Tag: Microsoft

Microsoft CRM Integration & Customization: SharePoint Document Gateway

MS CRM is very close to document workflow automation, including Microsoft Office documents: Words, Excel, etc. The document workflow was perfectly automated about 10 years ago in Lotus Notes Domino. In this small article we describe the solution based on MS CRM integration with MS SharePoint.

Microsoft CRM is new player on CRM applications market and it is gaining its market share. Having different paradigm in its design (it stakes on Microsoft OS and technologies and completely disregards alternative platform, such as UNIX, Linux, Oracle, etc. based). Microsoft CRM market is very diversified: from small (5 users) to large (several hundred MS CRM User licenses) and it serves variety of industries: Transportation, Logistics, Lawyers, Pension Funds, High-Tech, and many others. Deploying technologies, like Windows Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange 2003/2000, SQL Server, Crystal Reports Enterprise, Biztalk, Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Great Plains and Navision in close future – makes CRM a beloved system for Microsoft oriented IT departments.

Let’s go right to the topic.

Major issue with storing documents in MS CRM in the form of attachments to Activity is inability to work on these attached files in cooperation with other colleagues, who do not have to use CRM. When several service people serve requests from the same client this is required. Currently you can use alternative way when you store office documents in the folders of your file system and when modifying document, you save it and reattach to CRM. This is inconvenient, because first it requires all your editing users to have CRM licenses, which delays CRM implementation.

We seem increasing popularity of document storage systems, like Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle Files, etc. Such systems, being implemented gives you time savings, related to documents revisions and versioning, approval cycles and workflows, web access through web-portals systems and the like.

The target of our product is Microsoft SharePoint integration with MS CRM for document storage. Let’s take a look at the high level technical realization details:

oMain modification from the MS CRM side is standard system behavior change when you open attachment in Activity. Standard unmodified CRM suggests you to store documents in the file system. Modified version sores document in SharePoint Document Library (the required library is subject for setup by MS CRM system administrator) or keep it in MS CRM as is (for documents of minor importance). From the moment of saving the document in SharePoint Document Library it is not stored in MS CRM – CRM will now store only the link/reference to the document. Also you are given the ability to open and modify the document at the place of opening, which speeds up MS CRM user performance substantially.

oTable, storing the links to the documents sits in separate database and doesn’t deal with MS CRM tables (you know that you are banned to do structure changes in MS CRM db)

oDocument saving into MS SharePoint process occurs in MS CRM and with its assistance – SharePoint bridge, which does addition and update for the existing document into destination Document Library with MS SharePoint Web Services calls

oUpon the addition into Document Library, MS CRM – SharePoint bridge registers the document in the special table for the future data extraction or notification mechanism registration

oThen, interested users can work with the documents just using MS Office 2003 or other programs/editing tools, assuming these tools have access to MS SharePoint

oFeedback is provided by MS SharePoint Event Handler component. This is special handler, inspecting document change status, transferred from MS CRM to document storage (SharePoint), and report Activity owner on the changes with home page notifications (User home page in MS CRM). User in turn can review the history of the document editing – who, when and where is the change

oOpening Activity, where document is “attached”, and in fact placed into MS SharePoint Document Library, and pressing opening button, MS CRM user gets live version of the data

oThis approach allows you seamless work with MS CRM document in the whole informational space of your company

oAdditional enhancements to this product might be document library management directly from MS CRM (web interface – meaning remotely), administrative interface for MS Sharepoint documents revision, ability to create reports on the document storage status, rights/access management (Author, Reader, Contributor etc) from MS CRM, portal pages integration into MS CRM to name a few.

Happy programming, implementation, customization and modification! If you want us to do the job – call use 1-630-961-5918, 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Microsoft Office 365 for YOUR Business

Microsoft Office 365

OK, we’ve spent some quality time together checking out Office 365 and what it can do for small to mid-sized businesses in previous posts. Now, we want to take a look at what this cloud-based productivity tool from Microsoft can do for you and your business. After all, it’s your business that you worry about so, as your chosen Denver IT support experts, we should too, right?

Office 365 allows you to pay for the services you use, and nothing more

Microsoft offers a range of monthly subscription plans for their cloud-based productivity tools offering – Office 365. For most of the businesses we work with at North Star, Inc., the P1 Plan will be the most popular. This is the plan Microsoft has designed for businesses with up to 25 employees, with 50 users maximum. The P1 Plan offers full access to all of the most popular Office tools, such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint, for just $6 per month per user.

So, what will you receive for your six bucks a month?

  • Anytime, anywhere access to – email, contacts, calendars, files, documents, spreadsheets, slide shows and every other Office function on just about any mobile device – including iPads, iPhones, and Android devices.
  • Ease of use – across all digital environments, with access to Outlook, Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint.
  • Enhanced collaboration – on even the largest files. Rather than trying to email huge data packages, Office 365 allows you to create password-protected access to share large, difficult-to-email files within and without your organization. This provides you with a single, easy-to-find location for all versions and variation of every document in your system.
  • Increased security and enhanced reliability – with Microsoft enterprise-level servers. You no longer need to wonder if your system is secure, since Microsoft handles all of your server needs with enterprise-grade reliability, disaster recovery capabilities, data centers in multiple locations, and a strict privacy policy. This also allows them to offer you a 99.9% uptime, financially-backed guarantee.

Access your email, calendar, and contacts across all digital environments

Powered by Exchange Online, Office 365 provides you with a 25 GB mailbox, with contacts and a calendar that is available virtually anywhere; and is accessible on your iPhone, Android, Nokia, Blackberry, Windows Phone, or use almost any Macintosh computer or PC, with cross-browser support for Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer.

  • Fully compatible with Outlook and Exchange Online
  • Large mailboxes that are easy to use
  • Professional looking email addresses
  • Automatic updating of email, contacts, and calendar across digital devices
  • Check the availability of your colleagues from the Outlook calendar
  • Antivirus and anti-spam protection
  • Reduce in-box overload with “Conversation View” feature
  • Access to other email accounts
  • A personal email archive

Enhanced sharing and collaboration with Office 365

Office 365 offers improved sharing and increased collaboration within your organization through the use of SharePoint Online. Your people will be able to save directly to SharePoint, or work collaboratively on any document, in real-time, through Office Web Apps.

  • Create a public website with the built-in Site Designer tool
  • Share and manage critical documents
  • Save different versions and drafts in a single location accessible to all
  • 10 GB of SharePoint storage
  • External sharing with trusted partners
  • Fully integrated with Microsoft Office
  • A familiar look and feel with familiar tools

Improved communication and collaboration

Microsoft Lync Online offers next-generation communication in an online environment, allowing your people to make clear connections and collaborate from virtually anywhere at any time. Lync Online provides an enhanced communication experience with IM, audio/video calling, and an online meeting experience that supports audio, video, and web conferencing.

  • Connect with colleagues and customers instantly
  • Make professional presentations from anywhere
  • Conference calls and meetings
  • Check status and availability of colleagues quickly and easily
  • Communicate with anyone suing Office 365 or Windows Live
  • Communicate with anyone using Microsoft Outlook
  • Connect with Exchange Online

Manage Office 365 from a single, easy-to-use interface

Managing Office 365 is accomplished from an intuitive, web-based portal accessible only to those you designate. It was designed for organizations without an IT staff, with simple navigation and low-tech solutions; allowing you to easily establish user accounts, assign various roles others, and configure the services you will be using.

  • A simple, user-friendly admin interface
  • You control access to all data, critical and otherwise
  • Set up separate user accounts for each employee
  • Add administrators to help you manage the system
  • Administer your public website
  • Control costs by controlling the number of users
  • Full access to Microsoft support 24/7, 365

You might also enjoy our other articles on Microsoft Office 365

Collaborating in Office 365: What Is Microsoft Teams?

How many times do you get pulled into a lengthy email thread with a group of co-workers? Are your team communications hard to document and scattered among multiple programs? How can your work group more easily collaborate, chat, and share important files and resources? Your solution is Microsoft Teams. Teams is a cloud-based collaboration tool that is part of the Microsoft Office 365 suite of applications. The core capabilities of Microsoft Teams include:

  • Creating and managing work groups
  • Communicating through chat/instant messaging
  • Connecting with audio calling
  • Launching impromptu or scheduled video meetings
  • Sharing files and links
  • Documenting work and resources
  • Simplifying access to other Office apps

With Teams, work groups within an organization can collaborate on content across different devices (laptops, tablets, and smartphones), and across multiple platforms including Windows and Mac. In addition, with Microsoft Teams, a team can also invite outside partners such as vendors, service providers, and consultants to participate in the collaboration and conversations as well as the sharing of resources. This is a big plus to productivity and project management.

Better Than Slack & Google Hangouts

At its core, Teams is a chat-based workspace that features group and private/instant messaging, with threaded and persistent conversations. Although Teams competes with similar products like Slack and Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams is more robust, is included with Office 365, and connects with other Office 365 applications including Excel, Word, OneNote, Planner, and SharePoint. This integration with other Microsoft Office programs creates a more fluid, seamless portal and experience.

Note: If your organization is currently using Skype for Business for instant messaging, it’s likely you will see a move to Teams as Skype for Business has a sunset date (end of life) in 2020.

Customize with Channels

Teams are made up of channels which can be organized by topic, projects, or departments. Channels are quite flexible as they store meeting history, chat, shared files or resources, and other communications that can be easily searched. In addition, each channel can be customized with tabs for apps such as SharePoint, Planner, OneNote, as well as files and other shared resources. Planner is an easy-to-use Office 365 application to create to-do or action items for members of a workgroup and then track progress of each action for a project or team.

Communicating with a specific channel member or even the entire team is also easy with @ mentions. Fortunately, the Activity tab in Teams makes it simple to catch up on all your unread messages, @mentions, replies, and more. Like other messaging services, Teams communications can also include emojis and GIFs, an essential part of any business communication <grin>.

Video & Voice Meetings

Within a team-based messaging thread, you can easily schedule voice and video meetings or launch a quick impromptu meeting with little effort. Teams meetings can even be scheduled from Microsoft Outlook. Regardless of the method used for scheduling meetings, these are be synced with Outlook to keep you on track. Video meetings can be launched with specific contacts or within a channel and it’s easy to create a recording of the meeting. Microsoft Teams includes a cool artificial intelligence (AI) feature called blur background. With such a mobile and remote workforce, this tool lets you eliminate a cluttered or unprofessional background of a call while still engaging with each participant on the call.

Microsoft Teams Resources

To save time working with Microsoft Teams, grab a handout of Teams keyboard shortcuts at http://thesoftwarepro.com/teams.

Microsoft Dynamics ERP Selection: GP, AX, NAV, SL, CRM – Notes for Consultant

Microsoft recently (in September 2005) renamed its ERP product: Great Plains – Microsoft Dynamics GP, Navision – Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Axapta – Microsoft Dynamics AX, Solomon – Microsoft Dynamics SL, Microsoft CRM – Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The idea is probably nice – to unify future concordance product under Microsoft Dynamics name. There are multiple possibilities, however in getting all MRP systems merged into one Microsoft Dynamics and what should be taken as base and what should be phased out. We can not be judges – we will give you some facts for you to take into consideration. This article is planned as a first entry point to look “under the hood” of Microsoft ERP applications and probably compare the facts with the competition: SAP (especially SAP Business One if you are small or mid-size company or international branch of multinational corporation), Oracle E-Business Suite/Oracle Financials, also referred as Oracle Applications.

o Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0/Microsoft Great Plains. This ERP was initially architectured by Great Plains Software – Great Plains Dynamics and Great eEnterprise hit the market in earlier and middle 1990th. If you remember those old-good-days of IT boom – nobody knew which operating system will win: Unix/Solaris, Microsoft Windows, Apple MAC OS. This is why – the traditional (and pioneering way) for those days was to create a shell, written in C language to abstract you from Graphical platform. Great Plains Dexterity was this shell, programming language (sanscript). The second fundamental idea was to abstract Great Plains Dynamics from database platform, however the abstraction was done on the level of “budget” database platforms: Ctree/Faircomm, and Btrive, later on Pervasive SQL 2000, for Microsoft SQL Server 6.5/7.0/2000 Great Plains used atomic stored procs approach to speed up database access. Nowadays Microsoft Dynamics GP/Great Plains versions 5.5, 6.0, 7.0, 7.5 are available for Ctree and Pervasive, however since version 8.0 Microsoft Great Plains is available on MS SQL Server/MSDE platform only. Currently Microsoft Great Plains 9.0 is offered in USA, Latin America, Canada (including French Canadian version for Quebec), UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and other countries where official language is English – such as South East Asia, for instance.

o Microsoft Navision/Navision Attain/Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Some ERP analytics believe that Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions (later renamed into Microsoft Business Solutions) bought Navision Software (est. in 1984). The fundamental ideas of Navision come to its own shell – C/SIDE, database proprietary platform: C/SIDE, etc. Navision was designed to be flexible and grow with your business – from small to upper mid-market. Navision Software had its own marketing plans prior to be purchased by Microsoft and expanded in continental Europe, UK, USA (competing with Great Plains Software and Solomon Software). When Navision was bought by Microsoft – Microsoft Business Solutions offered and promoted Navision in East Europe: Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, etc. Plus it tried Navision in Brazil (over 100 implementations – 2005). Navision is more flexible to localization challenge (than Microsoft Great Plains)

o Microsoft Axapta/Microsoft Dynamics AX – it seems to be rising star for Microsoft and it can compete with upper ERP/MRP mid-market. Axapta has modern design and its ability to expand is still in its architecture modern model (versus Great Plains or Navision – where we see integrations with MS Office, Web Fronts/Business Portal/eConnect/eCommerce type of improvements). In late 2005 we see US and UK MBS VAR activity to sign for Axapta and consultants training.

o Microsoft Dynamics SL/Microsoft Solomon – this ERP is for project-driven organizations.

o Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0/Microsoft CRM 3.0. This CRM solution from Microsoft is abreast of the majority of Microsoft recent ideas and innovations: Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, XML Web Services driven MS CRM SDK with C# and VB.Net sample code. Currently MS CRM 1.2 and 3.0 has integration to Microsoft Dynamics GP 7.5, 8.0 (with service patch) and 9.0 (coming…)

Please do not hesitate to call or email us: USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918 help@albaspectrum.com

Microsoft Great Plains Reporting – Overview for Developer

Looks like Microsoft Great Plains becomes more and more popular, partly because of Microsoft muscles behind it. Now it is targeted to the whole spectrum of horizontal and vertical market clientele. Small companies use Small Business Manager (which is based on the same technology – Great Plains Dexterity dictionary and runtime), Great Plains Standard on MSDE is for small to midsize clients, and then Great Plains serves the rest of the market up to big corporations. There are several reporting tools available and you definitely need to know which one to use for different types of reports.

If you are developer who is asked: how do we create report for Microsoft Great Plains – read this and you will have the clues on where to look further.

  1. Great Plains Report Writer (ReportWriter) – this is built-in reporting tool. All the original report in Great Plains are written in ReportWriter. ReportWriter itself is Dexterity module. You should use this tool if you would like to modify existing Great Plains reports, such as Blank Invoice Form – here you can place your company logo, change the positioning, fonts, colors, etc. ReportWriter will allow you also do new reports – simple option if you want to export all the records from one Great Plains table – use it. New report, however doesn’t have interface where you would enter parameters – so it is not useful for real custom reports. Another limitation of ReportWriter – you can not do cross-modules report – when you need sales and purchasing info on the same report for example.
  2. FRx. This is excellent tool when deal with financial reporting – it works on the General Ledger level (Balance sheet, P&L, Cash Flow Statement, etc.). It also allows you to do multiple companies consolidation – when you do consolidated Balance Sheet (with inter-companies transactions elimination).
  3. Smart List – Export to Excel – this is nice feature in Great Plains – you could create a list with simple criteria and then export it to Excel.
  4. Crystal Reports. It gives you unlimited functionality. Obviously flexibility requires you to know Great Plains table structure: Launch Great Plains and go to Tools->Resource Description->Tables. Find the table in the proper series. If you are looking for the customers – it should be RM00101 – customer master file. If you need historical Sales Order Processing documents – they are in SOP30200 – Sales History Header file, etc. Create ODBC connection to GP Company database. Use the same technique as when you create standard ODBC connection for GP workstation – but change default database to targeted company database. Create SQL Query to probe the data – we always recommend tuning your query and see that you are getting adequate results – in any case – Crystal Report is just a nice tool to show the results of your query.
  5. Direct Web Publishing off Great Plains databases – yes – it is easy now with Visual Studio.Net and you can hire good programmers. This is good – Microsoft Business Solutions products: Great Plains, Solomon, Navision and Axapta will be integrated into so called Microsoft Business Portal – which will have web interface – you can get the idea if you look at Microsoft CRM web client – so direct web publishing is good taste.
  6. SQL Queries. If you have SQL background – this is great field for you. You know – with properly formatted SQL query you can realize simple EDI export/import for the integration with legacy systems.

Happy designing! If you want us to do the job – give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Exit mobile version