CRM 2011 – NAV Connector Gotcha’s

I had to use the CRM/NAV connector this week.  I have to admit I have a heavy heart when ever I have to use the CRM/NAV Connector, it is never easy and amazingly frustrating.

The main problem I have with the connector is the complete lack of examples and documentation and when you start using it, it feels like the connector is a black hole.

Things go in and out but you are never really sure what is happening in the middle and usually why things are not working.

I had to Synchronise the Account entity and two custom entities.  The connectors tool for making custom entities available inside the connector mapping tool is very good.

When you get to the NAV side you have to change the integration table and the best instructions I have found on this is this fantastic blog post which steps through what you have to do.

I had one odd problem, even though I chose not to map contacts and removed all mention of contacts on mapping, if a contact was selected on the account primary contact, it would not sync the account.

even though I didn’t want to sync the contact, it still wouldn’t sync.

After mucking around for a few hours I found that you have to set the dynamics integration field on the contact, if you do this when the account will sync.

another NAV connector gotcha is if you are mapping new entities and non standard tables in NAV then you need to make sure you set the Intergration ID value

I had an entity called Project and on the mapping from CRM to NAV you have to set the Integration ID with the Project\ID

if you don’t set this it will map the change for the first time but then any changes will fail because it can’t link to the entity in CRM without the Integration ID being set