Hello, my company is using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 for Customer Relationship Management / Invoices, and DotNetNuke for Intranet.

My wish is to use the MSCRM SDK to integrate DMX and MSCRM 3.

I need the following extensions:

 

1. AccountId attribute in CRM

I need to extend the DMX data model with a AccountId Guid so that I can mark a saved document with a CRM account.

For this purpose, I guess I will need to code a custom .ascx that will let me use the CRM SDK Webservice to do a look up to the CRM database to select the Account that I want, and then store the correct ID in DMX.

 

2. Template View to use in the Account Card in the CRM GUI.

CRM lets me use an external web page as a part of the Account Card view, so I should be able to create a page in the Intranet with a blank skin that can be used to show the documents that belongs to an account. This can for example be signed contracts, offers, and so forth.

For this purpose, I guess I will need a new clone of TemplateView.ascx that lets me take the AccountId stored in 1. as an input argument, and only show the documents that belongs to the account, if any exist.

Some other filter arguments would also be useful, but the AccountId is paramount.

 

So: Does this sound viable, and how should I go about this?

 

 

 

 

Hi Bjorn,

1. This is perfectly possible. We've done this kind of thing before. You'd get a dropdown in the 'custom' section of the edit and the value is stored as a custom attribute. This will take care of the editing. Where projects differ is in what happens after that. How is that data displayed/used later? In general this is not the hardest part, though.

2. I think you can several things. If you want to display data in the CRM from DMX by including a web page, you could create a separate aspx inside DNN that does what you need. Similar to download.aspx in the DMX module, it's a standalone page that is not burdened by skinning etc. You'll need to do something about security though as I guess the CRM system does not use the same authentication as the DNN installation.

Peter

Well, as for authentication we are using AD auth in Citrix for both the CRM and the Intranet, so that is no problem, here is a screenshot of that part working.

 

Question is:

Do I need the partial source to do the rest of the things that I need?

Hi Bjorn,

I advise Partial Src for anyone that goes this far tweaking DMX. The code shows how to interact with the various business objects. You can obviously program an extension without touching the partial src code, but you're programming 'in the dark'. If your project's budget can handle it I'd opt for partial src. If you have questions about licensing and upgrading don't hesitate to contact me by email.

Peter