Display External Web Pages in Unified Service Desk

Roshan Mehta, 12 January 2015

In my previous post, we customised Unified Service Desk by adding a toolbar with some toolbar buttons. Those buttons do nothing when clicked, so the focus of this post is to add some functionality to the “SharePoint” and “Yammer” buttons to open their respective websites in a new tab.

To get this to work we need to do a couple of things. Firstly, we need to create two Hosted Controls of type Standard Web Application – one for SharePoint and one for Yammer. Secondly, we need to configure the buttons so the applications open in separate tabs.

Create the Hosted Controls

1.  In CRM, navigate to Settings -> Hosted Controls and create two new Hosted Controls

     Name: Standard Web Application – SharePoint
     Display Name: SharePoint
     USD Component Type: Standard Web Application
     Hosting Type: Internal WPF
     Application is Global: Yes
     Display Group: MainPanel

Note: We will also need a Hosted Control called “Standard Web Application – Yammer” where the only difference is the Name and Display Name

Modify the buttons to open their respective websites

Before performing the following steps, please take a look at my previous post which outlines how to create the Toolbar and Toolbar Buttons.

1.  Open up the Toolbar Button called Toolbar Button: Collaboration: SharePoint and click on Action Calls on the navigation bar



2.  Click on Add Existing Action Call, select the lookup and click on New



3.  On the new Action Call screen, enter the following details and then save the record

Name: Action Call: Open SharePoint
Hosted Control: Standard Web Application: SharePoint
Action: Navigate
Data: http://sharepoint.mydomain.com

4.  Perform steps 1-4 for the Toolbar Button called Toolbar Button: Collaboration: Yammer with the following Action Call values

Name: Action Call: Open Yammer
Hosted Control: Standard Web Application: Yammer
Action: Navigate
Data: http://www.yammer.com

Launch Unified Service Desk and click on the SharePoint and Yammer buttons on the toolbar. You should see the websites loaded in separate tabs.