Proprietary customer information and confidential documents form the backbone of thriving companies. Therefore, ensuring the safety of customer relationship data is vital in the information age. Yet it’s equally important that stakeholders have around-the-clock access to the imperative data that drives business via document management systems. One of the leading CRM systems nowadays is Microsoft Dynamics 365. Together with SharePoint, it provides great document collaboration features, and many organisations around the world already use them as a duet. In this post, we will discuss how to ensure security settings synchronisation between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint. It is going to be very practical! 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 has become the standard for managing customer relationship data. It covers all the key areas of CRM, such as sales, marketing and customer service, in addition to being totally customizable through user extensions. It facilitates analysis of the historical development of customer relationships. At the same time, it enables sales representatives to further these relationships by minimizing administrative overhead, thus improving mobility and productivity. 

Moreover, Dynamics 365 provides a sophisticated security model employing role privileges at multiple levels, while assuring the security of your proprietary information and enabling access control on a precise, granular level. 

SharePoint, however, remains the solution of choice for team collaboration and document storage. It provides many important benefits to Dynamics 365, such as lower database utilization, cheaper online storage and access to documents for non-CRM users, among others. Also, by supporting document co-authoring, it facilitates approval processes, thus speeding up business activities. 

Obviously, combining these powerful capabilities would be the best way forward for businesses, and many companies are already doing it. Yet security-conscious decision makers are aware of the potential safety risks. 

Microsoft offers a standard out-of-the-box integration between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint which enables organizations to link SharePoint documents with CRM records. Moreover, it enables users to manage SharePoint documents and utilize many of the document management features of SharePoint directly in the user interface of Dynamics 365. 

But the security models of Dynamics 365 and SharePoint differ significantly. This out-of-the box integration does not provide the same level of record security in CRM and SharePoint. This results in documents in SharePoint being accessible to users without the required Dynamics CRM privileges.  

Imagine, a company has its contract values and prospects in their CRM system available only to senior managers. CRM is synced with SharePoint for the sake of document collaboration, productivity, etc. – and the documents which are restricted pretty much from everyone except for certain senior managers, are available to anyone in SharePoint.  

So, is there a way to combine the benefits of both solutions and enforce the correct access rights at the same time? 

Yes, there is. 

CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator is a small yet powerful application that monitors privilege changes for Dynamic 365 data items in the background and automatically synchronizes these changes to respective items in SharePoint. Thus the proper privileges from Dynamics 365 are applied to SharePoint items – automatically and instantaneously, securing your data items and documents at all times. 

After installation, the app does the synchronisation of permissions and privileges automatically without user interference. Thus, it ensures the protection of commercial information, personal data – which is also very important for the GDPR compliance and protects the respectful image of the organisation.  

Besides, the CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator has one useful add-on. It is called SharePoint Structure Creator and it is designed to automatically manage the threshold for broken inheritance in a SharePoint, which for SP 2013, SP 2016, and SP 2019 is 50 000 permissions per document library. Managing this limitation manually can be stressful, and in our blog we explain how it can be done automatically. 

The solution has been on the market since 2014, and during this period it has gained trust from many private and public institutions. Through our Canadian partner, Orangutech, Connecting Software provided the CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator software solution – ensuring ensuring user security permissions are replicated across both systems, and users do not have access to sensitive information they are not permitted to see.   

Another story is from a private sector, namely Compass Group PLC, UK, the largest contract foodservice company in the world. “It was unacceptable to allow unrestricted access to sensitive documentation in SharePoint or to manage it manually”, – says Anthony Crook, Head of Client Business Solutions Compass Group PLC. “The main paint point that led us to Connecting Software’s solution was the need for synchronisation. We mostly hold sales and contract information in CRM. Managing data access is key for ensuring that users only have access to the data they are allowed. As people come and go, it’s important that no one has access to more information than they require to do their job”, he explains.  

The geography and industries of the CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator are wide indeed: ACC Governmental Department in New Zealand; Spirit AeroSystems, USA, the world’s largest tier-one manufacturer of aerostructures; Stora Enso Oyj in Finland, a leading paper producer and the oldest limited liability company in the world; Securitas in Sweden, National Rugby League Ltd in Australia, – the list is too long to name all. 

Dynamics 365 is rapidly evolving and conquering the market, so it is only natural if your organisation uses it for customer relationship management. And, of course, the capacity of the system is boosted in combination with SharePoint – a flexible and multifunctional document management system. Integration of the two allows to make a good use of the duet, if you ensure the synchronisation of permissions and privileges between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint. To see how the  CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator can protect sensitive data in your organisation,  ask for a free trial.