One of the key features included in the release of
What is SharePoint?
SharePoint is one of Microsoft’s fastest growing business applications. SharePoint is a collaboration tool which makes storing, accessing, finding, and sharing documents and information easy, efficient, secure, and controllable. It’s also a highly configurable application and so is ideal for creating custom business solutions. This gives SharePoint the potential to improve a wide range of business processes, and makes it great for a wide range of practical uses. These range from business-wide document management systems to
And here’s the really good news: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 integration works with SharePoint Foundation, which you probably already own (it’s included free with most servers).
Document Control
Microsoft Dynamics CRM doesn’t have comprehensive document management functionality ‘out of the box’, so integration with SharePoint is a big advantage for areas such as Sales and Customer Service that need strong document control.
For example, say a company needs to produce a tender response or bid for a large potential project. The response document or documents can get worked on by a number of different people within the organisation. It may start at the marketing department, go through Sales, then to subject matter experts elsewhere in the company, reviewed and revised, perhaps looked over by finance, and back to sales or marketing before being collated and submitted to the client. SharePoint enables these documents to be checked in and checked out, have all changes fully tracked and document versions tightly controlled. At the same time, by using SharePoint the business can apply different levels of security to restrict the documents, or give access only to those who need it. Later in the document’s life it can be also archived as required, while retaining its full revision history.
SharePoint within Microsoft Dynamics CRM
With the SharePoint integration available in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and
With the previous example of a tender or bid response, the documents would probably relate to an Opportunity. But rather than attaching the document to the Opportunity as a ‘Note’, the integration with SharePoint would create a SharePoint folder and a window within Microsoft Dynamics CRM will show all the relevant documents within that folder. So your tender documentation is tightly and fully controlled, and you’re still working in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Consistent Security
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 SharePoint integration works with any entity, not just Opportunities. It’s one of the
Delivering Innovative Solutions
Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SharePoint integration is really starting to bring
Massive Future Potential
The integration between Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and SharePoint has massive potential and opens up a whole world of possibilities. It will be interesting to see the range of innovative solutions that businesses, Microsoft partners and others will develop in the coming months.
By Concentrix TSG – independent
Norbert,
since this year we provide solution for this security hole. Check out product pagehttp://connecting-software.com/index.php/en/solutions/products/cb-dynamics-crm-privileges-to-sharepoint-permissions-replicator .
You are stating that there is consistent security between sharepoint and crm - this is wrong - sharepoint documents will get no permissions from the crm system - which is a major security hole of the integration.
Hi. At the time of writing, it's not quite up on our web site, but we've just launched a plug-in that connects Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with the adopotion management tools in nGage Prime for SharePoint 2010. This means that adoption of CRM can be tracked, analysed, promoted and celebrated in Boardrooms and on SharePoint portals via our BI solution.
It also means that every time someone contributes to the CRM system, it can be surfaced as an Activity on their SharePoint My Site and followed by their Colleagues as a Newsfeed. You may want to share this if you agree that sustaining high levels of user adoption is a significant driver of business value derived from CRM.