Connecting MapPoint to Microsoft CRM Part 1

One of the last minute additions to the image that was made was the installation of MapPoint. We ran out of time to be able to actually get MapPoint and CRM connected. So over the next couple of weeks, I will be posting some primers on connecting MapPoint to Microsoft CRM.

If you go on the menu of MapPoint to Data | Link, it gives you a number of different options, including Excel, Access, Exchange, and Microsoft Data Link. None of them would work for connecting to CRM, except the Microsoft Data Link. This UDL file was not something I was familiar with. After doing a search, the second or third link there had a KB article on how to create a UDL File. The basics are:

1. Right-click in the My Documents Foldder, point to New, and then click Text Document. A new file is created by default (New Text Document.txt).

3. Right-click the Text Document you created in step 1, choose Rename, and then change the name and extension of the file to: CRM2MapPoint.UDL

4. A warning might appear, explaining that changing file extensions could cause files to become unusable. Disregard this warning.

6. Double-click the ( CRM2MapPoint.UDL) file or you can optionally right-click it, and then click Properties. This opens the Data Link Properties dialog box. You are now ready to connect to your data source. (Should be DanubeCRM for the Server and Adventure _Works_Cycle_MSCRM for the database with integrated Windows Authentication.)

Now that you have made the connection, now what? How about tying into CRM’s Filtered Views to pull data into MapPoint to show all of your customers in a certain geographic area? How about all of your leads by type? The next couple of articles will show you how to get some of the data combined, etc…

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 24, 2007
  Hi, Do you know when the next installment of these articules will be available ? Thanks John