I've said some days ago that I had quickly to return on this topic because there are lots of request about it on forums and newsgroups.
Connecting Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Dynamics NAV is not a titanic task, but it involves only a knowledge of the entire architecture that you want to obtain and (obviously) the knowledge of programming. I've to say that there are some commercial products that permits this connection (and we're waiting for the official Microsoft's connector) but this is not the topic of this post... here I want to leave you some ideas on how to implement the integration architecture.
So, how to obtain the integration between NAV and CRM? The basics are working with two technologies:
- Microsoft CRM Web Service
- Post Callouts
Microsoft CRM Web Service permits you to work with the CRM entities. This is the road that you've to take in order to execute from NAV a task that permits you to interact with a CRM record (write a new record, modify existing one, make a complex action).
You can write a custom DLL module that you can use from NAV (I've explained in the past here and here how to do it). This module can have different methods that can take a record from NAV and save it on the CRM or vice-versa (you can create any action you want from NAV to CRM).
Instead, in order to create a communication from CRM to NAV, you can use Post Callouts, a simple extension mechanism for implementing custom platform-based business logic. Post Callouts are simply custom events that fires after an action is taken on the CRM platform (PostCreate, postUpdate, PostDelete, PostAssign, PostSetState, PostMerge).
From a Post Callout, you can launch an event that creates an action on NAV starting from an action on the CRM environment, all in real-time.
Difficult? I don't think so... if you need to create a custom integration between NAV and CRM, this is the way to do. 