Whether you use the standard Dynamics 365 Case Subject tree, or you use an alternative method and hope that the subject tree dies, categorization of your cases is important if you want to report on them later and analyze your case history. By assigning subjects to cases, you can group cases by category, identify related issues, and spot trends that will be helpful in improving your products and services in the future. By analyzing your case history by subject, you can identify which products or categories have the most issues and perform root cause analysis on these issues.

But if you are starting from scratch, sometimes it is hard to know which subjects you should include, and how your structure should be organized.

My recommendation is start simple. Too often managers want to overload the subject tree with too many options. This can be counter-productive, as customer service agents will find navigation through the list to be cumbersome, and may pick the wrong subject. Start with a handful of subjects and add to it over time based on user feedback.

The subjects that you use will probably differ based on you type of business and how your customer service teams are organized.

Companies that sell products

If you have customer service and sales teams ordered by product line, then categorizing cases by product line usually makes sense with subcategory types that clarifies the question or issue.

• Product A
  • Sales Question
  • Technical support question
  • Returns
• Product B
  • Sales Question
  • Technical support question
  • Returns
• Product C
  • Sales Question
  • Technical support question
  • Returns

A Software Company

The following example is for a software company that has teams separated by function and technical tier.

• Bug
• Feature Request
• Sales Question
• How To
• Technical Issue
• Cancellation

Corporate IT

If you are using CRM to support internal helpdesk tickets, you probably will want to categorize by IT area and team handling the request.

• Desktop Hardware
• Desktop Software
• Server
• Networking
• New Employee
• Office 365
• CRM
• Change Request

By Department

In some organizations where issues are strictly handled by each department, categorizing by department can make sense.

• Software Development
• Sales
• Information Technology
• Human Resources
• Mail Room
• Operations
• Shipping

How did you arrive at your case subject/category structure? Let us know in the comments..