Hi Sharepoint Folks,

Just to have all the things at one location. This is a Re-Published post from the original post from my friend Shaiq’s Post.

Original Post here - https://blogs.msdn.com/b/shariq/archive/2013/01/25/integrating-sharepoint-2010-and-crm-2011.aspx

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Hello SharePointers !!

I have been working with SharePoint for many years, but this is the first time I decided to blog about something.

The driving force behind choosing this particular topic is the two-fold: Firstly, there is not enough information available and secondly, due to the constant reminders by colleague Andy to help the larger community out there.

Andy, himself has published multi-part blog series on this topic and in essence this post forms the part 3 of his series.

Over here we will see how we can fetch and display complete set of entity information from CRM 2011 in a SharePoint Web part. That is in the SharePoint Web Part I will have a drop down list with the collection of all CRM ‘Entity’ and another drop down that will contain the associated ‘Views’ and finally the Entity Result set. But before we do that it’s important to understand why this is not straight forward!

Thought Process:

1) CRM 2011 provides SDK and I can always develop custom solutions. If I choose to refer to “Walkthrough: Build a Web Application That Connects to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Using Developer Extensions” I can easily display CRM 2011 entity information in a Web Application.

2) That means I can easily transform those custom solutions (like a Web Application) into a SharePoint 2010 web part, and bingo! We are all set!

Catch:

1) CRM 2011 is based on .Net framework 4.0 and SP 2010 is on .Net 3.5. So if you try to implement the step 2 you can’t even build your SharePoint Web Part forget about deploying it.

Resolution [Important Steps]:

1) Publish an intermediary WCF service with relevant methods to expose information from CRM 2011.

2) Create a SharePoint Web Part and make appropriate calls to the WCF service and then transform the result set as per your needs for the end user.

The Steps in detail:

1) We need to create and publish a WCF service to call in CRM 2011. This service can have multiple facets based on your needs; may be you intend to perform add/edit/delete apart from just “display” so create the WCF methods judiciously. For now I will stick to the display part.

IMP: The code blocks below doesn’t confirm to the coding best practices but does work, and I am sure you guys can transform it accordingly. I have ripped the pieces from from all over the web

a) Generate Early Bound Types:

Run the CrmSvcUtil.exe tool, with the Microsoft.Xrm.Client.CodeGeneration extension, to generate your entity classes and service contexts.

The following example command creates a file called “Xrm.cs” that points at an instance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Note that the Microsoft.Xrm.Client.CodeGeneration.dll file must be in the same directory as the CrmSvcUtil.exe file, or in the system GAC, when you run this command.

crmsvcutil.exe /codeCustomization:"Microsoft.Xrm.Client.CodeGeneration.CodeCustomization, Microsoft.Xrm.Client.CodeGeneration"
/out:Xrm\Xrm.cs /url:https://dpm2012/fabrikam/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc /domain:CONTOSO /username:spfarm
/password:Welcome@123 /namespace:Xrm /serviceContextName:XrmServiceContext

b) Use Visual Studio 2010 to create a WCF Service Application (ensure .NET Framework 4).

c) Right-click the project in Visual Studio, click Add, and then click Existing Item. Select the “xrm.cs” file that you created when you generated the early bound types.

d) Right-click the project in Visual Studio, click Add, add a new class to the project. The Add New Item dialog box appears. Rename the class as Entities.cs. Similarly add one more class and name it as Views.cs

e) Add couple of properties in both these classes (please name it appropriately)

public string MyProperty { get; set; }

public string MyProperty1 { get; set; }

f) Add the references as shown below (for the CRM dll the Source will be SDK\bin, don’t search for C:\Shariq )

g) Now your Solution should look more like below (few more references might have been inadvertently added)

h) Right-click the project in Visual Studio and add the Service Reference for the Organization.svc

i) Open the interface IService1.cs and replace the ServiceContract with the code below:

[ServiceContract]

    public interface IService1

    {

        [OperationContract]

        string GetMessage();

        [OperationContract]

        List<Entities> GetEntityData();

        [OperationContract]

        List<Views> GetViewData(int SelectedEntity);

        [OperationContract]

        DataSet GetCompleteData(string _SavedQueryId);

    }

j) Now we need to implement the Service1.svc, copy the below code (make appropriate changes for your OrganizationUri i.e. Organization.svc )

    public class Service1 : IService1
    {
        public List<Entities> GetEntityData()
        {
        ClientCredentials Credentials = new ClientCredentials();

        Credentials.Windows.ClientCredential = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;

        //This URL needs to be updated to match the servername and Organization for the environment. 

        Uri OrganizationUri = new Uri("https://DPM2012/TailspinToysDB/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc");
        List<Entities> EntityList = new List<Entities>();
        Uri HomeRealmUri = null;
        using (OrganizationServiceProxy serviceProxy = new OrganizationServiceProxy(OrganizationUri, HomeRealmUri, 

        Credentials, null))
        {

            Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.IOrganizationService service = serviceProxy as Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.IOrganizationService;

            RetrieveAllEntitiesRequest request = new RetrieveAllEntitiesRequest()
            {
                EntityFilters = EntityFilters.Attributes,
                RetrieveAsIfPublished = true
            };

            // Retrieve the MetaData.
            RetrieveAllEntitiesResponse response = (RetrieveAllEntitiesResponse)serviceProxy.Execute(request);

            foreach (EntityMetadata currentEntity in response.EntityMetadata)
            {
                if (currentEntity.IsCustomizable.Value == true)
                {
                    foreach (AttributeMetadata currentAttribute in currentEntity.Attributes)
                    {

                        Entities e = new Entities();
                        e.MyProperty = currentEntity.LogicalName;
                        e.MyProperty1 = currentEntity.ObjectTypeCode.Value.ToString();

                        if (EntityList.Where(en => en.MyProperty.Equals(e.MyProperty) && 

                        en.MyProperty1.Equals(e.MyProperty1)).Count() == 0)
                        {
                            EntityList.Add(e);
                        }
                    }
                }
            }

        }
        return EntityList;
        }

        public List<Views> GetViewData(int paramSelectedEntity)
        {
        ClientCredentials Credentials = new ClientCredentials();

        Credentials.Windows.ClientCredential = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;

        //This URL needs to be updated to match the servername and Organization for the environment. 

        Uri OrganizationUri = new Uri("https://dpm2012/TailspinToysDB/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc");

        Uri HomeRealmUri = null;
        List<Views> ViewsList = new List<Views>();

        using (OrganizationServiceProxy serviceProxy = new OrganizationServiceProxy(OrganizationUri, HomeRealmUri, 

        Credentials, null))
        {
            serviceProxy.EnableProxyTypes();

            Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.IOrganizationService service = (Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.IOrganizationService)serviceProxy;

            // Retrieve Views
            QueryExpression mySavedQuery = new QueryExpression
            {
                ColumnSet = new ColumnSet("savedqueryid", "name", "querytype", "isdefault", "returnedtypecode", 

                "isquickfindquery"),
                EntityName = SavedQuery.EntityLogicalName,
                Criteria = new FilterExpression
                {
                    Conditions =
        {
                
            new ConditionExpression
            {
                AttributeName = "returnedtypecode",
                Operator = ConditionOperator.Equal,
                Values = {paramSelectedEntity}
            }
        }
                }
            };
            RetrieveMultipleRequest retrieveSavedQueriesRequest = new RetrieveMultipleRequest { Query = mySavedQuery };

            RetrieveMultipleResponse retrieveSavedQueriesResponse = 

            (RetrieveMultipleResponse)serviceProxy.Execute(retrieveSavedQueriesRequest);

            DataCollection<Entity> savedQueries = retrieveSavedQueriesResponse.EntityCollection.Entities;
                
            foreach (Entity ent in savedQueries)
            {
                SavedQuery rsq = (SavedQuery)ent;
                if (rsq.IsDefault == true)
                {
                    Views e = new Views();
                    e.MyProperty = rsq.Name.ToString();
                    e.MyProperty1 = rsq.Id.ToString();
                    ViewsList.Add(e);
                }
            }
        }

        return ViewsList;           

        }

        public DataTable convertEntityCollectionToDataTable(EntityCollection BEC)
        {
            DataTable dt = new DataTable();
            int total = BEC.Entities.Count;
            for (int i = 0; i < total; i++)
            {
                DataRow row = dt.NewRow();
                Entity myEntity = (Entity)BEC.Entities[i];
                var keys = myEntity.Attributes.Keys;
                foreach (var item in keys)
                {
                    string columnName = item;
                    string value = getValuefromAttribute(myEntity.Attributes[item]);
                    if (dt.Columns.IndexOf(columnName) == -1)
                    {
                        dt.Columns.Add(item, Type.GetType("System.String"));
                    }
                    row[columnName] = value;
                }
                dt.Rows.Add(row);
            }
            return dt;
        }

        private string getValuefromAttribute(object p)
        {
            if (p.ToString() == "Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.EntityReference")
            {
                return ((EntityReference)p).Name;
            }
            if (p.ToString() == "Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.OptionSetValue")
            {
                return ((OptionSetValue)p).Value.ToString();
            }
            if (p.ToString() == "Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Money")
            {
                return ((Money)p).Value.ToString();
            }
            if (p.ToString() == "Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.AliasedValue")
            {
                return ((Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.AliasedValue)p).Value.ToString();
            }
            else
            {
                return p.ToString();
            }
        }

        public DataSet GetCompleteData(string _strSavedQueryId)
        {
        DataSet ds = new DataSet();

        Guid _SavedQueryId = new Guid(_strSavedQueryId);

        ClientCredentials Credentials = new ClientCredentials();

        Credentials.Windows.ClientCredential = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;

        //This URL needs to be updated to match the servername and Organization for the environment. 

        Uri OrganizationUri = new Uri("https://dpm2012/TailspinToysDB/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc");

        Uri HomeRealmUri = null;


        using (OrganizationServiceProxy serviceProxy = new OrganizationServiceProxy(OrganizationUri, HomeRealmUri, 

        Credentials, null))
        {
            serviceProxy.EnableProxyTypes();

            Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.IOrganizationService service = (Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.IOrganizationService)serviceProxy;

            ColumnSet cSet = new ColumnSet("savedqueryid", "fetchxml");

            SavedQuery rsq = (SavedQuery)service.Retrieve(SavedQuery.EntityLogicalName, _SavedQueryId, cSet);

            RetrieveMultipleRequest req = new RetrieveMultipleRequest();
            FetchExpression fetch = new FetchExpression(rsq.FetchXml);
            req.Query = fetch;
            RetrieveMultipleResponse resp = (RetrieveMultipleResponse)service.Execute(req);
            DataTable ObjDT = convertEntityCollectionToDataTable(resp.EntityCollection);
            ds.Tables.Add(ObjDT);

        }
        return ds;
        }
    }

k) Now the CRM WCF Service is ready and we can publish it at IIS. The steps to publish any WCF service can be found easily over web. Starters can refer to https://debugmode.net/2010/09/07/walkthrough-on-creating-wcf-4-0-service-and-hosting-in-iis-7-5/. Skip the Service creation steps from this blog just refer to Publishing steps and also ensure to test it locally using a local Client.

If you have reached here successfully, the battle is almost won

2) Now we just need to create a simple SharePoint 2010 Visual Web Part to consume this service as per need.

a) Use Visual Studio 2010 to create a new Visual Web Part project.

b) Right Click the project and Add the Service Reference for our CRM Service published in Step 1.

c) Add the following code to VisualWebPart1UserControl.ascx :

<asp:DropDownList ID="ddlEntityList" runat="server" AutoPostBack="True" 
OnSelectedIndexChanged="ddlEntityList_SelectedIndexChanged"></asp:DropDownList>
<asp:DropDownList ID="ddlViewsList" runat="server" AutoPostBack="True" 
OnSelectedIndexChanged="ddlViewsList_SelectedIndexChanged"></asp:DropDownList>
<asp:GridView ID="gdEntity" ViewStateMode="Disabled" runat="server" />

d) Add the following code to VisualWebPart1UserControl.ascx.cs:

       protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (!IsPostBack)
            {
                Service1Client proxy = new Service1Client();

                ddlEntityList.DataSource = proxy.GetEntityData();
                ddlEntityList.DataTextField = "MyProperty";
                ddlEntityList.DataValueField = "MyProperty1";
                ddlEntityList.DataBind();
            }
        }

        protected void ddlEntityList_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            ddlViewsList.Items.Clear();
            int index = Convert.ToInt32(ddlEntityList.SelectedValue);
            Service1Client proxy = new Service1Client();

            ddlViewsList.DataSource = proxy.GetViewData(index);
            ddlViewsList.DataTextField = "MyProperty";
            ddlViewsList.DataValueField = "MyProperty1";
            ddlViewsList.DataBind();


        }

        protected void ddlViewsList_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {            
            string str = ddlViewsList.SelectedValue;
            Service1Client proxy = new Service1Client();
            gdEntity.DataSource = proxy.GetCompleteData(str);
            gdEntity.DataBind();
        }

e) Right click the Project and deploy to the SharePoint Site.

f) Go to the SharePoint 2010 Site and add the Visual Web Part to a page where you want to display the Web Part. And ‘Bingo’. You should see the something like this:

This SharePoint Web Part code above is pretty basic in nature for now, but I am sure you can improve upon this sample code – you know, things like:

• When not to show the ‘View’ Drop Down when the Entity is refreshed.
• Or when there is no result set we must show appropriate result rather than the Yellow screen of death.
• Or you want to filter the Grid by removing certain columns from the dataset or renaming the column Header etc.

I leave all it all up to you, as the sample is attached. Use it/Break it and Enjoy !!!

Food for thought

1) In principle this should work for MOSS 2007, for those who are still on it

2) In SharePoint 2013, we can merge the WCF code implementation within the SharePoint web part itself.

You can download the complete sample from here.

Code References

https://mscrmbi.blogspot.com/2012/02/crm-2011-convert-entitycollection-to.html

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg695790.aspx

Hope this helps a needy soul! If it does, please leave your comment/feedback.

Cheers!

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Hi Sharepoint Folks,

So Finally after so much delay I and my SharePoint Developer friend Shariq has been able to get this post done. I wont take much time, here is the Part 3 of this post series.

As tradition here is the index :-

Part 1: Introduction and CRM 2011 - Document management Integration with SharePoint 2010

Part 2: Reporting CRM data in SharePoint using Excel services

Part 3: Publishing CRM entities in SharePoint (This post). Republished Version here

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/shariq/archive/2013/01/25/integrating-sharepoint-2010-and-crm-2011.aspx

Part 4: Search CRM entities from SharePoint Enterprise Search.

And I am sorry for the delay too.

Thanks for reading ! God Bless you !

Andy

With this post I want to wish you all Happy Diwali ! I ask god for world peace and happiness everywhere. Diwali always excites me as I am with my family and friends to celebrate it, friends make diwali evening incredibly fun and joyful. It gives me immence happiness and peace to celebrate Diwali - the festival of lights, add to that, a beautiful cool star-lit night which make it a surreal experience each year. Wishing you a Happy Diwali, special wishes for my colleagues Bonoshri Sarkar, Rohit Kochher, Suchitra Sethumadhav and Pooja Chadwani  to have best of the health and have great future ahead, also a wish to help the technology world with there technical skills :)

Dhanyavad (Thank you)

Andy

I got a lot of customer and partner asking questions, weather CRM onprem can integrate with sharepoint online? or crm online can integrate with Sharepoint onprem and other type of combination. So i write this post to make it crystal clear what YOU could possibly do with type of CRM and sharepoint service you have. As usual comments question and feedback are welcome.

If you have :-

A. CRM Online and SharePoint Online

Then

- You can Document Management Integration. Follow the steps after label "b. On CRM Server –“Configure CRM to use SharePoint as the backend document server” on post https://blogs.technet.com/b/anand_nigam/archive/2011/12/04/crm-2011-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-part-1.aspx

NOTE - You must have Sharepoint Online and CRM Online both part of your OFFICE 365 subscription for the integration to work.

- You can also do "Reporting CRM data in SharePoint using Excel services" as described https://blogs.technet.com/b/anand_nigam/archive/2012/01/20/crm-2011-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-part-2.aspx

B. CRM OnPrem AND SharePoint Online

Then

- You can do Document Management Integration. Follow the steps after label "b. On CRM Server –“Configure CRM to use SharePoint as the backend document server” on https://blogs.technet.com/b/anand_nigam/archive/2011/12/04/crm-2011-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-part-1.aspx

NOTE - You must have ADFS SSO setup for Sharepoint Online (technically you setup SSO for all the service, irespective of particular service) for this to work. Else the CRM UI would not able to connect to sharepoint, it will fail in authentication stage. A dirty work around for this is, the user needs to sign in to sharepoint online site First and then go to CRM UI and work, this is a dirty trick but works. For Enterprise I would recommend setting up ADFS SSO, as this is a scalable and End user friendly solution.

- You can also do "Reporting CRM data in SharePoint using Excel services" as described https://blogs.technet.com/b/anand_nigam/archive/2012/01/20/crm-2011-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-part-2.aspx

C. CRM Online AND SharePoint Online

Then

1. You can do Document Management Integration. Follow the steps after label "b. On CRM Server –“Configure CRM to use SharePoint as the backend document server” on https://blogs.technet.com/b/anand_nigam/archive/2011/12/04/crm-2011-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-part-1.aspx

NOTE -

<UPDATED section on 11/14/2012

- added the sceanarios and corrected few spellings >

Here there are two possible scenarios

Senarios A. Your end users are MSOL users ( Microsoft Online users, in simple words, Cloud user, who are created in your O365 subscription)

- Here you dont need anything, special CRM and Sharepoint will work smoothly

Scenario B. Your end users are Federated users ( Meaning the end users are in your On Prem Active Directory and you have federated the Domain and setup ADFS and Dirsync)

- You must have ADFS SSO setup for Sharepoint Online (technically you setup SSO for all the service, irespective of particular service) for this to work. Else the CRM UI would not able to connect to sharepoint, it will fail in authentication stage. A dirty work around for this is, the user needs to sign in to sharepoint online site First and then go to CRM UI and work, this is a dirty trick but works. For Enterprise I would recomend setting up ADFS SSO, as this is a scalable and End user friendly solution.

2. You can also do "Reporting CRM data in SharePoint using Excel services" as described https://blogs.technet.com/b/anand_nigam/archive/2012/01/20/crm-2011-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-part-2.aspx

3. You could do "Sharepoint searching CRM data" Integration, For this to work you would need a. to write a WCF service to READ CRM data using CRM Online web services (https://blogs.msdn.com/b/apurvghai/archive/2011/08/26/create-your-custom-web-service-and-integrate-with-crm-2011-online.aspx) Once the WCF is ready you must write a BCS ( VS or SPD) and created ECT which will then enable sharepoint Enterprise search to Crawl the CRM entity. Simple !

<END of UPDATED section on 11/14/2012>

D. CRM OnPrem AND SharePoint OnPrem

Then

- You can do anything bascially, few of the integration points are as below.

https://blogs.technet.com/b/anand_nigam/archive/2011/12/04/crm-2011-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-part-1.aspx

https://blogs.technet.com/b/anand_nigam/archive/2012/01/20/crm-2011-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-part-2.aspx

https://blogs.technet.com/b/anand_nigam/archive/2012/01/20/crm-2011-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-part-2-continued.aspx

https://blogs.technet.com/b/anand_nigam/archive/2012/07/29/crm-2011-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-part-4.aspx

Bye for now folks, will be back soon.

Andy

Hi SharePoint/CRM Folks,

If you are a Microsoft Partner may be this is exciting. If you looking for Microsoft Consultants do a Workshop on SharePoint – CRM Integration, you can request it right here - https://blogs.technet.com/b/dynamicspts/archive/2012/07/19/dynamics-pts-workshops.aspx.

This is the GPS Dynamics Team blog, I have been working these guys for a long time now. Here is there dedicated blog https://blogs.technet.com/b/dynamicspts/ . Trust me they are PRO in CRM and I work closely with them, its always a pleasure working the GPS Dynamics team. Together we have had several workshops delivered. I would definitely encourage you to use their service whenever possible.

If you are NOT a Microsoft partner, do not worry :) I can try to arrange a workshop given to you please email at anand.nigam@hotmail.com.

See you soon !

Welcome Sharepoint Folks,

Now that previously here we saw that SharePoint can search CRM entities, I want to add a little enhancement to it. Here is the concept, Your end user does a Entity search in SharePoint and sees several record from CRM system, now that user wants to jump to the CRM entity and work on it. So we are saving few hundreds of clicks for the user ( actually just a few, but “hundreds” sounds cool than “tens” :) ).

We achieve this by doing two steps

1. Creating a Custom Actions in BCS ECT and set that action as default.

here is the sequence of events for end user

1. End user does a search and sharepoint returns a CRM result

2. End user clicks on the interesting result, and now wishes to open that crm entity directly, So he clicks on Open in CRM link

And the entity opens in CRM Form

So here is what we are going to do to achieve this.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Open the CRM ECT in Central admin

Click on Add button

Fill the info according to the below image

Now here the tricky part is to get the URL correct

Below is how to get that URL

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We need to construct a URL that accepts a parameter and somehow opens the specific account CRM dialog in a new window.

according to documentation at MSDN - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg328483.aspx

So general form of the URL is

https://<CRMURL>/main.aspx?etn=account&pagetype=entityrecord&id=%7B<ACCOUNTID OF THE ACCOUNT>%7D

Here CRM URL is simple to get

ACCOUNT ID is dynamic (depending on the result), BCS will give us the accountid all we need is, enclose that in {0} and select what parameter  BCS should replace it with and our CRM link is ready.

here is the finished url i used in the box

https://crm/fabrikam/main.aspx?etn=account&pagetype=entityrecord&id=%7B{0}%7D

And thats how you get the URL

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok Once you got the URL, select from the Parameter Property accountid, mark it as Default action, Click OK.

(You may be required to update the profile page).

See you soon !

Hi SharePoint Folks,

I had too many things to sort out to get time for this.  All right then, fasten your seat belts and get ready read further. So this is going to be a fast and furious ride.

Ok just to be on the same page – here is the index

Part 1: Introduction and CRM 2011 - Document management Integration with SharePoint 2010

Part 2: Reporting CRM data in SharePoint using Excel services

Part 3: Publishing CRM entities in SharePoint ( going to be there soon).

Part 4: Search CRM entities from SharePoint Enterprise Search (This post).

Here is what we are going to do, Below is my CRM 2011 with sample data populated.

Our Goal is  - “We want to perform search in SharePoint Search Center and I MUST get my CRM 2011 entities as we see above. Below is our lovely SharePoint Search Center” , to be precise we would search CRM entities like Accounts and Opportunities from SharePoint.

To achieve the above goal here is what we need

1. A SharePoint Site.

2. A CRM deployment.

3. This Post

=============================

Overall steps are

1. Create a BCS model / External content type ( here we will decide where and how to speak to CRM system , What to fetch from CRM system)

2. Once ECT is done, We configure the SharePoint Search Service application to crawl the data coming via  BCS model we created in the above steps

3. Information on Securing the above setup, usually for your production implementation. [updated entry] Sun 07/29/2012

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Step 1 –

(1. Create a BCS model / External content type ( here we will decide where and how to speak to CRM system , What to fetch from CRM system))

On SharePoint Server

Here we will create an External content type that will connect to the CRM backend database and fetch us the data we are are interested in, we are looking to search Accounts and Opportunities. If think closely what attributes of Accounts and Opportunities would the end user be searching for? ok no answers now we will look at it when we reach to that step.

Ok Open the SharePoint site in SharePoint designer

Here in box labeled 1 – Enter the name that you want for the ECT (External Content Type), On box 2 – Click on link next to External System.

Once you click there, Click on Add Connection then select SQL Server Click OK

Next you enter the Database server and Enter the CRM database ( NOT THE CRM CONFIG DB). In my case my database server is – DC, the database name is Fabrikam_MSCRM. Click OK to connect.

Once the connection is successful expand the Views section, look for FilteredAccount.

Now Right click on FilteredAccount and Select New Read Item Operation.  (why did i chose Filtered Accounts when there is an Accounts view ?  here is the reason)

Click next on the wizard like screen, then select accountid  and check box next to Map to Identifier, Click Next

Uncheck the box Data Source Elements ( because we don't want all the info of Accounts, we will select what we want individually)

Now For a minute forget about everything and think what your users are most likely to discover CRM accounts with, for example, i am an end user most probably i should be able to search a CRM account by – Account Name, Account Number, Email address, website address, primary contact name…etc etc etc.

Now imagine in SharePoint search box, you type in an email address and you come up with the CRM account info on SharePoint page, What all information for that specific account should you be able to see ? my guess is the above attributes PLUS Primary contact name, address, city, annual revenue, number of employees, description

below is the information i can get from the views, these are my options, Its huge :)

Now Map these information in the CRM Account Entity UI

Now most of the UI data corresponds to the fields i showed you above this. which means, most of the info in the UI is accessible via view, which in turn means i can pull it from BCS (ECT), which means My users can see those info in SharePoint search result or in SharePoint profile page (don't worry about profile page for now).

Now I have decided that I would fetch the below information from CRM views:-

1. Accountid

2. accountnumber

3. address1_city

4. address1_country

5. address1_line1

6. address1_line2

7. address1_postalcode

8. address1_telephone1

9. description

10. emailaddress1

11. fax

12. numberofemployees

13. revenue

14. websiteurl

15. name

Come back to reality now, Lets proceed. Now that we know what data we want from CRM accounts we will select those attributes

First task is to select the accountid (which is UNIQUE) and check map to Identifier

Second task Check mark all other columns we decided.

Click Finish

you will see a dialog like this

And a new Read Item Operation is created

Now again right click on FilteredAccount and this time select New Read List Operation

Click Next

Click Add Filter Parameter

Click in the sequence shown and set the values as showed below.

Now after clicking OK, In the Default value box type 100 ( you can use any number, this number defines the result set returned. you should be careful in selecting this number, if you enter 1 million here BCS will ask CRM to give 1 million records, you can imagine the load CRM DB server would have. 100 appears to be decent amount.)

Click Next and we see the same familiar screen, 1st select accountid and Check Map to Identifier, Read only and Show in Picker.

2nd – select the same fields we selected in previous operation

1. accountid – we already have selected this (skip this field)

2. accountnumber

3. address1_city

4. address1_country

5. address1_line1

6. address1_line2

7. address1_postalcode

8. address1_telephone1

9. description

10. emailaddress1

11. fax

12. numberofemployees

13. revenue

14. websiteurl

15. name

Now click Finish,  the page should look like this, notice the new operation gets listed

Now Save the ECT

  =>

Once Save is done, now its time for testing if ECT can fetch the info from CRM, for this click Create Lists and Forms, give list a name then click OK

  >     

Now open the sharepoint site in brower and  open the list and verify if you can see the CRM info over there.

And we see the CRM info just fine, Incase you face error here its most probably due to the permissions of the logged in user and the explicit permission on of the farm admin on the BCS Model. You can play with it in central admin.

Even during testing if you face error accessing the site just use the permissions i have set for my lab on service account. My service account of SharePoint ( spfarm) has access to the CRM as well as the database). I have given the following permission 

Notice - that spfarm is my SharePoint and CRM service account and spfarm has all the rights on metadata store. (NOTE- you don't have to explicitly set object permission if you have granted permission here and also Check the box on “Propagate permission to all BCD models…..”)

Anyways now that the CRM info is showing up in SharePoint list, we are confirmed its working. NOW Delete that list, we don't need it.

Now Open central admin and navigate toe BCS service application and Click Configure

Enter a site url here, This site would be used to host the BCS pages, it would a simple page not a subsite, I just used the root site collection. Click OK

Come back to SharePoint designer and click Create Profile Page

the pages will be created now, This page will be used when a user clicks on the search result,

Now from the list of fields, select name and then click Set as Title

Save the ECT again, What we did just now was to set the CRM account name as the title of the profile page

Now Click on Create Profile Page ( Yes, I forgot to do this before :) ) Click yes on the confirmation box

Step 2 – Still On SharePoint Server

(2. Once ECT is done, We configure the SharePoint Search Service application to crawl the data coming via BCS model we created in the above steps)

Now our goal is simply to Configure the Search service application to search the CRM entities via BCS model we created above.

Open SharePoint Central Admin > Service application > your search service application

Click on Content Sources

  = >

Fill the details as shown below

in the bottom check on Start full crawl…  and click OK

Notice that the Crawling (reading CRM entities and creating an Index) is taking place in SharePoint). All we have to do is now wait for Crawl to complete.

Also for troubleshooting purpose you can look at the crawl logs ( crawl logs can be accessed by hover mouse on CRM Entities> View Crawl log), Most common issue is insufficient permission on crawl account on CRM DB. Minimum permission required for this solution to work is READ.

here is my Crawl logs showing a successful crawl, More importantly there are 0 errors, even if you have 1 error please investigate what is it.

Time for testing !!

Now I did a search for an CRM account “A Store (Sample)” and SharePoint gave me all the CRM + SharePoint results  :) I am a happy guy now. Lets open one of the results

Here we see the CRM details in a clean SharePoint page, BTW this page is the profile page we created/set.

Now keep in mind the above page is a REAL TIME info from CRM System. To prove that keep an eye on the Name attribute which is – A Store (Sample) ( in the bottom of the page)

Now once i update the details in CRM application and refresh this page it fetches the new updated value there is no cache, no old data problem :)

[ Start of updated section] Sun 07/29/2012

3. Information on Securing the above setup,

usually for your production implementation.

Alright now that these two guys (CRM and SharePoint) are speaking, you must be aware about the security implications given the setup we used, I just used the most simple technique and it worked. So here are few ways to Ideally do this.

1. This is the screen where we connect to the CRM database, If you notice closely I did not specify any credentials to connect to the DB, Ideally You can setup a Application ID in Secure Store Service (How to setup this? Click here) , And put the Application ID in Box 3 (in below pic), this way you don't grant SharePoint admin any special privileges on CRM system. Also do remember CRM system knows ( not the SQL Server only) which user has what privileges, so if i grant an account X permission on just sql db of CRM, you will se no results, because the Filtered views we are using are Security Context aware and will only show content if the calling account has permission to it. So best way is to grant user access on the CRM System (most probably as reader) and also on SQL DB (reader).

Step 1- Open Secure Store service and create a new Application ID

Fill in the details, Click Next

This is fine Click Next

here in the 1st box – enter who ever is owner of the target app, can be crm admin and SP admin, in the 2nd box, enter who can use this Application ID- I used all users because, i want all of my company users to be able to search and see the details, if you have restrictions on who can see the crm info, create a security group in AD and enter that here. Click OK

Now dropdown on the newly created Application ID, and Set credentials, Enter the account which has at least READ permission in CRM site and DB.

Now Edit the ECT model in SharePoint Designer

Change the 1 and 2 box as shown,Box1 – here we specified the type of credential, Box 2 is where we specified use this Application ID credential to speak to CRM db. Click OK and Save this config, create an external list of this ECT and verify if information is visible for sharepoint service account also to end user account.

below is the end result, Dan- end user can see the CRM info too,

[End of updated section]

Enhancements – Open the CRM form directly from search results follow this  - CRM 2011 and SharePoint 2010 Integration - Part 4 (Enhancements)

Hope I was descriptive enough, Incase you feel you need more info on any of the steps, please let me know and it will be fixed soon.

Finally I want to say big sorry to Brent Tenney , Pam Jensen , Brian L. Tenney , Sanjiv Sharma, Nick Verhangen, Bill Kelly, Erwin Sanders, Colin V, Thomas Binder to keep you waiting.

Important info for Microsoft Partners – If you are an Microsoft Partner and would like to have a workshop on any of the topics included in this blog please send email directly to me at anand.nigam@hotmail.com

Have a fantastic day

I am really want to apologies for the delay on my part in writing Part 3 and Part 4. This is due to the new challenge i have taken on and I am struggling to find time to write the remaining parts, I have completed the draft for Part 3, it needs some polishing and further technical verfication before I publish, and for all the worlds reasons i am unable to find time.

If you urgently need the steps and information  OR your organisation wants to implement the part 3 and part 4 of crm-sharepoint integration blog, please shoot me an email at anand.nigam@hotmail.com .I will for sure can sent you the steps, yes the unpolished ones. I have set goal to finish the Part 3 and Part 4 before May.

In Future expect SharePoint and ADFS step by step, this would be cross forest authentication on sharepoint ( its a fancy way of saying, a user from an external forest authenticates to shareponit in your organisation, using purely ADFS trust, No NT trust)

Thanks for stopping by and sorry for trouble due to my schedule.

UPDATE – The Part 3 is Published- https://blogs.technet.com/b/anand_nigam/archive/2013/01/26/republished-crm-2011-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-part-3.aspx

Andy

By default Count is selected, change it to Sum and click OK

Now we see the table and the chart correctly

Now the next job is to Add a Slicer that will filter the chart and table based on the number of employees. Select the Chart by clicking it once and then Click Insert and select slicer

Select “numberofemployees” and click OK

You will now be able to see some meaning ful report

Task 6

Now the real hero comes into picture, the Excel Services. Click on the file>Save & Send> Save to SharePoint > double click on “Browser for a location” and locate the SharePoint document library location where the Excel report will be saved

Navigate to shared document library

As soon as you save you see the report in the browser

Verify if its working by selecting the “number of employee” slicer

And yes it does J

Ok what happens when the CRM data changes ? Try it – Open an CRM account and change the revenue value , I did for “A store (sample)” frm 10000, to 12000.

Now go back to the excel service report and click Data> refersh all connection

And see the smooth update of data

And this way you can hopefully build complex and more meaning ful reports and publish it in SharePoint.

Enhance this ?

If you want to show/display the excel workbook anywhere in SharePoint, you can use the Built in “Excel Web Access web part”

Open your SharePoint site and edit the page and add a webpart “Excel Web Access”

Click Add and see the web part added. Now open web part properties

You will see the properties

In the workbook Box enter the excel work book location, in my case - \crmrpt/shareddocument/CRM report.xlsx. Click Apply.

Further we can just have the chart shown in the site

Change the web part property, Enter Named Item to Chart 1 (This is the chart object’s name), if you want to verify open excel and see the chart property

And It just shows the chart on the home page,

To get the chart name see in the Excel, click on the chart object to select it and see the name in ribbon.

Further Enhance this using Connected Web parts

If you have several reports in the library AND you want to just have click and see behavior we can create connections between web parts to have that kind of experience. Just ensure that you have multiple reports in the library.

Edit the home page, Add the library that has Excel Reports in it AND add the Excel Web Access webpart on that same page, Configure the Excel Web access to show a report (this would be the default report that it will show). Now click on the menu of the Library >Connections>Send Row of Data To > Excel Web Access Web part.

In the following popup menu

Got to Tab 2. Configure Connection> and set the Field name to Document URL> and Finish. Now save and Close the page.

See it in action, by selecting the report

With that I will come back with the 3^rd and the 4^th part soon. Thanks for reading.

Hi SharePoint Folks,

This post comes after a long time after the Part 1. But as the saying goes – better late than never. Here I am back with Part 2, this time we will focus on Reporting CRM information into SharePoint Using Excel services.

Part 1: Introduction and CRM 2011 - Document management Integration with SharePoint 2010

Part 2: Reporting CRM data in SharePoint using Excel services (This post)

Part 3: Publishing CRM entities in SharePoint.

Part 4: Search CRM entities from SharePoint Enterprise Search.

The word you are thinking is “awesome”, well I know J. Ok let’s cut short the talking and make it work, get ready!

Reporting CRM data in SharePoint using Excel services

So below is what you will need J

1. CRM 2011 deployment and some sample data (I populated my CRM with built in sample data).

2. A SharePoint 2010 farm, with a web app created

3. This post

What we will achieve by end of this post is to create an excel based report, to – Show all the account’s revenue, and have a filter on accounts based on number of employees . Our first step in the direction of SharePoint –is the SSS i.e. Secure Store Service. We will use Secure Store Service to, create an Application ID, We will use that App ID to retrieve the information from database server where the CRM 2011 is currently connected.

TASK 1

So we open SharePoint Central admin > Secure Store Service application and Create a New Application ID> and fill in the info as shown in the figure below,

1. Target Application ID – CRMKey

2. Display name – CRMKey

3. Contact E-mail – any valid email address preferably

4. Target Application Type – Keep it to Indivdual

Click Next,

Modify the Field name to reflect appropriate application credentials, this is not a necessary step, you could leave the default names as is.

Click Next

Specify who is going to manage the target application, Apart from farm admin, who by default has rights to modify the settings. For now, I have specified my CRM admin’s account – contoso\crm11.

Click Ok and proceed to SSS main page, with our Application ID created.

Here we just need to set the credentials once, Click on the drop down and select Set Credentials

Below is what you will see, in Credentials owner specify the account that will manage this credentials – more simply put – just put the farm admin account here. What is more important here is in the username and password box, you specify the CRM 2011 account who has admin credentials, basically who can create a connection to the database Server of CRM 2011 deployment

I have specified my crm11 admin account and its password. Click Ok to Finish

We are DONE with SSS now.

Task 2

Next we will create a Data connection Library, which is a specific type of library where we will store the data connection file (.odc),

Now create a library where you want the resulting excel file to be published, this can be any normal library. I am going to use my Shared document library.

TASK 3

Now one important task, We need to configure excel service to trust the “data connection library” and the “shared documents” . Unless the trust is configured the report would not render.

So Open Excel Service application main page > click on “Trusted File Location”

Click “Add Trusted File Location”

Enter the shared documents location (and of course remove the trailing /forms/allitems.aspx)

Tick mark – Children Trusted

Scroll down, Under the External Data section Select Trusted data connection libraries only (this is because we will use the connection kept in SharePoint)

Uncheck Refresh warning enabled

Click on OK

Now go back to Open Excel Service application main page> click on “Trusted Data connection Libraries”

Click on Add Trusted data connection library

Enter the location for data connection library and click OK

The result should like this

TASK 4

After this Next comes the task to create a connection file which will enable Excel to connect to CRM database views

1. Open Excel > Data > From Other Sources> From SQL Server

2. Specify the CRM’s SQL server name,

3. Specify the Organization database of the CRM, in my case its Fabrikam_MSCRM, and Select FilteredAccount

4. On the next screen, click Authentication Settings next to Excel Services, and enter the SSS Application ID we created

1.

1. Click ok and come back to the wizard, Now clik on Browse and save the connection file to SharePoint Data connection library

Click Finish in the wizard, after the wizard finishes just click on OK, in the property window that pops up

Then just hit cancel and exit out of Excel.

2. Now click Save, Once saved, Go to SharePoint data connection library and Approve the connection file, as shown below

TASK 5

Let’s now create an Simple Excel Report. Open Excel > Data> Existing Connections> Click on Browse for More and specify the SharePoint data connection library location, and click open.

Now you will get the Import data prompt , select Pivotchart and Pivotable Report, and click Ok

You get the Pivot chart on the Excel worksheet

Now Coming back to our objective to –“– Show all the account’s revenue, and filter to filter the accounts based on number of employees”

We will drag the Field “Name” to “Axis Fields (categories)” box, By the way the fields are sorted in alphabetical order, it should be easy to find fields.

Next drag the “revenue” field to “Values” box,

The end result is as below

You will notice the pivot table shows the COUNT of the revenue, which is not what we want, we want to see the number, so right click on the “revenue” or “count of revenue”

Continued in Page 2