Microsoft CRM for Large Corporation - Security

Microsoft Business Solutions CRM proved to be reliable solution in the whole spectrum of industries and market niches: transportation & logistics, education, recruiting & placement, supply chain management, pharmaceutical, oil & gas, aerospace & defense, manufacturing, wholesale & retail. When corporation is looking into CRM application to choose from - one of the fist questions is security. In this small article we'll try to give you the highlights on the most typical questions we are receiving in the security area.

? Active Directory. Microsoft CRM uses Active Directory users and its security is built upon Windows domain security. We heard complains about this tight integration. If you compare MS CRM with Siebel, for example - you will see, that Siebel security is built on the CRM level and Siebel can be installed on Windows and Unix/Linux platforms

? Vertical Security, Roles. If you are thinking about vertical security, say assign more rights to manager, versus salesperson, this should be done on the role level. We first talk about vertical security, to give you conception of the matrix-type of security, realized in MS CRM

? Horizontal Security, Teams. At this moment (MS CRM 1.2, MS CRM 3.0 is due in September 2005) team can include users only, not other teams, however, if you share the object with the team - you can share it with multiple teams. This is the place where collective security begins. Imagine, you have Worldwide product line - widgets and you have several regions: Europe, Pacific, USA, Australia & New Zealand, China. In gadgets team you have product manager, who should see all the sales worldwide, also you create regional teams for European, America, Australian etc markets and then make gadgets manager as team member of all these teams

? Secured Reporting. When you, as European market manager run report on the gadgets sales - you see only records in your security realm. This statement is true even if you have customization, done in MS CRM SDK: C# or VB.Net.

? Presentation Level. If you use MS CRM Web or Outlook clients - these are just two types of presentation level clients. Microsoft CRM schema sits in MS SQL server database, so if you deploy MS CRM SDK to modify/customize your CRM - both presentation clients will get the custom interface

? Messaging. Microsoft CRM deploys MS Exchange. However you can improve MS CRM Exchange connector to catch emails by addresser email or domain, also you can deploy Lotus Notes Domino as email server - check with Alba Spectrum Technologies

? Integration with MS Great Plains. Microsoft CRM integrates with GP customers, SOP Orders & Invoices. You can have custom integration, by calling Great Plains objects (customer annual sales info, employee's payroll summary, etc.)

Good luck and you can always seek our help in customization, implementation, integration and support. Call us: 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer