Social selling is becoming more important these days, as companies are looking to find creative ways to generate more opportunities. Microsoft provides support for this in the Dynamics CRM space by providing integration with Yammer and CRM 2013. I’m going to show you how easy it is to setup Yammer to work with Dynamics CRM 2013, so your sales force can begin using its social features.
Prerequisites
There are a few prerequisites that need to be completed before the actual integration can be performed:
- Yammer Enterprise. Integrating Yammer with CRM 2013 requires the enterprise version of Yammer
- The user performing the integration with Yammer requires system administrator privileges in CRM 2013
- The user performing the integration with Yammer requires system administrator privileges for your organization’s Yammer account
- Install the most recent product updates for Dynamics CRM 2013
Steps
- Login to Dynamics CRM 2013 and navigate to the Settings area. This is done by clicking on Microsoft Dynamics CRM --> Settings
- Navigate to the Administration section by clicking on Settings --> Administration
- Click on the link titled Yammer Configuration to begin the wizard steps to enable the integration. Please note that you will not see this link if you do not have System Administrator privileges in Dynamics CRM
- A Yammer Disclaimer page will display, asking you to agree to the disclaimer. Click on Continue to proceed
- A configuration page will appear, with steps listed on how to connect your Yammer environment to Dynamics CRM 2013. Notice that only the first step, Authorize Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to connect to Yammer will be enabled at this point. Click on this link to perform the authorization step
- A dialog will display requesting you enter your Yammer credentials for the authorization. Enter these credentials and click the Log In button
- Another dialog will be displayed that asks you to confirm the connection between Yammer and Dynamics CRM 2013. Click on the Allow button to allow this connection
- At this point the integration is performed and complete, but the process takes you back to the Yammer configuration page, and you will notice that steps 2 and 3 are now enabled. These are optional steps that you can configure for specific items/behavior with the Yammer integration
- (Optional) Select a Yammer Group ID to control conversation access. This optional step allows you to configure whether all the conversations initiated from Dynamics CRM should be placed in a specific group in Yammer. If you don’t specify a group, the All Company Group is used for this
- (Optional) Set the level of security for Yammer activity stream messages. This optional step allows you to configure whether the conversations in Dynamics CRM are visible to everyone (Public). Selecting Private for this setting will require users in Dynamics CRM to follow the appropriate record in order to see the Yammer conversations
Configuring Entities
Once Yammer has been connected to Dynamics CRM 2013, you need to specify which entities in CRM you wish to enable for use with Yammer. This can be done by navigating to the Post Configuration section in Settings (click Settings -->Post Configurations).
In order to activate an entity for use with Yammer, select the desired entity and click the Activate selection in the top navigation bar. Deactivating an entity for use with Yammer is done by clicking the Deactivate selection in the top navigation bar. Please make sure you Publish All Customizations to verify that the changes you made take effect in Dynamics CRM.
Reactivating an inactivated entity for Post Configurations will restore any conversations in Yammer (they are not deleted when you inactivate an entity as the messages are stored in Yammer, not Dynamics CRM).
Issues to be Aware Of
There is only one issue I encountered when configuring the Yammer integration with Dynamics CRM 2013. You need to make sure you have your URLs for your Dynamics CRM organization as well as the URL for Yammer in your Trusted Sites zone in Internet Explorer options. Since my Dynamics CRM environment is online, the URL I used was https://*.crm.dynamics.com, and https://www.yammer.com. If you forget to do this, you may run into an issue when you complete Step 6 (I encountered a blank screen that sat there forever).
Conclusion
That’s it! You now have the social power of Yammer integrated into Dynamics CRM 2013, and can begin to leverage the benefits of social tools for your Dynamics CRM environment!