Telerik conecting to Dynamics CRM

Question

Hi there,

I am trying to create a dashboard for Dynamics CRM 4.0 using the telerik silverlight rad controls and charts. what is the easiest/fastest way to link my project to CRM?

Answer 1

You'll either need to use the CRM web services API to query for data, or if you can access the SQL Server database directly, you could query the SQL views that CRM generates. These are the only ways of accessing data in CRM that are supported by Microsoft.

As a starter, check the Dynamics CRM SDK documentation for technical information about Dynamics CRM and the web services API:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb928212.aspx

If you want to use the SQL views, also check the Report Writers Guide - this is guidance for people writing SSRS reports for CRM, but should provide useful information:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb955081.aspx

If you use the views, you should always use the ones named 'Filtered...' as these will respect the authenticated users' security role (ie. they prevent users seeing data they wouldn't normally see when using CRM via the UI.)

Information on Filtered Views:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc308184.aspx