I need to figure out a way to either import or have CRM check against
an external catalog for the porduct list. I need to do this because
we are using an external product catalog that gets update on a weekly
basis. How do I import this into CRM so we don't have to update
thousands of products weekly, which would be impossible. I just want
to be able to import this on a weekly basis or copy the new catalog
and overwrite the old one in which CRM is pointing to. Is this
possible?

Nick,

You might want to take a look into the SDK. For this purpose, you would be
most likely looking at developing a fairly straight forward integration to
load/update the product data. You could also look into a tool like Scribe's
Migrate, but the cost for a simple process like this might be a little high.

Matt

"Nick" <nrjarman@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:5c63ab7a.0312011351.8f24221@posting.google.co m...
I need to figure out a way to either import or have CRM check against
an external catalog for the porduct list. I need to do this because
we are using an external product catalog that gets update on a weekly
basis. How do I import this into CRM so we don't have to update
thousands of products weekly, which would be impossible. I just want
to be able to import this on a weekly basis or copy the new catalog
and overwrite the old one in which CRM is pointing to. Is this
possible?

Thanks I guess I will have to check this out. I was
hoping there was gonna be an easy way to do this. Seems
like they would have made CRM able to import more than
just contacts/accounts or at least made it easy to point
to an excel file and bring in the info since it is so easy
to export to excel.

Nick

Look at either creating an app you run or even an NT service which takes
your product data and updates CRM perhaps early in the morning before anyone
uses the system.

Writing such a tool is a pretty trivial exercise however there are a number
of gotchas to think about

1 - if you have a large number of items the data load coud take literally
hours using the sdk
2 - are you updating products and adding new ones or just adding
3 - if you updating what happens to records using the old ones etc

writing the code for this would literally take a week max however the real
hard work is ensuring you have all the rules and scenarios worked out. Keep
this in mind when estimating the time to complete etc

Best of luck and feel free to ask any questions around this on this
newsgroup as most of us here are doing similar work.

"Nick" <nrjarman@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:5c63ab7a.0312011351.8f24221@posting.google.co m...

While MS could have allowed you to import products from excel it would not
work when you wanted to update them etc.

if your not a coder then look at the scribe tool. However if you've been
looking for an excuse to get into coding then CRM is as good an excuse as
any :-)


<anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:04ef01c3b861$1c7712d0$a301280a@phx.gbl...

Why would it not be possible to update products using an excel spreadsheet?
I have several applications that perform update/delete operations during the
import based on a column in the imported record.

Though I am impressed by Microsoft's committment to XML, I think it is
absurd not to be able to import data into CRM without a programmer. They
should work with other file formats as well. Just like they do with Outlook.

--
J. Tennyson Einstein
Einstein Technologies

Add ink input to Outlook with Tablet Enhancements for Outlook! Only $19.99!
http://www.einsteinware.com

"John O'Donnell" <csharpconsulting@nospam-hotmail.com-nospam> wrote in
message news:%23Gi2$LGuDHA.2180@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...

i've made new forms and mappings. Im need to get the sum
of my products into my new quotes form. This is one of the
many problems that i think i can overcome with writing the
pages. i'm not a programmer. i've read through some of the
sdk and am trying to find out where to start, or a book,
any thing. thanks