How to provide UI to contacts to update their details in CRM Dynamics?

Question

We have a Dynamics CRM portal deployed on our test server. We have certain logins for this portal, using which users can manage Organizations,and Contacts.

Now we want to give the ability to update contact details to the external users. For that, I am planning to write a .NET Website that will allow a contact to login with his/her email address (some authentication), and can update his/her details. The contacts are not physical users in CRM portal. How can I achieve the authentication of contacts and allow them to update their details through the new .NET website?

Any help on this much appreciated!

Thanks and Regadrds

Nirman

Answer 1

You can use ASP.NET membership and then you need to create credentials field (Or Entity) and roles for the contacts.

Read through the above link and then create Membership system as described in link below:

Walkthrough: Creating a Web Site with Membership and User Login

YOu can also use ADX Portals. Using Adxstudio's Portals product you can use the Contact entity for authentication mechanisms that Adxstudio provides forms authentication, or some other identity manager like Facebook and Twitter. It's also very simple to create Web UI for CRM entities.

Answer 2

It sounds like you're planning on performing your own sort of authentication to validate that the contact is the contact and should be able to update their own contact information. Once you've over come this hurdle, just use the SDK to perform your updates.

Use a service account to access the data from CRM, display it to the use using whatever method/technology you wish, and make additional SDK calls to update the data in CRM based on the user's edits.

Answer 3

Nirman,

I just wanted to make sure you were aware that the CRM 2011 Customer portal provided in the CRM SDK allows users to edit their own contact information. Have you thought about just implementing it instead of writing something custom?