I’ve been going through a bunch of CRM integration scenarios to refresh my “hands on” abilities.  You have to do that in a job like mine, otherwise you’re just a talking head that doesn’t know what you’re talking about.  Anyway, the topic of integrating CRM with SharePoint beyond what’s available out of the box comes up often.  Two sessions worth watching to understand some of the possibilities are:

http://dkdt.me/L5DcGW

http://dkdt.me/kUq33n

They are very similar sessions, but from two different presenters.  One of the things covered in these sessions is how to integrate CRM and SharePoint through BCS.  The trick to doing it productively is the sample code Chris and Girish made available here:

http://dkdt.me/L5DcH4

With this, you can now open up the world of possibilities that SharePoint BCS enables including cross entity searching.  See Configuring Business Connectivity Services (BCS) Search in SharePoint 2010 as an example.

@devkeydet

“Can I get the the integration the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 provides to work with SharePoint Online when my CRM 2011 deployment is OnPrem (i.e. installed inside my organizations private network or somewhere else that’s not CRM Online)?”

The answer is Yes with a few caveats / configuration hints. 

First, you have to understand that the built in integration between CRM 2011 and SharePoint 2010, enabled through the List Component, is actually at the UI level. 

Everything inside this highlighted blue border is UI rendered on the SharePoint server and surfaced through an iFrame.  The CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is responsible for the CRM 2011 look and feel.  CRM 2011 just stores metadata about SharePoint in a set of Entities.  Therefore, you will obviously need internet connectivity from your browser.

But remember, the scenario we want to get working is a “hybrid solution” where SharePoint Online is “in the cloud” and CRM 2011 is OnPrem.  If you just follow the instructions provided through the Configuring the List Component in SharePoint Online blog post, there is a good chance will run into issues with these instructions. 

The first caveat for this scenario is that you have to take authentication into consideration.  If you are one of the more advanced organizations using Office 365 configured to work with your Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) 2.0 deployment for authentication, then you likely have Single Sign On (SSO) working.  In that case, the Configuring the List Component in SharePoint Online instructions should “just work.”  However, if you aren’t, then you will have to make sure you are logged in to SharePoint Online first.  Once you’ve done that, you can follow the Configuring the List Component in SharePoint Online instructions.  That is IF your CRM 2011 deployment is configured for https.  If not you will run into browser warnings about “mixed mode” and subsequent issues due to your CRM 2011 deployment running under http and your SharePoint Online deployment running under https.  This is to be expected.  To remove the warnings and resolve the issues, make sure you’ve added your SharePoint Online site and your CRM 2011 site to the IE “Trusted sites” list. 

In my case, that’s “http://crm2011” and “*.sharepoint.com” in the screenshot.  However, you could choose to be more granular and enter “yoursubdomain.sharepoint.com” for SharePoint Online if you like.  Finally, make sure that you configure a “custom level” setting for your trusted sites to enable the display of mixed content without prompts:

If you weren’t in a position to follow the Configuring the List Component in SharePoint Online instructions before, then you should be now.  Again, both initial configuration AND end user scenarios will require the user to login to SharePoint Online first before you bring up your CRM UI, unless you have SSO configured.

@devkeydet