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Microsoft Business Solutions CRM is very good budget alternative to Siebel and
actually be-loved by Microsoft-oriented IT department system. Considering the
fact that in many cases Microsoft CRM should somehow fit into and cooperate
with existing legacy business applications, integration question maybe the
first to place. It is probably good to mention that Microsoft Navision has its
own CRM module (and Navision will probably have MS CRM Navision integration
tool for MS CRM 2.0 – at this moment we do not know when). We would like to
give you, software developer highlight on how you allow Navision data lookup
from
Microsoft CRM screens: Account (which is customer), contact, lead. We suppose
that Navision is installed with native C/SIDE database, because in the case of
MS SQL Server this topic doesn’t make sense Microsoft CRM web interface is
built on .Net architecture and Microsoft CRM SDK is married with .Net. We
suggest you to use Microsoft tools to connect to Navision database via ODBC.
• Native C/SIDE Database. If Navision sits in C/SIDE database, then create ODBC
linked server to Navision via C/ODBC
• Configure web.config to enable Microsoft CRM customization
• Configure isv.config to place the button or navigation bar on one of your MS
CRM customizable forms: Lead, Account, Contact, etc.
• Use MS CRM SDK sample code to come into Microsoft CRM Security realm
• Create separate Database on the same SQL server where Microsoft CRM is hosted
and place heterogeneous stored procedures or views – which will be pulling data
from Navision C/SIDE linked server
• Program ADO.Net calls and returned dataset processing in Visual Sudio.Net
(preferably C#.Net, because Microsoft CRM SDK is C# oriented)
• We probably should mention that isv.config buttons allow you to transfer GUID
of the Contact, Lead or Account to your integrated web application
• Crystal Reports caution – MS CRM has built-in Crystal Reports Enterprise,
licensed for MS CRM data access only. So, if you like to integrate web Crystal
report into your application – you should resolve licensing issue and check
with Microsoft on purchasing full version of Crystal Enterprise. The other way
is to separate your Crystal web application and MS CRM by placing them on
separate hardware
• Additional tip – in your stored procedure use this directive: DBCC
TRACEON(8765), which allows working with the data results of variable length
returned by C/ODBC driver
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