Simple Integration of MS-CRM and SharePoint

Statera just released an easy to use enterprise application mashup called Stratus to simplify the integration of MS-CRM and SharePoint. Stratus can be setup in a few minutes and will allow you to leverage SharePoint's document management features within Microsoft Dynamics CRM (both online and on premise versions).

Once activated, Stratus adds a new tab to Accounts, Opportunities and Cases that will allow you to create Sharepoint sites and add/view documents to and from those sites.

In addition Stratus gives you visibility to key CRM information directly from within Sharepoint.

To learn more about Statera's MS-CRM and SharePoint Integration tool, go to stratus.statera.com.

Integrating LinkedIn and MS-CRM

A simple example of using a dynamic URL to pull LinkedIn information into a MS-CRM iframe.

For this example we will create a simple integration with LinkedIn from the MS-CRM account record. This integration will allow CRM users to quickly see all contacts from this account that are in their LinkedIn network. This feature is enhanced significantly if you setup a group for your Organization within LinkedIn, because this will ensure you see all of the relationships across your organization.

1) Create the iFrame
As a system administrator, go to the Settings tab and click Customizations. Select Customize Entities and then click the Account record. Click Forms and Views under the details section. Click the form record. Add a Tab and name it LinkedIn. Add a section and name it LinkedIn. Add an Iframe and name it IFRAME_LinkedIn. Uncheck restrict cross-frame scripting box and check the “automatically expand to use available space” box under the row layout section of the formatting tab. Click ok to save the iframe changes.

2) Add Code
Click the form properties under the common tasks section of the account form. Select OnLoad from the Event List and click edit. Enter the following code:

var CRM_FORM_TYPE_CREATE = 1;
var CRM_FORM_TYPE_UPDATE = 2;
switch (crmForm.FormType)
{
case CRM_FORM_TYPE_UPDATE:
crmForm.all.IFRAME_LinkedIn.src="http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&company=" + crmForm.all.name.DataValue+ "&currentCompany=currentCompany&searchLocationType=I&countryCode=us&postalCode=" + crmForm.all.address1_postalcode.DataValue+ "&distance=50&sortCriteria=3";
break;
}

Click ok to close Event Detail Properties window. Click ok to close Form Properties window. Click the Save and Close button on the Account form.

3) Publish
Click Publish from the Action menu on the Account Entity form. The change is now available to your application.

Notes
Required Fields
Account Name and Zipcode are required fields for this integration and should be made as required fields in MS-CRM. The Zipcode requirement can be removed by removing the location references in the URL.

Sorting
The lists will be sorted by the default sorting (degrees and Name). This can be changed by changing the sortCriteria value.
1: Number of Connections
2: Degrees and Recommendations
3: Degrees and Name
4: Keyword (CompanyName) relevance

Troubleshooting
If you get a security message when you open the account record or the following message in the LinkedIn iframe “Navigation to the webpage was canceled”, you need to change security settings in Internet Explorer to enable “Display Mixed Content”.