NEIL PARKHURST

This is the next post in my collection regarding revision for the MB2-713 certification (Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Sales). I am busy revising for this exam now and as I do so I’m publishing blog posts covering all aspects of that revision.

In this post I’m going to cover the subject of OneNote integration.

I guess the first question might be, what is OneNote? OneNote, as the name suggests is a product for taking notes. Notes can be simple items of text but could also involve screen shots, audio or even video that relate to whatever subject is being covered. Meaning that OneNote offers a much richer interface than available with standard note taking. OneNote also supports co-authoring, allowing multiple people to collaborate on a single “document”. OneNote has a variety of clients to install locally, run on-line and even as apps on mobile devices.

OneNote uses a concept of notebooks, each notebook can have sections and pages, Just like a real notebook!

Note:
OneNote also has a concept of section groups but this is currently not supported by the CRM integration. Meaning you should just use sections and pages when integrating with CRM.

From the social pane in CRM it is possible to open OneNote notebooks in the context of the currently selected record. You can then create and collaborate on OneNote documents using any of the supported clients.

OneNote integration uses SharePoint to store the notebooks. Because of this OneNote integration options can be found in the document management area of settings in CRM.

Prior to enabling OneNote integration each entity requiring the OneNote functionality must also already be enabled for document integration.

An alternative approach to enable OneNote integration is to navigate to the entity in customizations and enable in the communication & collaboration section.

As sections are added into the OneNote notebook they will show in the navigation within the social pane in CRM.

Note: The level shown in the social pane is section. Within that section multiple pages may exist, to view the pages you’d need to open the section in OneNote.

Clicking on the section headings will open that section in OneNote.

One “strange” thing to be aware of is the way section names do (and don’t) change. When a new notebook is opened it will contain one section with the name set top “untitled”. Clicking on this heading will load the notebook. If you rename the untitled section in OneNote online this change is not reflected back in the CRM social pane. To rename sections it is best to open them using the full OneNote desktop application.

If you remove a CRM record the associated OneNote notebook will not be removed from SharePoint. If this needs to be removed it will need to be manually deleted from SharePoint.

By default, CRM will create a separate document location and a separate OneNote notebook for each record viewed. Should you wish to share one notebook across multiple entities this can be achieved by manually editing the document location so that it points to one shared OneNote notebook location.

As with SharePoint integration you need to be aware that CRM access and SharePoint access (and therefore OneNote) are not directly linked. Permissions will need to be granted in the CRM security model and SharePoint independently. You need to ensure users have access to both CRM and SharePoint.

It is also worth understanding that SharePoint and OneNote configuration does not form part of the CRM solution. When moving from development to production environments any configuration will need to be repeated in both environments.

In this post I hope I have covered all of the major points needed for the MB2-713 certification.
J