Minimizing license costs for 2011 on-prem

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Posted on by Vassil

Hello,

I am looking into the minimization of licensing costs. We would like to give limited access to employees (who exist in the AD) to CRM, so that they can process custom entities. In this case CRM is not that much used as a CRM but as a forms platform. Is there a way to make use of the ESS CAL or another licensing should be used? Workarounds are welcome too ;-) At the moment some people on the project where thinking of displaying CRM content in SharePoint via iFrames but I don't think that this is in sync with the ESS CAL.

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Wayne Walton 13,730 on at

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the SharePoint idea is close, but it can't be iFramed. What you would need to do is set up the SharePoint site to have custom forms with the data you need to pull/push from CRM, and then SharePoint would display it as a portal of CRM data to those non-CRM users.

However, you will have to consider the development and support costs of doing that versus just getting those users CRM licenses. Remember, your support for that custom form will be an ongoing things, and the license is essentially that once.

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Vassil on at

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Hi Wayne,

thanks for the quick answer. Is it a problem though that the users are AD users for Microsoft? Like if they do basically updates on the records are their names going to show actually in the audit history or then we need one fixed "service" account?

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Wayne Walton 13,730 on at

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It will be a service account. If you need named users in the audit history, you have literally no choice but to get them all CRM licenses.

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Mithilesh Kumar 10,047 on at

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Hi Vassil,

When you connect CRM using a custom Portal (maybe aspx) or SharePoint web-part you will need one User License.

If you want audit history to be maintained based on user then there is no point implementing a Portal, because you will require a User License of each user.

Hope that helps

Thanks

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