Sharepoint install best practices (with CRM in mind)

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Posted on by awalters

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We're a fair amount of the way through the process of implementing CRM, and are now looking into implementing Sharepoint as well. (These will both be on-prem, so I'm really hoping that CRM 2016 will support this combo using the server-side integration, as I don't want to do a new deployment with the deprecated list component.)

As we consider how to structure our Sharepoint implementation (sites, site collections, etc...) I was wondering - are there any best practices we want to keep in mind to make this the smoothest integration with CRM? I haven't been able to find much in the way of guides, since it seems like most people that integrate the two already had a working Sharepoint site ahead of time.

Also, I'd love to get a clearer idea of how the out of the box server-side integration stores/organizes docs, and whether there's any control over that. Thanks!

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Rajkumar Rajaraman on at

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Refer this article,it explains deeply:

www.spdockit.com/.../sharepoint-2013-best-practices

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awalters 3,079 on at

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This page and the PDF linked on it don't mention CRM. I have someone who's experienced in Sharepoint for general guidance - I'm looking for any considerations specific to CRM. Thank you, though.

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J Matlon 1,465 on at

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Allison,

The biggest "gotcha" for us, was conflicts between the CRM Solution in SharePoint and others.

I would recommend installing the CRM solution on a completely different web app or site collection from the rest of your SharePoint content, so that you do not have any potential for conflicts between how you build-out SharePoint and CRM.

Otherwise, with the CRM/SharePoint integration, you provide CRM a SharePoint site. CRM will then create a document library at that site for entities that you specify, and folders will be created for each record when adding docs from CRM.

You are also able to specify meta-data, once CRM creates your document library in SharePoint. For example, in our "Account" document library we capture information that aids us in our retention policies. We also enable "Versioning" to cut back on the documents users need to sort through.

All the CRM solution does is present SharePoint with a "CRM feel". You still get the same prompt for filling in additional fields that you would when uploading the document directly to SharePoint.

Hope this helps.

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awalters 3,079 on at

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That's great Joe - thanks! Some questions/comments:

I'm not 100% clear on exactly what you mean by the "CRM Solution in SharePoint". Is that just the integration plug-in, basically, or...?

Given that we currently have all of our files on one file share, I worry about the concept of "this area is your files that are linked to CRM" and "this other area is everything else". People are very used to just going to one place to look for everything. Have you experienced any issues with this?

Storing all contracts together, and all proposals together, etc... (which is what it sounds like how it would go, since you said it creates things by entity) is definitely not how we have it organized right now, so that worries me a bit. But I suppose that going to the client in CRM is how they'd see something like our current structure, which is more "what are all the docs pertaining to this client", so hopefully that part would work out, at least...

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J Matlon 1,465 on at

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* When you integrate SharePoint/CRM, you will install a "Solution" in SharePoint to enable CRM to integrate properly.

* We think of the CRM instance of SharePoint as our fileshare for CRM-related documents (Account, Opportunity, Case, etc. documents). Most users will access these documents through CRM, and they don't even know that SharePoint is the backend. More advanced users will click "View in SharePoint" from within CRM to access this area and play with different views for the files.

We also have this area included in our normal SharePoint crawl, so these documents will be included with any searches.

* There are a few different ways to setup the way CRM will create folders for documents. We have everything based on our accounts, so there is an Account document library within SharePoint. Within that document library, there is a folder for each of our accounts, and within those account folders, there are sub-folders for the opportunities, cases, etc.

You can also have each entity type have its own document library. But the decision on how to set this up doesn't need to be made until you are setting up the integration to SharePoint in CRM. It doesn't impact the way you setup SharePoint.

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awalters 3,079 on at

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Hmmm...maybe I'm a bit confused. I thought with the server-based integration, you didn't have to install anything in Sharepoint. What you're describing sounds more like how I thought the List Component worked...

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J Matlon 1,465 on at

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"Solution" is a generic term for the add-ons to SharePoint. I was referring to the list component.

It's used for applying the CRM look and feel to SharePoint.

But it does install on SharePoint as a feature, and we found it can potentially conflict with other features. Which is why we set up a clean instance of SharePoint for CRM... because it was conflicting with other features we had installed. Previous to splitting things out, we were getting weird issues, like not being able to open certain documents from within CRM.

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awalters 3,079 on at

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Ah - we're not planning to use the list component, so I wonder if we'd have the same issues? I'll test regardless, but it's good to know what to watch out for. Thanks!

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Community Member on at

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Microsoft hasn't released any recommendations on a recommended SharePoint deployment or architecture when considering server-based integration with CRM. For CRM 2016 on-premise, the configuration steps will probably be similar to the current steps for configuring an integration between CRM online and SharePoint on-prem, but with less Azure dependencies (like Azure AD) and more reliance on an on-premise token provider (like AD FS).

MSDN has another page of considerations when doing a server-based integration. Notably: server-based integration creates libraries using CRM entities' display names instead of schema names.

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awalters 3,079 on at

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Thanks!

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