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Many organizations are utilizing both CRM 2013 Online and Yammer Enterprise. For those that are, or are planing to in the future, here is a quick guide on getting these two products integrated.
Before you get started, here are a few things to keep in mind.
Recently, I worked on a project that required me to programmatically set up Field Security in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Field Security allows you to designate selected fields (of selected entities) to be “secure” – which means only a certain group of users can have access to it. This access is made up of three operations: read, update, and create, each of which can be granted separately. MSDN does a pretty good job giving an overview of how it works: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309608(v=crm.5).aspx Read More…
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is an interesting and powerful business application. A core out-of-the-box (OOTB) benefit of Dynamics CRM is the ability to extensively tailor the application to address business needs, and here there are two approaches to consider: development or customization. Determining which approach to take is the key to maximizing the benefits of Dynamics CRM while keeping costs low.
Dynamics CRM is a basic web user interface fronting a SQL Server database that manages relational data. However, it is flanked by a built-in array of basic analytical tools and extensive administrative features, such as auditing, which give it enterprise-level credentials. Throw in a customizable user interface (UI), and you have a tool that is capable of supporting both small businesses and multinational corporations. So it would be logical to assume that Dynamics CRM has a developer-friendly, structured architecture to support customizations.
However, the reality is a little more complicated and brings up some curious paradoxes about Dynamics CRM. Read More…
Microsoft has revamped its licensing model for Dynamics CRM 2013. Here’s a summary of the information from the latest Microsoft documentation.
There are three basic versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, and each has its own particular licensing requirements:
Software development is a risky endeavor, with many things that can go wrong. At any moment, you may find that your budget or schedule targets have been completely missed and your developers and customers disagree about the scope and functionality of the project. In fact, numerous studies state that up to 60% of projects completely fail or massively exceed their budget. A recent study by McKinsey found that on average, most software projects over $5 million exceed their budget by 45%, turning that $5 million application into a $7+ million application. As responsible software systems developers, we have to constantly ask ourselves – how do we prevent this from happening to our projects? The answer is to reduce risk. Read More…
Dynamics CRM 2013 is about to be released and if you have already made a large investment into SharePoint as a development platform, you may be asking yourself why Dynamics CRM matters. After all, you are already using a wildly successful platform that underpins collaboration tools, intranets, your ‘corporate’ social media and quite likely a base of custom applications and tools. Why would you need yet another platform if SharePoint is capable of handling everything you throw at it?
First off, let’s clear up a misconception that everyone generally has the first time they hear about Dynamics CRM: it’s not “Dynamics versus SharePoint,” it’s “Dynamics AND SharePoint.” Dynamics CRM offers some pretty significant benefits that are not available when using the SharePoint platform alone. Likewise, SharePoint has capabilities that Dynamics CRM simply wasn’t designed to even begin to replicate. The trick is knowing when and how to best leverage the benefits of each tool. Simply put, both tools need each other to offer a truly complete platform that offers you the best of everything: a collaboration tool, an intranet and content management tool, a repository for unstructured data, an application platform, and a quick and easy way to rapidly and efficiently build applications to manage structured data. Read More…
I just finished working on a proof of concept using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. The application needed to support the activities of a crime investigation unit in the government.
As a devoted Lennie Briscoe fan, I felt I knew my way around a crime scene…but what I didn’t know was CRM. As it turned out, it didn’t matter! Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 was fairly easy to get up and running. I put together a cloud-based implementation that included:
All were “free” (free as in “trial”). All were in the cloud. All played nicely together.
That said, there were several confusing bits to sort out regarding the e-mail configuration. I’ll share what worked (and what didn’t work) for me. Maybe it can be a timesaver for you. Read More…
Creating SharePoint Sites From a Dynamics CRM PluginWith more and more companies adopting both Dynamics CRM and SharePoint into their corporate technology stacks, I’ve found myself integrating the two technologies more often than ever before. It’s quite cool. These are two extremely powerful systems and they both do what they are designed to do very well. I’m not going to go in-depth about what the differences are between these products…they are in totally different software “genres.” Apples and oranges. However, I want to point out one thing SharePoint gives you that many clients ask for again and again: Subsites.
Subsites are SharePoint sites that belong to a root SharePoint Site Collection. An example of this would be a corporate intranet SharePoint Site Collection (https://intranet) with SharePoint Subsites for each division in the corporation, e.g. Marketing (https://intranet/sites/marketing), Accounting (https://intranet/sites/accounting), etc. There are pros and cons to breaking these Subsites out into their own Site Collections (so they can have their own content database), but quite often you see this hierarchical approach.
Another very common use of SharePoint Subsites is for things like item level management, for instance a project. You may have a SharePoint Site Collection named Projects (https://projects), and you may require a new SharePoint Team Site for any new projects that come online so as to provide an environment where a team can collaborate on said project, and maintain any data or documents about the project in a central location. This can best be described with URLs —https://projects/sites/Project1, https://projects/sites/Project2 and so on.
So how does Dynamics CRM play into my scenario? What if you’d like to leverage this same functionality for things like Accounts, Contacts or Leads? Pick an Entity from CRM — for the purposes of this blog the Entity is somewhat arbitrary, but we’ll use the Account Entity so we have something to focus on. Every new Account I create may or may not require an environment where teams can collaborate and store data and documents for this new Account. Dynamics CRM gives us SharePoint Document Management out of the box. But what if I need more? What if my company maintains a site ‘template’ that can be used to create a new, standardized website (SharePoint Subsite) for any new Accounts that come online? A place where a team can collaborate and have the freedom to deal with unstructured data and content in a central location?
In this blog I’ll show you how to leverage the SharePoint Client Object Model in a Dynamics CRM Plugin to create a SharePoint Team Site for new Accounts that come online.
We recently deployed a five-node CRM 2011 topology using Windows Azure IaaS with the following objectives:
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 has come a long way from its predecessors in many areas. For companies using both CRM 2011 and SharePoint 2010, the improvements can be appreciated even more since Dynamics CRM 2011 has native SharePoint 2010 document management capabilities right out of the box.
This functionality is apparent in a couple of different places in the CRM 2011 web interface. First, there is a page under the Settings section for Document Management. Second, some entities will have a Documents area available on their forms. Please see the screen shot in Figure 1 below. (Click on any image to see full-size.)
For this write-up, I’ll be focusing on the Document Management page and the required steps for configuring access to SharePoint 2010 as well as installing the SharePoint List Component.
