SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 Boost Microsoft Dynamics Ease-of-Use, Corporate Reach

Dynamics users have a lot to gain from the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 applications launched this week.

According to Rob Helm, managing vice president research with Kirkland, Wash.-based Directions on Microsoft, the two new applications will make it easier for Dynamics users to perform certain tasks and also will broaden Dynamics' exposure among the office workforce. And it's all part of Microsoft's overall strategy and ongoing initiatives to improve integration between Office and Dynamics applications.

"There's nothing specific about Dynamics in (these SharePoint and Office applications) but Dynamics is the authoritative source for sales and inventory data and the basic information used to run a business," Helm said. "And these new tools creates an easier way to build reports than users can currently do in Dynamics."

Dynamics AX and NAV, for example, have the heavy-duty ERP infrastructure to perform business intelligence inquiries on large data sets, but they often require additional code or/or an Excel guru to execute, Helm said.

Now, however, typical AX and NAV users can simply identify the data they want to analyze, assemble it into a data set and build Excel PowerPivot tables (extracting data in real time) without extensive expertise, he said. Then they simply publish the data in SharePoint and colleagues without Dynamics on their desktops can view the results using a browser, he said.

According to Helm's new report on the twin 2010 releases, SharePoint 2010's Business Connectivity feature makes Dynamics data more accessible and importable, a feature that he anticipates Microsoft and/or partner developers "will jump to exploit," he predicted. The new Business Connectivity feature also makes it easier to push data out to ...