Hi, we are working in a Dynamics CRM 2016 On Premise solution which displays in a form a Map based on coordinates obtained from the Dynamics mobile app. We currently tested it with Google Maps and everything worked fine, I mean, map and street addresses were displayed correctly based on coordinates.
Now, our customer is asking where the traffic to Google maps is being originated from? From the user computer? From the CRM Server? Based on what I know, Google license agreement only allows traffic from client side so the answer should be traffic originates from each client computer. However, our customer has a really tight Internet access policy and they don't want to open access to google.com to the CRM Users (access to google.com is needed eventhough Google Maps uses subdomains of it). So, is it correct? Is traffic being originated from client computers? If so, what other solution could we use to allow our customer access google maps without access to google.com? Is there any way to access Google Maps from a server and locally serve the maps? Can Bing be an alternative?
Thanks for your suggestions,
Xavier Villafuerte
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Hello,
I would suggest Quick maps For Dynamic CRM which also work in Bing maps.
This tool which gives the user in visualizing the CRM data on a map. It is an intuitive and easy-to-integrate plugin that assists sales and marketing managers to effectively manage their daily activities as well as teams. Geo- Analytical Dashboard dashlets provide smart overview of sales activity, open leads, follow-up data, and performance. If you want traffic comes from which place, use this plugin and google analytics which gives users performance.
This is about it: www.microsoft.com/.../use-bing-maps-to-view-a-location.aspx
There's not much to it, as it's natively a part of CRM. Just tell an admin to turn it on, and then go. It won't work, of course, without access to Bing.com. Fair warning, I don't know which regions Bing doesn't work for, but there are some regions that the Bing maps integration isn't available.
But fundamentally, if they want public mapping, they need to make public mapping available to their users. If not, they can spend the tens-to-hundreds of thousands of dollars on a private mapping service and the integration to that instead. They do exist, but they are far from free.
Thanks Wayne for your answer. Yes, it is an IT Security policy issue supported by management and because of that access to the full Internet is restricted to most people at the Company (I am not kidding). Only corporate services are allowed and they are tightly controlled by IT.
Can you point me to some good documentation about using BING with Dynamics CRM?
Xavier
1. Unless you set up a proxy server, data will have to come from Google.com to the client machine, because it has to render there. And most likely, if you are using JavaScript and an HTML web resource to render Google Maps, it ENTIRELY is coming from the client machine.
2. Bing has native functionality with Dynamics CRM. There's literally nothing you need to do but turn it on and it will render maps for you. You would likely be better served by using Bing simply because there's no licensing questions.
3. If you need an enhanced version of that functionality, there's a tool called Maplytics which provides a lot of enhanced functionality with Bing maps.
Basically, there's no real way to render something as heavily client-side as Google Maps (or Bing Maps) without allowing access to it. My question is why on earth is access to either of those maps apps an issue? This in part sounds like a problem with the IT department.
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