Microsoft SharePoint is the platform for portal-based collaboration and document management/enterprise content management (ECM). The product also works tightly with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Unified Communications (UC), both Microsoft technologies that will be described in detail later on. This integration provides great visibility for workflows related to documents and document libraries, and improving collaboration through the “presence” and “click to communicate” features.
Today, SharePoint is the universal portal technology for the Dynamics portfolio; for example, in Dynamics AX 2009, the AX Enterprise Portal (formerly Axapta Enterprise Portal) is now based on SharePoint. The portal was devised from the standard SharePoint design experience, whereby a gallery of Dynamics AX Web parts is now available, making it very simple to bring to the surface Dynamics AX data (with the inherent AX security model enforced) on SharePoint portal pages.
In addition to Web parts, other strategies for SharePoint integration are its Business Data Catalog (BDC) Web Services feature (currently used within Microsoft Dynamics GP [evaluate this product] and Dynamics CRM [evaluate this product]), and data binding (within Dynamics AX). It is likely that BDC services will grow further in importance, and we should expect a broad Microsoft Dynamics consistency around this feature.
The abovementioned UC technology provides the ability for applications to identify users’ “presence” and enable “click to communicate” capabilities. Via Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Dynamics AX 2009 and Dynamics CRM 4.0 currently work with UC (which is envisioned for the upcoming Dynamics ERP releases too). For example, whenever a user sees a person in the application screen, he/she can also see a presence indicator showing if they are “out of the office”, “in a meeting”, “on a call”, or “available”. By clicking on the indicator, a user gets to pick the preferred method to communicate with them with a single click, whether it might be via email, instant messenger (IM), or phone, if the company has the computer telephony integration (CTI) capabilities.
The Microsoft Dynamics team is working together with the UC team to develop even more advanced scenarios that bring people closer to the processes represented in their applications. One such possible scenario, “Call Center of the Future”, was showed at Convergence 2008 during Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech. Expected scenarios for the next version of UC platform will revolve around how to factor in application embedding, advanced in-context collaboration scenarios, and blending UC and business process management
Today, SharePoint is the universal portal technology for the Dynamics portfolio; for example, in Dynamics AX 2009, the AX Enterprise Portal (formerly Axapta Enterprise Portal) is now based on SharePoint. The portal was devised from the standard SharePoint design experience, whereby a gallery of Dynamics AX Web parts is now available, making it very simple to bring to the surface Dynamics AX data (with the inherent AX security model enforced) on SharePoint portal pages.
In addition to Web parts, other strategies for SharePoint integration are its Business Data Catalog (BDC) Web Services feature (currently used within Microsoft Dynamics GP [evaluate this product] and Dynamics CRM [evaluate this product]), and data binding (within Dynamics AX). It is likely that BDC services will grow further in importance, and we should expect a broad Microsoft Dynamics consistency around this feature.
The abovementioned UC technology provides the ability for applications to identify users’ “presence” and enable “click to communicate” capabilities. Via Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Dynamics AX 2009 and Dynamics CRM 4.0 currently work with UC (which is envisioned for the upcoming Dynamics ERP releases too). For example, whenever a user sees a person in the application screen, he/she can also see a presence indicator showing if they are “out of the office”, “in a meeting”, “on a call”, or “available”. By clicking on the indicator, a user gets to pick the preferred method to communicate with them with a single click, whether it might be via email, instant messenger (IM), or phone, if the company has the computer telephony integration (CTI) capabilities.
The Microsoft Dynamics team is working together with the UC team to develop even more advanced scenarios that bring people closer to the processes represented in their applications. One such possible scenario, “Call Center of the Future”, was showed at Convergence 2008 during Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech. Expected scenarios for the next version of UC platform will revolve around how to factor in application embedding, advanced in-context collaboration scenarios, and blending UC and business process management
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