Sharing Information in Microsoft CRM

If you work or collaborate with others, your coworkers may need access to your customer information in Microsoft CRM so they can find addresses or contact names. And as your business grows, your colleagues may need access to a history of all past activities as well as the ability to update this log.

Microsoft CRM enables you to easily share account information with associates, while allowing you to control access levels for each individual. Through privilege settings based on four specific sets of criteria—user type, security roles, access level, and security rights—Microsoft CRM provides you with the ability to expose only as much information as required by users, based on job title and needs. Through sharing, users can make exceptions to these settings based on individual criteria.

Using real-world scenarios, this page shows how you can use the sharing feature in Microsoft CRM to provide and control individual access to specific information beyond what the system allows.

Security Rights

Before we discuss the examples, here's a quick refresher on the security rights Microsoft CRM provides. The security rights defined for each user determine which tasks he or she can perform on the information he or she is able to access.

If a user has not created or does not own the record, his or her security rights are designated by the owner of the record through a process called sharing. When you share a record you own, you grant the user permission to view or change that information beyond what the user is allowed by his or her security role.

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Scenario 1: Sean Chai, Sales Representative, Eastern Region

The system administrator has added a new sales representative, Sean Chai, to the organization. As a sales representative in the Eastern Region, Sean is granted read, write, append, and assign privileges to all the contacts and account records in the Eastern Region. He has share and delete privileges only to the records that he creates and owns.

On the organization level, Sean has been granted view-only access to all contact and account records. When Sean logs into the system, he sees a list of all the contacts and accounts in the Northern, Southern, and Western Regions, but he cannot change or add information to them.

The following figure shows the typical access privileges granted to a salesperson by the system administrator.

Figure 1: A salesperson’s access privileges

While playing golf in Hawaii, Sean runs into an old college buddy, Rebecca Laszlo, who is interested in doing business with him. When Sean returns to work, he learns that Rebecca has already been added to the system by a salesperson in the Western Region, Fernando Caro. Sean and Fernando agree to collaborate on the account, and Fernando shares the record with Sean.

As shown in the following figure, when Fernando shares the record with Sean, he gives him read, write, append, and assign privileges, but retains share and delete privileges because he is the owner of the account.

Figure 2: Sharing an account with a salesperson

Sean can now view Rebecca's account, modify it, append items to it, and assign work activities, but he will not be able to delete it or share it with someone else.

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Scenario 2: Elizabeth Keyser, Customer Service Intern

It's the holiday season and Elizabeth Keyser is an intern who has been hired to help the customer service manager, Stefan Delmarco, monitor the quality of customer service the organization provides. When Elizabeth was hired, Stefan did not think she would open cases or work with customers; however, he knew she would need view access to all cases so she could check status and turn-around time.

The system administrator set up Elizabeth with a user account, granting her read-only privileges to customer service information, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 3: A customer service intern with read-only access privileges

When things suddenly get really busy, Stefan decides that Elizabeth has had enough experience and shown enough initiative to allow her to pitch in and handle some cases.

He selects a handful of cases he owns to share with her so she will have write privileges to them. When he attempts to do so, he finds out that since she has read-only access to the system, he cannot increase her privileges through sharing cases with her.

He contacts the system administrator, who changes Elizabeth's security privileges, allowing her write access to cases, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 4: A customer service intern with write privileges to cases

When this is done, Stefan is able to share his cases with Elizabeth, granting her both write and append privileges.

Figure 5: Sharing a case with a customer service intern

When you share information within your organization, it is important to exercise good judgment. Most system administrators and managers are cautious, providing read-only access to the team or organization at large, limiting modify privileges to individuals who need them to accomplish their daily tasks.

If you'd like to learn more about sharing records in Microsoft CRM, see Appendix B, "Security Role Tables," in the Microsoft CRM Implementation Guide and the following topics in Microsoft CRM Online Help:

Yvonne de Quadros is a senior technical writer for Microsoft CRM. She has worked as a writer and an editor specializing in online documentation at Microsoft and other software companies based in the United States. In her spare time, Yvonne watches movies and reads non-technical material avidly.-

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