Girish Raja's Blog

Connecting SharePoint Online and CRM Online using BCS - 2013 Edition

Girish Raja — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:44:54 GMT

This blog post is a simple step-by-step walkthrough on connecting SharePoint Online (SPO) to CRM Online using the Business Connectivity Services (BCS). This can be useful in a number of situations including self service portals, executive dashboards, etc. The end goal for this post is to have CRM account information displayed within SharePoint as illustrated below (nothing fancy) but you can easily extend this sample to include additional scenarios such as pulling additional entities/tables, create/update CRM data, charts/dashboard, mashups with ERP and much more.

Note: SharePoint Online in this example uses SharePoint 2013 and CRM Online is the December 2012 release. Steps are subject to change for future releases. This walkthrough uses the App model for SharePoint instead of the classical BCS settings managed in the admin center.

Architecture of the solution

Below is a quick diagram showing the architecture of the solution we’re going to walkthrough. As you can see from the diagram below, we do have a shim sitting between CRMOnline & SPO. The reason for us to have a shim/proxy web service is because, external authentication is not enabled on CRM Online’s REST endpoint today. CRMOnline’s REST endpoint today is only available for use by JScript and web resources within the CRM application however you can expect that limitation to change in the future.

Enough with the talk, let’s get to the code.

Building the Proxy OData Service

Download and extract the latest CRM 2011 SDK if you don’t have it already. While you could build the proxy web service in several ways, we’re going to use an approach that creates a REST/OData service that involves very minimal custom code!
Once you have extracted the SDK, goto the folder “\sdk\walkthroughs\portal\webappwalkthrough\” and open the webappwalkthrough.csproj project using Visual Studio (2012 in this case)
Open the web.config file and change the connection string to your CRMOnline credentials as shown below. In this post, we’re using the same identity for all CRMOnline calls and we are not impersonating the SharePoint user.
Open the CrmData.svc.cs file and modify it as shown in the snippet below. Essentially we’re modifying the code to make the OData endpoint just pull accounts and contacts from CRM instead of pulling everything.

Right-click on the project and “Add Reference” to the Microsoft.IdentityModel.dll (v3.5). Make sure you set it’s copy local property to true.
Set CrmData.svc as the start page and hit F5 to verify that the OData endpoint is working locally. You can browse to http://localhost:<devport#>/CrmData.svc/ContactSet to verify that the proxy OData is indeed pulling data from CRM Online.
Note: For the purposes of quick illustration, the code in this blog post doesn’t apply any security on the proxy OData service. Please refer to Marc Schweigert’s blog post and Steve Fox’s BCS security post for details on implementing security for proxy services.

The service now needs to be deployed publically in order for SharePoint Online to consume it. Here, we’re going to deploy the OData service to the *free* Windows Azure websites. Once you have signed up for Windows Azure, login to your Azure account and hit the “New” button followed by the steps illustrated below to quick create a website. Hint: Use the region closest to your CRMOnline datacenter. The unofficial way of finding this out is documented here.

Once the site has been created, download its publishing profile from the portal.
Back to Visual Studio, right-click on the project and click “Publish”. In the publish dialog, choose Import –> “Import from a publish profile file” –> browse to the publishing profile you downloaded earlier –> OK. You can run through the next few steps or hit publish button directly.
Once the site has been published, browse to the public URL for the service (say http://yoururl.azurewebsites.net/CrmData.svc/AccountSet) and ensure that the endpoint is able to pull data from CRM Online.

Creating the SharePoint Online App

Now that we have the proxy OData service up and running, it is time to create the SharePoint App.

In your Office365 admin center, click the Admin dropdown followed by SharePoint. Create a new private site collection with the “Developer Site” template.
Open Visual Studio as admin or better yet follow this hack to always run Visual Studio 2012 as admin. If you’re going to spend a lot of time building SharePoint apps, the hack will save you a lot of time and pain.
Create a new “App for SharePoint 2013” project.
Enter a name for the app, the URL of the site collection you created earlier and choose “SharePoint-hosted” followed by clicking the Finish button.
If Visual Studio prompts you for Office365 credentials, enter them so that the project is connected to your SPO site.
Right-click on the project –> Add –> “Content Types for an External Data Source”.
Enter the URL for the custom OData proxy running in Azure website and specify a name. Click Next.
Choose both AccountSet & ContactSet and hit the Finish button. Visual Studio automatically generates the ECTs (External Content Types) for both accounts and contacts.
Within Default.aspx (under Pages), change the code within the head and body sections as listed in the below snippet. Essentially we’re creating the links for account and contact ECTs along with a placeholder for some custom javascript. Make sure that the version of jQuery referenced in the code matches the one within the Scripts folder of your app.

Next up, let’s write some jQuery to select the AccountNumber & Name and display it in a simple HTML table (sorry web designers)! Open the App.js file (under Scripts folder) and replace it with the code below. If you’re familiar with javascript and jQuery, the code should be pretty easy to follow.

Right-click on the project or solution and click Deploy. Visual Studio automagically installs the app to your SPO developer site.
Open the SPO site and you should see your app under “Apps in Testing”. Click on the app and make sure it works as expected.

Now that you have the base connectivity between CRMOnline and SPO through BCS, the possibilities are endless. You can bring data from other CRM entities, apply security trimming, have users update CRM data directly from SharePoint, use highcharts.com for pretty charts and dashboards, mashup CRM data with other OData data sources and much more depending upon your needs. If you end up building interesting SharePoint-CRM apps, please do tell us through comments below.

Watch Dynamics Convergence 2013 session recordings for free

Girish Raja — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 23:56:00 GMT

If you didn’t attend Convergence 2013, you can still watch the recording of the keynotes and breakout sessions by registering for the Virtual Convergence. Best part is that it is completely free! You can signup for Virtual Convergence here: http://presentations.inxpo.com/Shows/microsoft/MSConvergence/3-13/Registration/Registration.html.

For attendees of Convergence 2013, there is a better experience to catch-up on all the session content that you might have missed or slept through . Besides the virtual convergence website, if you log back into the Convergence attendee website, you can see the session recordings along with PowerPoint presentation decks in the Schedule Builder which also allows you to nicely slice and dice through all the content!

What’s new with SharePoint 2013 and Dynamics CRM

Girish Raja — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:44:00 GMT

Recently an analyst asked us what is new in SharePoint & Dynamics CRM with the December 2012 service update. I wrote the below note as a quick summary of what’s revolutionary and evolutionary with SharePoint (specifically SP 2013) & Dynamics CRM.

1. Self-Service BI with PowerView

Excel 2013 introduces the ability to create PowerView charts for advanced data analysis by combining a variety of data sources. With the new December 2012 Service Update, data from Dynamics CRM Online can be included as one of the data sources for PowerView. SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online’s new release provides the ability for customers to render PowerView charts (including bubble animations) from Excel workbooks through Excel Web App. This allows professionals to analyze their CRM Online data in a self-service manner with just a browser (no need for everyone to be running Excel 2013). For example, in the below figure you can see that the customer service data from CRM combined with call metrics from IVR systems to produce a report rendered right within the browser.

2. Self-service Portals with BCS

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint 2013 has been enhanced to natively consume OData endpoint making it easy for customers to integrate Dynamics CRM data within SharePoint. For example, customers can now easily build an internal SharePoint portal for casual CRM users. This is very useful in many enterprise scenarios such as help desk ticketing, vendor portal and many more. SharePoint 2013 also introduces the new notion of SharePoint ‘Apps’ that can bundle such customizations and provide developers with the ability to sell them through the Office marketplace. You can find a simple step-by-step walkthrough on Connecting SharePoint Online and CRM Online using BCS here.

3. Document library integration enhancements

With the December 2012 service update, the document library integration with SharePoint has now been enhanced to support SharePoint 2013 along with rendering on multiple browsers including Chrome, Safari, Firefox and IE. SharePoint 2013 also has improved eDiscovery for legal compliance and built-in Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) compatibility for interoperability with other applications (like Adobe Bridge and Photoshop) making it easier for customers to manage their CRM digital assets with SharePoint.

4. Identity alignment

Office 365 and CRMOnline have shared the same identity platform for some time now. The same identity platform now has been extended to developers for their custom apps as well through Windows Azure Active Directory. This simplifies the user provisioning and administration of joint solutions spanning Dynamics CRM, Office 365 and other applications within an organization.

5. Social enhancements

Last but not least is the social enhancements in December 2012 service update powered by Yammer which becomes the social layer for Dynamics CRM. We are also heavily investing in unified identity, integrated document management and feed aggregation among SharePoint, Yammer and Dynamics CRM for the future.

The list is just a sampling of what I have been able to do discover so far and I’m sure there are a lot more cool integration scenarios that we’ll discover together as a community. Things like FAST search, SharePoint for Internet Sites connecting to CRM and many more scenarios were possible earlier with SharePoint 2010 and they are enhanced in many ways within SharePoint 2013.

If you’d like to see some of these scenarios in action, please check out one of my presentations at the upcoming Convergence conference:

Title	*Developer's Guide to Integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM & Microsoft SharePoint 2013*
Session Code	CSCRM09
Description	Many organizations use both Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft SharePoint and are increasingly looking for ways to integrate these two technologies. With the new wave of SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 suites, it is now even easier and compelling to integrate them with Microsoft Dynamics CRM for collaborative cloud solutions. Come learn some of the developer patterns and practices you can use when building apps using technologies such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SharePoint 2013, Office 365, and more.
Room	391-392
Day	Thursday, March 21
Time	4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Add to Calendar	<!--[if !vml]--> <!--[endif]-->

Technical Decision Maker (TDM) deck for Dynamics CRM

Girish Raja — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 02:03:00 GMT

TL;DR version: Dynamics CRM ‘TDM’ presentation deck is now available for download here:http://aka.ms/crmtdmpartner. It is a must have resource for all sellers of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

TDM deck is a popular Microsoft lingo for a technical presentation deck that is used by the sales folks in the field. It is content that gets used when you’re presenting to technical folks at a prospect looking to buy CRM. A technical decision maker (TDM or ITDM) could be someone like a CTO, CIO, CIO Board Member, Enterprise Architect, Solutions Architect, IT Manager or other similar roles within the prospect organization.

However in real-life, you’re not going to be just presenting to a room full of TDMs alone. Of course there’ll be non-technical decision makers, also known as Business Decision Makers (BDM in Microsoft lingo), in the room along with TDMs. So use this deck in conjunction with the Dynamics CRM BDM deck when presenting to prospects.

Dynamics CRM TDM deck is an all-encompassing presentation providing a technical overview of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Further sections within the deck drill into specific topics that contain detailed technical information needed for influencing the technical audience. However the current version of the deck is just a beginning and we’ll strive to include new topics and keep it update to date with latest Dynamics CRM features. Upcoming sections of the deck include User Experience, Extensibility, Security and much more. Below is a sampling of some of the slides you’ll find within this presentation deck.

Updated 18th March 2013: New section includes presentation slides with speaker notes on the multi-instance capabilities of CRM Online.

Finally, this deck has been made possible by a number of folks both inside and outside of Microsoft. I’m not going to name them all as the list is pretty long but you know who you are and we sincerely thank you.

Happy selling!

Frequently asked questions:

Q: Why was the TDM deck not posted publicly on SlideShare or Skydrive?
A: Some of the content within the deck are not suitable for public posting due to legal limitations, hence we’re posting this to PartnerSource wherein all Microsoft Dynamics partners can easily access it.

Q: Can I share this TDM deck on SlideShare or any other publicly downloadable location?
A: No

Q: Can I share this with my prospects and customer?
A: Yes, but please exercise caution when sharing. Your prospect may not want to sift through hundreds of slides, so only share slides that you feel are appropriate, preferably in PDF format.

How to print a PDF file in Windows 8

Girish Raja — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:09:00 GMT

I’ve seen many people that are wondering where the print menu went in Windows 8 especially when trying to print a PDF file they’re viewing in the Reader app.

With Keyboard

If you have a keyboard attached to your Windows 8 machine, it is as simple as pressing Ctrl+P in the Reader app which will bring up the list of printers that you have installed and you’re two clicks away from printing your document.

Without Keyboard

If you don’t have a keyboard, don’t worry as you can do this easily with touch. Swipe from the right to bring up the charms.

Tap on Devices which should show you the list of printers you have installed.

Select the appropriate printer and choose other options (like page size, etc) and print away! BTW be responsible and print only if you must absolutely do so. Vast majority of things you can do on paper (such as reading, highlighting or adding an annotation) can be done directly within the Reader app in Windows 8.

Dynamics CRM Identity Federation Demo Setup

Girish Raja — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 01:06:32 GMT

One of the benefits of the new CRM Online identity platform is the ability to federate user identities so that end users can use their Active Directory (AD) credentials to logon to CRM Online without having to use a separate set of username and password. This is also referred to as single sign-on (SSO) wherein a user signs in once and can access many applications including CRM Online, Office 365, local on-premises applications and more.

I often get asked how can one setup a demo/test environment to showcase this functionality with CRM Online so I spent a little bit of time putting together the list of steps required to have a CRM Online demo environment with federated identity. In the end, it is a "no drama" demo as all you are doing is just signing in but there are plenty of things happening behind the scenes to enable this magic!

The list of steps might seem long because I cover everything from setting up active directory from the ground up to adding users in AD. End-to-end, it'll take about 2 to 3 hours to setup. . I pretty much followed the video walkthrough by Planky to put together my demo environment however there are few steps missing in planky's videos that I've included here. Please note that these instructions are strictly for demo environments and not recommended for production environments. In typical production environments, much of this would be done in advance and you'd need backup/redundant servers for failover, etc. In short, you're better off following the official documentation for production environment setup

The post assumes that you have already created a new CRM Online trial and have a fair bit of knowledge on Windows Server and Active Directory setup. If you don't have that background, you can easily search the terms I mention on your favorite search engine and you can find plenty of articles to help.

CRM Online Identity Federation Demo Setup Steps

Create a Window Server Hyper-V Virtual Machine with external network connectivity. I generally use the Windows Server evaluation VMs provided by the Windows team. In this setup, I'm running the VMs locally on my machine but you could also host the VMs in the cloud with Windows Azure
1. Rename the machine appropriately, say CRMOFedDC
2. I generally disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC) for administrators & users within the server manager for my demo VMs.
3. Run windows updates to install all the updates
While the updates are installing, register for a new domain name at your favorite provider. In this example, I'm using godaddy.com and the new domain name I registered for the purpose of this demo is crmpmg.com
Promote the VM to domain controller using dcpromo
1. Pick an FQDN of the forest domain. The one I use in this guide is crmpmg.com and you need to pick your own. Optionally you can also use crmpmg.local but you'll have to add the .com UPN suffix at a later step.
2. Chose Windows Server 2008 R2 and above only
Add the "Active Directory Certification Services" role and set up the VM as the Enterprise Root Certification authority as per the instructions here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772393(v=ws.10).aspx#BKMK_AS1
1. Choose "Certificate Authority" in Role Services screen
2. Choose "Enterprise" in setup type
3. Choose "Root CA" in CA type
4. Choose all the defaults in Private Key and database locations screens and finish the wizard to configure the machine as the enterprise root certification authority.
Download 64-bit ADFS 2.0 setup for Windows Server 2008 R2 (RTW\W2K8R2\amd64\AdfsSetup.exe) and install as a stand-alone federation server
1. This will automatically install IIS, PowerShell, Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) and other required components
2. Restart the machine at the end of the ADFS 2.0 setup if prompted.
Open "ADFS 2.0 Management" under administrative tools and run the ADFS 2.0 federation server configuration wizard.
1. Choose " Create a new federation service"
2. Choose "Stand-alone federation server" since this is a demo environment.
3. New SSL certificate will automatically be created and displayed for you since the same machine is the certificate authority. Click next a couple of times and complete the wizard.
Download and install the Microsoft online services sign-in assistant: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28177
Download and install the Microsoft Online Services Module (64-bit): http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/ff652560.aspx
If you used a local name for the AD forest domain (like yourdomain.local) and haven't added yourdomain.com (for example crmpmg.com) as the forest domain in dcpromo setup earlier, go to "Active Directory Domains and Trusts"
1. Follow this article (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772007.aspx) and add a UPN suffix for crmpmg.com
Note: Do the above setup only if you haven't added yourdomain.com as the forest domain in AD. For example if you added crmpmg.local during dcpromo, this UPN addition is necessary, otherwise not required.
Login to the Microsoft Online services portal (portal.microsoftonline.com) with the administrator credentials of your demo account. This is typically the first user that was used to provision the trial such as admin@crmpmg.onmicrosoft.com.
Add the yourdomain.com (e.g., crmpmg.com) domain name to the "Domains" under Management.
1. This can be done using the portal web UI or using PowerShell command New-MsolFederatedDomain: http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/ff637620.aspx
2. See godaddy specific steps here: http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/gg584185.aspx.
3. A visual walkthrough of this specific step is available in this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQbdWXFTJfw
4. Create a TXT entry in the zone file within godaddy.com with the values provided for your subscription in the portal.
5. Wait for a few minutes and go back to the Microsoft online portal and click "Verify" button at the bottom of the instructions page.
6. Select Exchange Online & Lync Online in the "Specify domain services" step.
7. If you choose SharePoint Online, it is primarily for the public website hosting on office365.com as explained here. http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/jj128104.aspx?CompanyType=CompanyTenant&DapEnabled=0&HasLiteSKU=0&HasAdminPermissions=1
8. Also see "Specify the services you'll use with your domain name" within http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/f86db0a2-5713-4106-b90a-edd09ff898a2#bkmk_intent?CompanyType=CompanyTenant&DapEnabled=0&HasLiteSKU=0&HasAdminPermissions=1
Add a user in the Active Directory Users and Computers ensuring that the UPN suffix is the FQDN suffix (for example testuser@crmpmg.com).
Enable Remote Desktop on the box and add the above user to Remote Desktop users.
Open Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) and allow login through terminal services for remote desktop users as shown in the screenshot below.
Go into the online services portal and manually add domain users like girishr@crmpmg.com. It will provide a temporary password but you won't use it as you'll use the domain credentials after next step.
Note: Manually adding domain users is not recommended however the reason we're doing this is because we can test and verify identify federation with just one box without setting up directory synchronization. If you don't add this user now, the only way to add domain users after federation conversation is through directory synchronization.
Next step is to convert the domain name to federated (Convert-MsolDomainToFederated -DomainName crmpmg.com) by running the set of commands in http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/ff652560.aspx.
Remote desktop into the VM using CRMPMG\testuser and login to CRM or the portal (portal.microsoftonline.com). When a domain user tries to sign-in, the office365 login page, automatically redirects to the federated login page.
Active directory then prompts for credentials
Once you sign-in using AD, you'll immediately login to the portal/CRM.
You can disable this secondary authentication prompt by doing the below steps.
1. Disable Anonymous Authentication and enabling Windows Authentication in IIS as shown in the below screenshot. Restart IIS to ensure the changes have been refreshed.
1. Add https://crmofeddc.crmpmg.com to the "Local Intranet Zone" within IE for the windows credentials to be passed automatically.
2. Now if you visit the portal (or CRM), you just enter your username and you'll be automatically signed-in using your domain credentials.
You can also create single sign-on URL that allows users to login to CRM directly without even entering the username. This is done by appending the CRM URL with whr query string: https://crmpmg0.crm.dynamics.com/?whr=http://crmofeddc.crmpmg.com/adfs/services/trust

DirSync

Note that once you've enabled federation, you cannot add AD users through the portal UI. AD users have to be synchronized from AD to the online portal through a tool called DirSync.
Visit https://portal.microsoftonline.com/DirSync/DirectorySynchronization.aspx and click "Activate" (step 3) to active directory synchronization.
Create a second virtual machine (Windows Server 64-bit image) and join the VM to the CRMPMG AD domain. As always it is certainly a good idea to install all the latest windows updates before proceeding further.
Note: In Hyper-V, you might want to create an additional network switch (Internal or Private) to bridge the VMs together to able to domain join. This network setup is similar to the 2010 IW VM.
Install the pre-requisites for dirsync tool
1. .NET 3.5 SP1
In the second VM, install the DirSync tool: http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/ff652545.aspx
Note: Office 365 supports synchronization of up to 50,000 objects (users, groups, etc). To synchronize more than 50,000 objects, contact Office 365 Support.
At the end of the install, make sure that the configuration wizard checkbox is selected to start the configuration right after the install.
Enter the online services tenant administrator credentials (admin@crmpmg.onmicrosoft.com) followed by domain admin credentials (CRMPMG\administrator).
Leave the "Synchronize directories now" checkbox as check and finish the wizard.
After a few minutes, you can see that users from Active Directory are now available within the Microsoft Online Services users. You can also verify directory synchronization by following the steps here: http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/ff652541.aspx. You can easily distinguish domain users as they have a special "Refresh" icon next to them. Select the synchronized users and active them. You'd also want to assign them security roles with CRM for those users to access CRM Online.
You will also see an error email regarding testuser@crmpmg.com stating that there is conflict during directory synchronization. This is expected since we manually added testuser instead of synchronizing from the directory. You can delete the user within the portal and it'll get added back to CRM after a few hours via synchronization.
You can also force directory synchronization using PowerShell (Start-OnlineCoexistenceSync) or using configuration wizard as per the instructions here: http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/ff652557.aspx.
And you're done! You now have CRM Online demo environment with federated identity and directory synchronization.

Authentication with Dynamics CRM Online on Microsoft online services environment(Office 365)

Girish Raja — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 23:24:00 GMT

Since July 19th 2012, all new sign-ups for Dynamics CRM Online have been switched over to the Microsoft online services environment which is the same subscription/billing platform used by Office 365 and many other services from Microsoft. Among many new things with this switch over, one significant technical change is that it allows CRM Online customers and partners to use the same identity platform as Office 365. This means that users of CRM Online & Office 365 will have the same set of username/password to access various services and it also helps administrators to manage their users in an effective way.

If you are a Dynamics CRM developer or partner developing with the CRM Online web services, you might want to update your code to support the new identity platform (now called as Windows Azure Active Directory - WAAD in short)

For .NET developers, this page on MSDN shows you all the details on updating your code: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh670628. Also the downloadable SDK code samples have been updated to reflect the various authentication options.

For those that are writing code in platforms other than .NET, you might want to checkout the updated SOAP-only web services sample posted here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/girishr/archive/2011/02/04/connecting-to-crm-online-2011-web-services-using-soap-requests-only.aspx

You can sign-up for a trial account in the new platform at http://crm.dynamics.com and manage your subscription at the Microsoft Online Services Portal – https://portal.microsoftonline.com. Existing users of CRM Online using Microsoft account (formerly Windows Live ID) will eventually be migrated to the new environment and the timelines for this migration is still TBD.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 UR9 (a.k.a “R8”) Beta is here!

Girish Raja — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:04:48 GMT

Today I’m proud to announce the availability of beta version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 UR9 or Q2 2012 Service Update or “R8”. Call it what you want but it is here! The beta release only includes on-premises version of the next release of CRM. This release includes support for multiple browser types and many other great features that you can find in the Release Preview Guide.

This beta release is primarily targeted at developers and partners. We want you to make sure your solution and custom code works as you expect with the upcoming release. Please be sure to ready yourself, your peers and solutions for the release coming up in just a few short weeks.

What does the beta include?

A test only on-premises build
Pre-recorded feature overview sessions and power point presentation files
Pre-release implementation guide
SDK and readme.

Again we’d like to emphasize that the beta release is for test purposes only, and not for production usage. There is no migration path from the beta to the final release, so please plan accordingly and use appropriate test environments. There are elements of upcoming release that are not included in the beta, for example Mobility or CRMOnline specific features are not offered as part of the beta but will be available in the final release.

Where can you get the beta release?

The bits are available on Microsoft Connect site. Please follow the steps below to get access.

Please provision an account on the R8 Beta Connect site by clicking on this link. https://connect.microsoft.com/site687/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=7663&InvitationID=crnb-FJTQ-QPB3
Please complete the R8 Beta Access Survey using this link. (this link will not work until you complete step 1 above) http://connect.microsoft.com/site687/Survey/Survey.aspx?SurveyID=14211
Please access the R8 Beta Package using this link. (this link will not work until you complete steps 1&2 above) https://connect.microsoft.com/site687/Downloads
Please pose any questions about the R8 Beta using this R8 Beta Discussion Group here. (this link will not work until you complete steps 1&2 above) http://innovation.connect.microsoft.com/CRM2011R8Beta/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=6861

Questions/Comments?

Post all questions on the Connect discussion group linked above in step #4. If you are having trouble accessing the connect links above, please send an email to crmtapbeta@microsoft.com.

BCS with SharePoint Online & CRM Online

Girish Raja — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 03:17:15 GMT

Microsoft is bringing new capabilities faster than ever to our cloud offerings including SharePoint Online and CRM Online. Case in point is the Business Connectivity Services (BCS) that was introduced in SharePoint Online last fall as part of the recent service update. The biggest ask I’ve had since the service update was examples of surfacing CRM Online data within SharePoint Online through BCS.

Having worked with BCS in SharePoint 2010 along with CRM Online, I chatted with the BCS experts at Lightning Tools to pick their brain on this topic. Nick Swan from Lightning Tools was really excited about building a connector to integrate the two cloud platforms. Nick also published a blog post which has a detailed walkthrough on setting up basic integration between SharePoint Online and CRM Online through BCS. You can check out the post here:
http://www.lightningtools.com/blog/archive/2012/02/20/crm-2011-online-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-through-business-connectivity.aspx

It is a great sample for the community to get started on this topic and Nick also addresses some of the popular questions and concerns you might have. If you are looking for a full-fledged integration solution, please reach out to Nick directly by emailing him at nick@lightningtools.com.

Happy SharePointing!

Book - Professional SharePoint 2010 Cloud-Based Solutions

Girish Raja — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:47:27 GMT

Happy New Year! Over the holidays, a book I co-authored with my former colleagues at evangelism group was published by Wrox : Professional SharePoint 2010 Cloud-Based Solutions (Wrox Programmer to Programmer).

This is my first book and the whole experience was pretty daunting, humbling yet really fun! Seeing one’s name on the bookshelf is truly rewarding and I’d encourage everyone to try it at least once in your lifetime.

With CRM systems being a major workload in the cloud, the book has a chapter on managing customer information in SharePoint Online using CRM Online as the backend (of course)!

Steve Fox was the driver behind this and it was a great opportunity to team up with him and my other colleagues Paul Stubbs and Donovan Follette to write this book.

Professional SharePoint 2010 Cloud-Based Solutions is primarily for IT Pros, SharePoint Developers and enthusiasts who want to better understand how to leverage the cloud in/from their SharePoint solutions/installations. Each chapter is designed to expose some form of integration with SharePoint and the cloud. This includes Web 2.0 technologies, Windows Azure, CRM Online and other cloud-based services.

What I believe is most helpful in the book, is that each chapter provides a conceptual overview of the technologies used in building cloud-based solutions. It then provides a high-level architecture for a solution and then lays out the practical step-by-step instructions to walk through a sample concept-to-practical solution. Our intent for the book is not to just talk about what you might do, but to describe the concepts and then show you how to do a small project and get you rolling.

Thanks again to Steve, Paul and Donovan for the opportunity to work with you on this.