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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived) / Integration with LOB a...
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Integration with LOB applications. Does CRM HAVE to be the source of Contact data?

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Posted on by Rory Osman 145

I'm evaluating Dynamics CRM 2011 as a platform for Contact Management. I'm a medium sized ISV that produces a packaged Pension Administration System. As such, we already record the details of the Pensioners whose accounts we administer. So my real question is whether MSCRM has to be the repository for the Customer information, or can it source it from another location? (eg. a set of views in a DB or a set of WCF services) The reason I ask is that I want to avoid having two copies of the same data. Ideally, the existing Pension Administration system stores the Pensioner's personal and contact details and MSCRM stores all the telephone call, emails, marketing campaigns etc etc etc.

Hope to hear your thoughts.

Regards,

Rory

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  • wisdomseun Profile Picture
    wisdomseun 5 on at
    Re: Integration with LOB applications. Does CRM HAVE to be the source of Contact data?

    Hi Sven,

    I am also evaluating CRM 2011, We have are an asset and fund management company.

    I want you to elaborate on "Modify the Pension Administration system to include a flag"

     

    Thanks

     

    What you could do is the following:

    - You modify the "Pension Administration system" to include a flag and only if this flag is set, the data may be integrated to Dynamics CRM.  (This is how you can control what goes to CRM)

    - You can modify the security roles to prevent CRM users to create new entities or edit them. For instance you can give read only access to entities like contact, account, etc and you can give full control for creating activities etc.

    Please let me know if you have more questions

    Kind Regards,

    Sven Vanoirbeek

    Senior consultant - Dynamics CRM

    Blog: mshelp.be

  • Suggested answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at
    Re: Integration with LOB applications. Does CRM HAVE to be the source of Contact data?

    Hello Rory,

    Self referencing relationships is no problem. Think for instance of the parent customer on the contact form. You can define it the same way, creating multiple 1:N (contact - contact) relationships representing the different functions. You could also add this function (CIO, CTO, CEO, etc) as an attribute on the contact form and create the hierarchy using this attribute. For instance. The best way is to experiment a little bit. Connections is also an option if you want.

    Concerning the committee's I would create a new entity for this related to the contacts. This way you can easily see which contacts are linked to which committee.

    At a glance I think you should be able to do this with standard relationships. Could be that after some experimenting with connections you find a better approach.

  • Rory Osman Profile Picture
    Rory Osman 145 on at
    Re: Integration with LOB applications. Does CRM HAVE to be the source of Contact data?

    Sven,

    I've got a few books now and am working through them, things are gradually becoming clearer.

    My client has a specific requirement to be able to understand the organisational structure within each of their Customers enterprise (eg. Middle Manager reports to COO who reports to GM etc). In addition, each Contact may belong to a Committee (or two!). So they want to be able to specify the Relationships that that Contact has with other Contacts within the business. I've looked at self referencing entity relationships to interrelate homogenous entities and have had a look at the new Connections feature. Which would you recommend for being able to create fairly complex hierarchical structures where Contacts might be members of multiple hierarchies?

    Cheers

  • Suggested answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at
    Re: Integration with LOB applications. Does CRM HAVE to be the source of Contact data?

    1. Is my assumption correct? Or am I missing something in the out-of-the-box pieces?

    Actually, Dynamics CRM has an elaborate service module. Best practice is to always try and map your processes to CRM using existing entities. If it's really not possible, then you go for custom entities. I have the feeling that a little more Dynamics CRM knowledge is required to better understand the basic in Dynamics CRM. A good book can help you with this.

    Note: I've looked in the Marketplace for Service Business Add-Ons but there's not much there.

    2. Is there documentation of how the out-of-the-box Entities are related? I know I can check the individual Dependencies but I was looking for something like an ER diagram.

    You can download the ERD for CRM2011 here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=d9a6006c-eb4e-45bd-a1d2-1b21158a1e04

    There is help included in the application (mind the "Get Started" pane), but a book will give you more in depth knowledge.

    3. Is there any system of Entity inheritance? I wanted to base my concept of an Employer on an Account but add more to it.

    Why can't an employer be an account?

  • Rory Osman Profile Picture
    Rory Osman 145 on at
    Re: Integration with LOB applications. Does CRM HAVE to be the source of Contact data?

    OK, so I've been playing around on the trial version of CRM 2011, creating custom entities and assessing the entities that come out of the box. It's very apparent that this CRM Platform (and many others) are geared towards Product rather than Service businesses.

    As such, I am assuming I will need to create a custom Solution which contains new Components (mainly Entities) that I think are relevant to a service business, and remove the ones that aren't. So my questions are?

    1. Is my assumption correct? Or am I missing something in the out-of-the-box pieces?

    Note: I've looked in the Marketplace for Service Business Add-Ons but there's not much there.

    2. Is there documentation of how the out-of-the-box Entities are related? I know I can check the individual Dependencies but I was looking for something like an ER diagram.

    3. Is there any system of Entity inheritance? I wanted to base my concept of an Employer on an Account but add more to it.

    Thanks for any info.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at
    Re: Integration with LOB applications. Does CRM HAVE to be the source of Contact data?

    Give me a shout if you need more information, I do this on a daily basis :-)

  • Rory Osman Profile Picture
    Rory Osman 145 on at
    Re: Integration with LOB applications. Does CRM HAVE to be the source of Contact data?

    Great, that's all ... for now ;)

    Thanks.

  • Verified answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at
    Re: Integration with LOB applications. Does CRM HAVE to be the source of Contact data?

    What you could do is the following:

    - You modify the "Pension Administration system" to include a flag and only if this flag is set, the data may be integrated to Dynamics CRM.  (This is how you can control what goes to CRM)

    - You can modify the security roles to prevent CRM users to create new entities or edit them. For instance you can give read only access to entities like contact, account, etc and you can give full control for creating activities etc.

    Please let me know if you have more questions

  • Rory Osman Profile Picture
    Rory Osman 145 on at
    Re: Integration with LOB applications. Does CRM HAVE to be the source of Contact data?

    Thanks for the info Sven. I've researched Scribe and understand it's capabilities.

    It raises a new question around synching of the common data. Ideally I don't want bidirectional synching, that is, I only want the Pension Administration system to perform modifications to the common dataset and then push them on to the CRM. Is there a way to limit the set of data CRM can create/maintain, or can I intercept Create/Update calls before they get to the CRM repository? Obviously I need CRM to create new Activity records and Campaigns etc etc but I don't want Accounts or Contacts to be created or modified in CRM otherwise I'm faced with bidirectional synching.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at
    Re: Integration with LOB applications. Does CRM HAVE to be the source of Contact data?

    To would be able to make emails etc in Dynamics CRM, you would also need to have contacts in Dynamics CRM. (where you would actually send the email to for instance).

    What I would do is the following.

    I would invest in a Data Integration platform, something like Scribe is ideal for this. BizTalk is also possible but it's a bit of an overkill for this scenario. With this you configure an integration between your SQL view or databases (your Pension Administration system) and Dynamics CRM. This can be set up to run every night for example. The Pension Administration system will stay the master of the data. The data will just be replicated to the Dynamics CRM. In Dynamics CRM you can maybe make the contact details readonly.

    This way you will have your contacts in Dynamics CRM and you can create all your activities.

    Let me know if you need more advice

    Kr,

    Sven Vanoirbeek

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