Data Transfer from BCM to Dynamics CRM 2011 Online

Roshan Mehta, 21 April 2011

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I recently had the opportunity to create a data migration tool which transfers data from Business Contact Manager 2007 to Dynamics CRM 2011 Online. Business Contact Manager 2007 is an add-on for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and is a system which allows you to store data relating to Contacts and Accounts, as well as link e-mail activities to these Contacts and Accounts much like Dynamics CRM.

There are a few challenges when performing this type of data migration. Firstly, it is important to list out each of the fields which need to be mapped into CRM 2011. To do this, we needed to take a backup of the BCM database and restore it using SQL Server Express. We could then examine the database structure in order to determine which tables and/or views needed to be queried to transfer data in these fields.

The trickiest task was to locate custom fields in BCM. The structure here is not the same as Dynamics CRM, where you can find custom fields in the same filtered view as system fields for any entity. They are easy to identify based on the schema prefix set within system settings in CRM. BCM however has separate tables and views dedicated to storing custom fields. These fields are stored in binary format and have a related field which determines the correct data type for that field.

The next task involves mapping each of these fields to CRM 2011 fields. Custom fields need to be re-created in Dynamics CRM 2011 in order for the mapping to be successful. We also needed to perform a lot of data cleaning, as e-mail activities stored the sender, recipients, and e-mail body inside a single field in the BCM database. This needed to be separated in order to map them correctly to Dynamics CRM 2011.

The nice thing about performing a data migration from BCM to Dynamics CRM 2011 is that we can directly query the BCM database. This means that there is no limit to the number of records you can retrieve in a single query so the retrieval is extremely quick.

If you’re thinking of moving your BCM 2007 data into a Dynamics CRM 2011 on-premise or online environment or you wish to find out more about the data migration process, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

* Image 1 from: http://blog.brianleejackson.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/outlook2007_logo_lg.jpg
* Image 2 from: http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-89-49-metablogapi/6724.dyn_2D00_CRM2011_5F00_v_5F00_rgb_5F00_3.png