Set up content recommendations in MS Dynamics

Content recommendations help admins to create policies that suggest the most relevant content for each sales conversation in MS Dynamics. The recommendations, which serve up materials such as videos, ebooks, white papers, and infographics, are based on deal data in Dynamics. 

Enabling these policies will give your sales reps the best content suggestions for advancing each deal. Users will find recommended content surfaced in Accounts, Leads, Contacts, or Opportunities, depending on the setup.

As an admin, you can:

• Manually configure recommendation policies (rules) using various Dynamics field types (e.g., text, multi-value, picklist) and fields from related or child objects (such as products tied to an opportunity). These rules map tags from your assets to specific Dynamics field values. When certain Dynamics criteria are met, Showpad content with the corresponding tags will be recommended.
• Let Showpad AI automatically generate recommendations by analyzing the fields you define in your AI recommendation policies. The AI uses semantic search to suggest relevant content from your content libraries.

Recommended assets are presented to sellers in order, first by the number of matching rules and secondarily by the most recently updated date.

See how it looks

You need this to succeed

• • In Showpad, the users need access to the Experience that uses the recommended assets
  • Dynamics Enterprise or Unlimited plan
  • Update the latest Showpad for Dynamics solution (at least v1.11) (See how to install the package here)

Do this step by step

• Enable recommendations
• How to configure recommendation policies
  • with content mapping rules
  • with AI recommendation policies 
• See how recommended content appears in Dynamics

How to enable recommendations policies

1. In the Showpad Admin App, click the settings gear to open the admin Settings.
2. From the Integrations, click on CRM.
3. Click the Dynamics instance you wish to set up recommendations for.
4. Scroll down to the Recommendations tab and click Edit. 
5. Click Change at the top right. 
6. Check Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and/or Opportunities to select where you want to see the recommendations in Dynamics.
   Check the box if you wish to include internal files in recommendations. These files are files intended for internal learning and are marked as not shareable.
   

   Note: If the Showpad App is added to Dynamics Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, or Lead pages without enabling recommendations, users will see the app widget with just the Showpad Insights tab. 

Configure recommendation policies

Content mapping rule

The following explains how to manually configure rules to connect CRM field values to content tags.

1. Click Create recommendation policy in the top right or at the bottom.
2. Select Content mapping rule.
3. In the Recommended Showpad content field, add the tags for which you want to surface content. You can match assets and Courses with ALL the selected tags, ANY of the selected tags, or NONE of the selected tags.
   
   • Match ALL of these tags - An asset must contain every one of the tags listed in this field in order to be recommended.
   • Match ANY of these tags - An asset must contain at least one of the tags listed in this field to be recommended.
   • Match NONE of these tags - An asset must not contain any of the tags listed in this field in order to be recommended.
     

     Tip: To test which assets or Courses will appear in the recommended section of Dynamics, use the tags filter in your Assets & Experiences Library or Coach Library to validate your tag rules.

4. Next, choose the Object field and select the object you want the rule to apply to from the drop-down menu. Objects can be Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity, and any custom or non-sales object (e.g., Case) with a ‘layout’ capability.
5. Optionally, if you want to base your recommendations on a Child Relation, select an option from the drop-down menu.
6. Next, Choose the Field from the Object or Child from the drop-down menu, or type the related field you want to view.
   

   Note: You may also reference a parent object field using a dot notation, similar to Salesforce cross-object formulas. See an example in the Rule examples section.

7. Choose the parameters for the field values, such as equals, contains, etc. Add the field value that will qualify for recommendations.
   
8. Add the field value that will qualify for recommendations. For lookup fields, master-detail fields, and record types, you will need to enter the record ID rather than the display value.
   For matching values from multi-picklist fields, make sure to enter their API name, which administrators can find on the setup side of Salesforce. Also, note that multi-picklist values are stored as semi-colon-separated values, so consider using ‘contains’ rather than 'equals’ to ensure all matching records are caught.
9. Duplicate the current record by ticking the Create another box. Click Save when you're done editing.
10. You can also create advanced rule sets combining Salesforce conditions using OR and AND operators.
    
    • Using the OR functionality means either Salesforce component of the rule can be true for recommendations to show.
    • Using the AND functionality means that both components of the rule must be true for the recommendations to show.
      

      Note: When using the AND operator in recommendation rules, ensure all conditions relate to the same object type.

    

AI recommendation policies

AI-powered recommendation policies automatically analyze and suggest content based on the key objects and fields you define. Showpad's AI engine scans your defined parameters and performs a semantic search to find and recommend the most relevant content from the content library, presenting it to your users.

Note: Users will always see why specific content was recommended, regardless of using content mapping rules or AI-powered recommendation policies.

Set up an AI recommendation policy

1. 1. Click Create recommendation policy in the top right or at the bottom.
   2. Select AI recommendation policy.
   3. Next in the CRM context section, choose the Object field and select the object you want the rule to apply to from the drop-down menu. Objects can be Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity, and any custom or non-sales object (e.g., Case) with a ‘layout’ capability.
   4. Optionally, if you want to base your recommendations on a Child Relation, select an option from the drop-down menu.
   5. Next, Choose the Field from the Object or Child from the drop-down menu, or type the related field you want to view.
      

      Note: You may also reference a parent object field using a dot notation, similar to Salesforce cross-object formulas. See an example in the Rule examples section.

   6. Duplicate the current record by ticking the Create another box. Click Save when you're done editing.
      
       

How recommended content appears in Dynamics

If you create your Recommendation Rules and attach content tags to the correct fields, the content will start to show up for your sales colleagues in the various places you selected. Up to 100 assets will be displayed, and they will be sorted as follows:

• Number of matching rules (highest first)
• Last updated asset (most recently updated first)

Assets will be categorized into All, Share, and Learn Tabs. All include any assets relevant to the recommendation rules applicable, Share content is assets with the sharing permission enabled, and Learn is internal assets with sharing not allowed.

More information about how it works for your sales reps is available here.
 

Rule Examples

Basic rules

In the image below we will make recommendations for opportunities in the stage 'qualification'.

• • • Select 'Opportunity' as the object.
    • Next, choose the related field 'Stage'.
    • Select the qualifier 'equal to'.
    • Add the field value 'Qualification'.
      

In this example, when the opportunity stage field value is ‘qualification’, we will recommend content with the tags containing both ‘Agriculture’ and ‘Brochure’ that users have access to in their Experiences.

As an example of a rule using the optional child relation, we will make recommendations for products related to an opportunity.

• Select Opportunity as the object.
• Next, choose the child relation OpportunityLineItems. This is the intermediate ‘connecting’ object in Dynamics linking Opportunities to products.
• For the Child object field, type product2.Name.
• For the qualifier, we selected equal to, and the value Showspace Unlimited as the product.
• In this example, when any of the products related to an opportunity is equal to Showspace Unlimited, we will recommend content with the tags Showspace and Unlimited that users have access to in their experiences.

As an example of a rule using the parent relation with dot notation, we will make recommendations based on the account related to an opportunity.

• Select Opportunity as the object.
• For the object field, type Account.Primary_Distribution_Country__c.
• For the qualifier, we selected equal to, and for the value, we typed FR.

In this example, when the account’s primary distribution country related to an opportunity is equal to France, we will recommend content with the tags technology and brochure that users have access to in their experiences.

Advanced rules