Perhaps you have Microsoft Office 365 and you are thinking of purchasing Microsoft Dynamics GP. They are both from Microsoft, but can they be used together? Can a cloud application talk to an on-premise application?
In this post, “”, our own local New England tech guru, John Dooley, answers these questions.
Just as a refesher, Office 365 offers a range of services from to email via Exchange, to Lync to SharePoint Online in the Cloud. ? Microsoft Dynamics GP is full featured financial management/ERP software built on the affordable and highly-scalable platform of Microsoft technologies. ?
It all started when John saw a simple demo of (Office 365). But asked, how do you pay the employee for the expense report? With Dynamics ERP software (for example Dynamics GP). This is the tool to use to manage AP invoices and pay employee expenses. But how can you enable that expense report “in the cloud” with an on premise Dynamics GP system? And how can we get from the online version of SharePoint in Office 365 to Dynamics GP?
He solves this dilemma with two simple techniques to “bridge” between SharePoint Online and his Dynamics ERP on premise. According to his post:
- The first technique is to use Excel both as a tool to complete the expense report in the cloud and as well as a conduit to my intranet. Once I open an Excel workbook from SharePoint Online on my local machine, I now have access to resources behind the firewall, thus providing an easy and secure way to access to local resources like a web service that can link to my on premise Dynamics ERP without all the complexity of the sandbox Silverlight callouts. Basically thru bringing the document and data on premise thru Excel.
- The second technique is to leverage SharePoint Online workflow and email integration. By triggering a SharePoint Online workflow via a task approval event in SharePoint Online I can have workflow send email to an on premise process or folder in a SharePoint on premise server that enables me to action the expense report at a data level where information like Vendor Id, Document Number, Invoice Amount can move from the spreadsheet to/thru a process to a web service that handles the create/post to Dynamics ERP. This technique uses the DIP (Office Document Information Panel) to move values from Excel into SharePoint Online.
Watch John’s .
Pretty cool stuff John! If you are a New England company looking to integrate Office 365, SharePoint Online with Microsoft Dynamics GP, at 860-485-0910. We can even get you in touch with John Dooley himself!
By Anya Ciecierski, CAL Business Solutions,
