CRM 2011 online contains out of the box functionality to integrate with SharePoint 2010. This is the perfect way to store and manage documents that relate to your customers, such as quotes, orders, invoices and so on. However, to make full use of this functionality, you need to install a CRM component onto your SharePoint installation. While this is fine for on premise SharePoint deployments, it is not allowed for SharePoint online (Office 365). This is a glaring oversight in Microsoft’s cloud vision (fix this soon please!). However, it is still possible (if not obvious) to achieve a workable integration between CRM 2011 online and SharePoint 2010 online. This blog post shows you how to do it. 

Steps Required 

• Create a document library in SharePoint
• Add folders for each customer
• Create a custom URL to each customer folder
• Add the custom URL to the account record in CRM

In Detail

1. Create a document library in SharePoint online.
2. Add a folder for each customer.
3. Open a folder. Copy its URL and paste into notepad.
4. Locate the FolderCTID parameter, then find the & after this (this is the end of the folder id).
5. Delete everything after the &
6. Add idDlg=1 to the end of the URL
7. Copy the new URL (you will need to paste this into CRM).
8. Open the corresponding customer record in CRM online
9. Add a new document location. Give this a name and Paste the modified URL.
10. Click the Save button to save the location. Any documents in your folder are now visible in CRM and you can access SharePoint online functionality directly.

How it Works

For each account record, CRM 2011 is simply providing “a window” (IFrame) into your SharePoint online installation. This window points to the SharePoint folder that you have previously created. While the two systems appear to be integrated, they are in fact still separate. You will need to remember this when considering security (i.e. who can see and do what). If you want to control visibility and access to the documents, configure this in SharePoint.

When we copy the URL of our SharePoint 2010 folder, we first remove all the information we don’t need (as CRM complains if the URL is greater than 256 characters) and then add the &idDlg=1 parameter to the end. This is simply a switch to tell SharePoint not to show all its navigation headers, as we don’t want to show. If we leave this parameter off the integration would look like the screenshot below.

If you want to delete a document location, you will be frustrated to find that there is not obvious way to do this from the account record. However, it is possible by navigating to the Documents management section of the System Settings.

For more professional tips, visit Mentor blog at http://www.sharepoint-mentor.com SharePoint by Intelligent Decisioning - SharePoint, CRM and Workflow at http://www.id-live.com.au

For professional SharePoint Training in Brisbane Australia, visit Intelligent Decisioning SharePoint Training website at http://www.id-live.com.au/Sharepoint-2010-training-brisbane.aspx

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