Microsoft Dynamics CRM -- Do people build websites with it?

Question

Forgive my ignorance, but do people build websites with Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

I have a potential client who says that is the technology they will use for a new web project, for which I would be doing the HTML templating. I want to learn all I can as I am new to this particular system, but I can't seem to find anything related to web building and CRM. Is it more likely the client is using another piece of technology that they are neglecting to tell us about?

Any experience or insight about this process is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Hi,

You can't build website using MSCRM, but you can build ASP.Net website using CRM content easily. The API provided by MSCRM is a set of web services, that can be queried in a website to populate pages content.

Also, you can directly query the Database if you want ReadOnly content, and only for read-only content, because it is not supported to update/create data using SQL connections.

Note that it's required to have the external connector license to use any data in the CRM, thru the API and even thru direct SQL queries.

Answer 2

Hi,

I have built a website using .NET, utilising the CRM4 API and database. All the website did was to submit queries to CRM using the CRM web services and metadata web services, and get data back. This company was already using CRM for their back end, so it's much easier for the front end to use the same database as well since it's a simple one.

The alternative would be to create an intermediate connector between the 2 systems -- backend and front end, which is not as efficient (for our case anyway).