Top Tips to Setting-Up Security in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

When implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM, many people save security for last because of the many screens and questions that need to be answered, or worst yet, some give everyone Administrator access so they do not have to configure it. In my 8+ years of implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM, I have seen many companies struggle with this. In almost all of the cases, the security setup has inflamed the user’s lack of adoption of a system that should have worked for them. In this post I will review a methodology to starting the security tailoring process within  Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This methodology is not going to dive into every little detailed aspect of security, but take a broad look and approach to security setup within CRM. If you cannot get it started correctly, it doesn’t matter what the details are if your foundation is faulty. If however, you have a strong foundation and you must rebuild your security house, you can with fewer issues and less stress on your users.

There are two approaches to security administration that you need to decide upon. Ask yourself if you will have one role per security group, or will you build a layered security methodology? Many people will take the first approach and in fact Microsoft’s out-of-box security roles are named to suggest this approach. I suggest thinking about your options and picking the one you really need. The second approach is the layered security methodology. With this approach you start with a basic/general security role that all users must have and add more roles on top to add additional security. For example, let us say we have a security role called “standard users” which give read access to accounts and read/write access to contacts. In our organization only managers can update accounts. We would then have another security group called “managers” where this security group is blank with the exception of Accounts where we now have modify access checked.

Click here to review the pros and cons associated with these two approaches when setting up security in Microsoft Dynamics CRM or learn more by downloading the Dynamics CRM Security Best Practices Guide.

Bill Owens, CRM Practice Manager, Affiliated, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner and Integrator, Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio