Microsoft Business Solutions is promoting its own CRM – Microsoft CRM. Microsoft CRM is gaining market share in small, mid-size and even large company CRM markets.
For large enterprise clients email server is often realized on Lotus Domino or Java/Unix platforms. Microsoft CRM standard messaging works through Microsoft Exchange Server 2003/2000. Considering the fact that a large number of companies are committed to an alternative email server, we decided to develop Microsoft CRM Lotus/Domino connector (first release – April 2005), which works similar to MS CRM Exchange connector and will have improvement in comparison to standard connector in release 2 (June, 1 2005 – target date).
How does it work. When you send email from CRM object (Lead, Contact or Account) – the connector takes over, appends GUID to the message header and forwards to Lotus Domino for delivery. The reason for such a primitive solution is simple – Microsoft wants to be sure that all email systems, deployed from mail recipient side (Lotus, Unix or Exchange) will keep GUID in the response header (usually appending re prefix, like re:..GUID) and on the way back to MS CRM, connector will take all the messages with GUID in the header and will try to match their GUID with objects GUID and append these messages to their originating objects. Restating in direct words – if you send email from specific contact – when recipient responds – RE message will be attached to the contact.
Improvements. If email is sent from Lotus client – Lotus Domino server will analyze if MS CRM any contact, account or lead has addressee email and if so – it will attach closed activity of email type to this object. If message is received by Lotus Domino server without GUID in the header – server will analyze if any MS CRM object has addressor email and if so – it will attach closed email activity to the object
Technology – MS CRM Lotus Domino connector uses Java agent on the Lotus side and web services to address MS CRM.
Pricing – to be announced – it will be based on Lotus or other email server Licenses
Connector has standard core working with MS CRM and platform-dependent plug-ins. It will support following email servers (check with us on availability):
1. Exchange (Win32, Win64 (upon the arrival))
2. Lotus Domino (Win32, AIX, Linux, Solaris Sparc)
3. CommuniGate Pro (Win32, AIX, Linux, Solaris Sparc & x86)
4. PostFix (AIX, Linux, Solaris Sparc & x86)
5. Exim (AIX, Linux, Solaris Sparc & x86)
6. Oracle Collaboration Suite (Win32, AIX, Linux, Solaris Sparc)
7. GroupWise (Win32, Linux)
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, based in Chicago, California, Texas, New York, Georgia and Florida and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.
