List with a column that looks up from CRM 2011

Question

I have a SharePoint site and I would like to be able to create a list of which one column will be linked to a customer account.

I have seen products that sync data (not really what I want as the CRM will be the single data source), and I have also seen some pretty heavy code in the form of plugins - can anyone recommend a solution that involves a built in lookup wizard or if code is required is minimal?

Thanks in advance,

Chris

Answer 1

Hello Chris,

For this you need to do following things :
1.First you need to create WCF service which interact with CRM API,We can't access CRM API in SharePoint application due to compatibility reasons (SharePoint built on .Net 3.5 and CRM API built on 4.0) so we need to create WCF service.

2.After that you need to take instance of web service and call function :

 ServiceReference1.ABCOrganizationServiceClient proxy = new ServiceReference1.KrmOrganizationServiceClient(binding, remoteAddress);
                proxy.Open();

                ABCCompanyProfile[] AccountCompanyInformation = proxy.Get_Contact_Account(key.Contact_ID.ToString());
                proxy.Close();

                if (AccountCompanyInformation.Length > 0)
                {
                    keysABCUserProfile = proxy.GetEmployeesByCompanyId(key.ABC_this_company_pays.ToString());

                    if (keysABCUserProfile != null && keysABCUserProfile.Length > 0)
                    {
                        ddlEmployeeName.Items.Insert(0, " Select Participant ");
                        ddlEmployeeName.DataSource = keysSteerUserProfile.ToList<SteerUserProfile>();
                        ddlEmployeeName.DataTextField = "firstname";
                        ddlEmployeeName.DataValueField = "Contact_ID";
                        ddlEmployeeName.DataBind();
                    }
                }

Hope it will helpful for you.

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Mukesh Ajmera| LinkedIn | http://mukeshajmera.wordpress.com/|

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Answer 2

Hi Chris,

Hi,
additionally to the one from  Mukesh Ajmera please take a look at this article Integrating Dynamics CRM Data into SharePoint 2010

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Dmitry

Lightning Tools Check out our SharePoint tools and web parts | Lightning Tools Blog

Answer 3

the simplest approach would be create an external content type for CRM customer table(or view). And create a column of type External Data in SharePoint list to pick the CRM customer.

The link Dmitry post says to create a lookup column to external list, hope it's just a typo.