Summary Our client is a US-based manufacturer of premium connected countertop cooking appliances, sold direct to consumers and through retail partners. Their in-house support team works warranty, returns and device troubleshooting cases in Dynamics 365, but the rules for handling those cases lived outside it, in documents that had to be opened in a second tab. We built what they call the troubleshoot guide using the side pane, a part of the app shell most implementations never touch because the out of the box app only uses it for the productivity pane and the Copilot panel. A Quick Reference Guide icon in the right-hand rail opens a business rules library beside the record, it stays open while the agent moves from one case to the next, and it is edited in place by the people who own the rules. The content sits in Dataverse rows instead of in a solution, so adding or correcting a rule is a data change rather than a deployment. This post covers why we chose that surface, the two design calls we reversed mid build, and the limits we would design around on a second pass. ⓘPart of a wider engagement The troubleshoot guide is one piece of a longer programme of Dynamics 365 enhancements, reporting and third-party integrations for this client. Read the full Customer Success Story. Table of Contents Summary→ Business Challenges→ Solution Overview→ Technical Approach→ Impact→ Conclusion→ Let’s Talk→ Business Challenges The problem was never that the rules did not exist. The problem was where they sat relative to the work. The handling rules lived in documents outside CRM, so finding the right paragraph meant leaving the case form and giving up the record context Rules changed more often than anyone could republish them, and a correction had to go back through whoever owned the file Nothing tied a rule to the moment it was needed. The agent already had the case open and still had to remember which policy applied Anything that put the content on a form tab would have turned a typo fix into a customisation, an export and an import ⚠The cost was the switch, not the search Opening a document is quick. Rebuilding where you were in a case after you come back is not, and that happened on every lookup. Solution Overview The troubleshoot guide is a side pane. Most users only ever meet that surface as the productivity pane in Customer Service, and most project teams reach for a dialog or a form tab because those are the shapes everyone already knows. The pane is the only one of the three that keeps the reference material and the record on screen together. The entry point is a Quick Reference Guide icon in the right-hand rail of the app. It is there as soon as a case is opened and on a case the agent is still creating, so somebody taking a call does not have to save the record first. The launcher sits in the right rail, available on an open case and on a new one. One click opens the pane, and it stays pinned as the agent moves to the next record. Content is organised in two levels: a business rule heading, and sub-sections under it, all collapsed when the pane first renders so the agent sees the index before the detail. The pane in the right column of the app shell, beside the live form. What the pane does Two level structure. A business rule heading holds any number of sub-sections. Everything renders collapsed, so the agent reads an index first and opens only the rule they need Search across both levels. One box matches heading names and the body text of every sub-section at the same time, and auto-expands whatever it hits. Clearing the box restores exactly which sections were open before the search started Inline authoring. Add a heading, add a sub-section, write bold text, colour a warning line, insert a link. No second screen and no admin rights Insert images two ways. Upload from the device, or point at an existing URL. Either way the image is resized and compressed before it is stored Paste from Word and Outlook. The rule owners draft in Word. Pasted formatting is cleaned on the way in, and a screenshot sitting in the clipboard is embedded as part of the same paste Sort by dragging. Headings reorder against each other, sub-sections reorder within their heading, and the new position is saved the moment the item is dropped Move a sub-section to a different heading. Drag it out of one section and onto another. A collapsed heading opens itself when the item hovers over it, so nothing has to be expanded first Light and dark themes. A toggle in the pane header, remembered per browser, because the pane is open all day beside a form whose theme the agent does not control Delete that deactivates. Removing a heading deactivates its sub-sections first, then the heading, so nothing is orphaned and nothing is destroyed ⓘNothing here is a customisation Every heading and every sub-section is a Dataverse row. Publishing a new rule does not touch the solution and does not need a developer. Technical Approach Why the side pane and not a form tab We looked at three places to put the guide before writing anything. The deciding criterion was not how it looked, it was what survives the agent moving to the next record. Criteria Form tab Custom page dialog Our choiceSide pane Readable at the same time as the case fields partial ✗ ✓ Survives navigating to the next case ✗ ✗ ✓ Width the agent can drag to suit their screen ✗ ✗ ✓ Keeps scroll position and open sections between records ✗ ✗ ✓ No change to the form layout to adopt it ✗ ✓ ✓ The side pane has been available in the Dynamics 365 app shell since 2021 and almost nothing in the standard app uses it beyond … Continue reading How to Extend Dynamics 365 CRM Using Side Panes: A Practical Implementation for a US-Based Kitchen Appliance Manufacturer →