Microsoft CRM 4.0 data migration

Question

I'm in the middle of a contract that is porting a company's hand-rolled Microsoft Access-based CRM to Microsoft CRM 4.0. It's all gone pretty well, but now I have to migrate the data across.

The data is all over the place in the source .mdb. Lots of tables, lots of duplication, and generally shows all the signs of an ad-hoc database which has grown organically (like weeds) over time.

So, my dilemma is this. Do I bite the bullet and write lots of queries inside Access to export the data into some intermediate format that CRM can somehow import? Or is there some other way? Are there any middleware tools that map data from one to the other that anyone here knows about?

Note this is my first time using CRM, so if the question is obvious, I appologise.

Cheers, Shane

Answer 1

Dynamics CRM 4.0 provides built in tool called Dynamics CRM 4.0 Data Migration Manager to help developers migrate data from previous database into Dynamics CRM 4.0 database. I haven't used it extensively, but as far as i know, the previous data needs to be exported into a "standard" excel format provided by CRM 4.0 Data Migration Manager (DMM).

You can refer to below references :

1. http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/01/04/microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0-data-migration-manager-with-john-o-donnell.aspx

2. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6766880a-da8f-4336-a278-9a5367eb79ca&displaylang=en

There is also 3rd party solutions called Scribe http://www.scribesoft.com/ that will help you migrate to Dynamics CRM 4.0 database

Answer 2

I've had success just using the mscrm api in these kinds of cases. You can write a .net app which use odbc to connect to your mdb then use the mscrm api to create the entities you need on that end.

Anyway you cut it - it's not too pretty but you can get the job done.

Good luck.

Ms CRM Service Reference

Answer 3

I am sorry to say, I think you have to bite the bullet and write queries to pull the data from various sources and use some intermediate database like access ( You may also use SQL server or any db)

In my experience of handling several data migration projects for various small and large enterprises, I have always uses MS access as my data massaging/pulling tool. It works great. It might sound a lot of work but it’s is definitely lot cheaper than buying any expensive tools and spending thousands of dollars configuring them.

I would recommend you save all your queries and write a macro to automate the import. Hower trivial the query is, SAVE it. This will be very useful as you will have to do this again and again before you actually go live.

Once you automate it, it is just a matter of clicking a button. Typically and data migrating project will undergo at least 2 iterations and it could go up to 10.

Once you have data in the intermediate database, you can use de duping tools to standardize and remove dups from your data. There are a lots of cheap tools available both online and offline.