CRM 2011 – CRM online does not link in with sharepoint 2010 but will soon..

 

 

Microsoft Released Office 365 last week and one interesting thing I noticed this blog entry which explains that SharePoint and CRM 2011 are not compatible.  This is an important consideration for people who want to use CRM Cloud solution because it means they will have to have a SharePoint 2010 server set up themselves, which negates some of the benefits of the cloud solution

below is the reason, it’s basically the CRM List component which you use to show the SharePoint items within CRM.

Wrong! Despite of the better together marketing message surrounding Office 365 and CRM Online, there’s actually still no way to integrate the SharePoint document libraries with the CRM List Component. Sure, you can upload the solution file into a SharePoint Online site and publish it. What you cannot do in the Online version is to take care of the second part of the installation steps, which involves the AllowHtcExtn.ps1 PowerShell script,used for enabling .htc file extensions to be served from SharePoint.

Why is this important? Because without the .htc support, you can’t actually do anything with the document library. The folder creation can be configured and it flows through as it should when accessing the Documents menu for a new record, such as an account. However, after that you are presented with the following prompt:

 

Although this initially is bad news I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom.  Microsoft have a number of different teams working on projects and although they are starting to bring this together (that’s my thoughts reading the CRM statement of direction) they are not totally in sync yet.

one of the comments from the original article made a good point (although I’m not sure how you quote a comment)

Charlie Maitland says:

Hi

Mary Jo Foley is saying that a more unified Office 365/MSCRM offering will be out before the end of 2011. Now I take that with a pinch of salt but lets hope our collective pressure can get a definitive roadmap out of Microsoft and that the 2 teams are locked in a room together till they sort it out!
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/whats-next-for-office-365-crm-online-and-windows-intune/9848

Charlie

 

Initially it seems a bit disappointing but I think Microsoft are rattling projects/releases off at a such a pace at the moment that this will soon be sorted out.  A lot of the comments I have read seem more frustrated at Microsoft lack of information about this issue rather than the issue itself, which I suppose you could say is fair comment.

 

It still seems to me that Microsoft are certainly moving in the right direction and at a good gallop.