Integrating Dynamics CRM 4 and SharePoint 2007

Excellent new Microsoft training class available now, Integrating Dynamics CRM and SharePoint

Full disclosure: I recently wrote this class for Microsoft. So I suppose I’m not exactly disinterested…but I actually do think it’s an excellent class and I suspect readers of this blog will be interested in it. So here’s the official landing page on the Microsoft Learning site for Course 80141, Integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 and Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007

If you’re a more or less regular reader of the Trick Bag you’ll know this is one of my favorite topics. I’ve written more than a few articles on this blog about it; you can see them all by selecting  ”SharePoint” from the Category drop-down on the right-hand side nav bar.

The course (and the accompanying book) has a “right tool for the job” theme:

• SharePoint’s sweet spots are content and document management, collaboration, enterprise search, and internal/external web sites.
• Dynamics CRM ships with out of the box support for sales force automation, marketing and service management; but where it really shines is as a platform for relational database applications.

Both are web server applications and can support an entirely browser-based user experience.  

Why Integrate?

SharePoint’s sold a lot more licenses than Dynamics CRM,  partly because it’s been in the market longer, and partly because it’s got a broader, more general purpose feature set.  Enterprises rolling out SharePoint will often deploy it to all or most of their desktops; Dynamics CRM tends to be more specifically deployed to sales, marketing and service areas.

CRM data are highly structured: so-called “entities” (accounts, contacts, leads, activities…) are related to one another, referential integrity is enforced, etc. SharePoint data are much less structured. Probably the most common use of SharePoint is to store documents in document libraries. Meta-data is typically used to describe those documents. You might have columns in a document library for “account” and “document type”, and since SharePoint is so good at search, this would make it easy for a user to get a list of all the proposals ever created for the Acme account. And even in small organizations, it doesn’t take long to accumulate hundreds of documents – P.O.’s, proposals, statements of work… —  relating to a single large account.

An example like this sheds light on one of the most useful integration points: SharePoint data as meta-data about Dynamics CRM records. Picture a Dynamics CRM account form with a tab for “SharePoint Search” which a user can click and see all or some of the documents stored in SharePoint that are related to the current account record. Once I started thinking of SharePoint as a repository of data about important CRM records I was surprised how often I came across requirements for this functionality.

• Here’s a more complete article on the general topic, accompanied by a video.
• Here’s an article specifically about how to implement SharePoint search from a Dynamics CRM account form.
• Here’s a Channel 9 video on the general topic of integrating SharePoint and Dynamics CRM

I’d be interested to hear about your experience in this area.

Also: the courseware is good foundation content for custom workshops during which I train your team in the process of designing and building your integration solutions.  Let me know if you have questions — like I said, it’s one of my favorite topics!

Richard Knudson
richardk@imginc.com