entitlement that the system applies when the case is created | A condition on a field that representatives edit often. When it stops matching, the running timer is canceled. |
Each row pairs a design choice with a check that your team can repeat in a test environment. How we assess specialists describes the full method and its limits.
Can a consultant from MS Dynamics Guys change our case routing while the service desk keeps working?
Yes, when each change reaches production in a planned order and your service manager controls the timing. Cases keep arriving during the work, so the consultant builds and tests away from the live desk. Six practices lower the risk of a gap in routing:
- Test with your own case mix. The consultant configures in a development or test environment, and your team replays past cases there. Microsoft gives existing customers the same advice: configure and test unified routing outside production first.
- Choose a quiet window. Turning on unified routing imports a solution, which can affect database load and running operations. Your service manager picks the window, and your administrator turns the feature on in it. The service manager also names who watches the queues afterward.
- Move one case type at a time. Once unified routing is on, the active basic routing rule set routes nothing until intake rules exist. An intake rule can send cases to a new workstream or to that basic rule set, so case types can move one by one.
- Keep the old path until the new one is accepted. A basic queue that becomes an advanced queue cannot go back to basic. The consultant therefore builds new queues for the pilot and leaves the current ones in place.
- Release in Microsoft's order. Routing settings move between environments partly in solutions and partly as data, through the Configuration Migration tool. The order is fixed: session and notification templates, skill-based routing rule sets, capacity profiles, queues, then intake rules and workstreams.
- Check access and timers first. When a representative cannot open an assigned case, the system stops that assignment. A running SLA timer is canceled when its Applicable When condition stops matching. The consultant tests both with a test account for each tier.
Access and review follow the same split. The consultant gets configuration rights in development and test environments. Your administrator runs the production release, or approves the consultant to run it. Your service manager accepts each change, and team leads get a short note on what changes before each release.
After a release, the person who watches the queues checks where the first cases land, including the fallback queue. Each release list states how to undo every step, or says that a step cannot be undone. These practices reduce the risk; they do not remove it.
Questions service managers ask before adding a consultant
Who decides our SLA targets and escalation rules?
Your service manager decides them, with the people who sell your support contracts. Targets and escalation points are promises to customers, so the business owns them. The consultant shows what each option does in the system: when a timer starts, which statuses pause it and what happens at the warning and failure times. Those actions run in a Power Automate flow, such as an email to the team lead when a case nears its deadline. The consultant then configures the agreed rules and records each decision in the release list. If a contract term cannot be measured as written, the consultant says so before anything is built.
How is a Customer Service consultant assessed, and what should our interview add?
Before any introduction, a reviewer from MS Dynamics Guys scores the candidate on the service desk scenario described in the assessment section. How we assess specialists explains who reviews it. Spend your own interview on your real desk. Bring two or three cases that failed in different ways: a duplicate from two mailboxes, a case in the wrong queue and a timer that ran over a weekend. Remove personal data first. A strong candidate names the setting behind each failure before proposing a fix. Examples are the order of rule items, a route-to-queue condition or an SLA item with no customer service schedule. Start with the gaps that the reviewer's written summary lists. To compare candidates from several providers, use a buyer scorecard for Microsoft Dynamics 365 specialists.
When does a routing or intake requirement need a developer?
When settings cannot express the rule. Routing on data that lives only in another system is one example, such as an order status in your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. That data needs an integration before a routing rule can read it. A check at save time that needs data from another system is another example. A check on the case's own columns can be a business rule with the Entity scope, which also runs on the server and needs no code. Some needs only look like code. Bringing two mailboxes into one queue needs no code when your Microsoft 365 administrators use mail-flow rules. Microsoft also describes a Power Automate flow or a plug-in for that job, and a plug-in is developer work. When code is needed, the consultant writes the requirement and its test, and a CRM developer builds it.
MS Dynamics Guys can propose that developer for the same backlog, so both people work from one list of requests.
Our desk releases routing changes in quiet hours. How are the consultant's hours and price agreed?
In writing, before the consultant receives any account. The agreement sets the hours the consultant shares with your desk and the rate basis, and this site publishes no rates. Decide in advance whether the consultant must be online during each release window and for the first cases after it, including the fallback queue check. If the work moves cases from basic routing rule sets to unified routing, check your licenses first. Microsoft sets specific licensing requirements for unified routing. Microsoft licenses are separate from our price, including the license your tenant assigns to the consultant's account. To see how pricing changes when you pay for a defined result instead of time, read staff augmentation versus project delivery.
Can our own administrators maintain the routing and SLAs after the consultant leaves?
Yes, if the handover is planned from the start. Rules, queues, SLAs, entitlements and knowledge settings live in your environments as configuration, not code. The release list, design notes, routing matrix and test scripts sit in your workspace as the consultant writes them. A service desk also needs regular upkeep, so the handover names an owner for each task. Each holiday in the holiday schedule behind your SLA timers has its own dates, so someone adds the next year's holidays in advance. Someone checks the fallback queue, where cases that match no rule end up. Each knowledge subject keeps an owner who reviews drafts. Before leaving, the consultant walks your administrator through open changes, pending decisions and the release order for routing settings. Your administrator then removes the consultant's access. Notice and replacement terms are agreed in writing per engagement.
Our service team still uses Customer Service Hub. Does that change the work?
Partly. Since February 2025, Microsoft no longer offers Customer Service Hub to new organizations with Enterprise licenses. Existing organizations can keep using it, but Microsoft recommends a move to Copilot Service workspace. Some settings show their effect only there: notifications set up for unified routing of records appear only in Copilot Service workspace. Name your app in the role brief. If you plan the move, treat it as its own release, with a pilot group and test scripts for daily tasks.
Tell us what your service desk needs to change
Share your Customer Service version, the app your service team uses, your mailboxes and queues, the changes waiting, the hours to cover and for how long. We confirm whether we can staff the role before any introduction.
Product documentation referenced on this page
- Copilot Service admin center in Customer Service Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Customer Service Hub app removal and migration FAQ Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Automatically create or update records in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Create and manage basic queues for cases Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Automatically route cases using basic routing rulesets Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Manage unified routing in Customer Service Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Set up unified routing for records Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Configure work classification rulesets Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Configure route-to-queue rules Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Migrate configurations for record routing using solutions Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Configure service-level agreements in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Create customer service schedule and define work hours Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Create and manage holiday schedules Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Create entitlements to define support terms Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Define settings for parent and child cases Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Merge cases Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- KnowledgeArticle table in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Configure knowledge management Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Create and manage knowledge articles Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Business process flows overview Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Create a business process flow in Power Apps Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Define status reason transitions for the Case or custom tables Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Create a business rule in Microsoft Dataverse Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Manage Microsoft Dynamics 365 apps that run on Microsoft Dataverse Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Security roles and privileges Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Connect to Exchange Online Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Invite users with Microsoft Entra B2B collaboration Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026
- Create users Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026