How to connect Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Jira

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Use case: Integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM data into Jira 

Let's take a frequent use case around here: all customer data resides in a pre-existing CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and the customer support is provided on a Jira Service Desk portal. For Service Desk Agents to provide efficient service, they need data from the CRM, like the type of customers, locations, products, etc. By integrating this data back into Jira, inside tickets, it will give all key information to support agents. This cannot be done with Jira natively, so one of the solutions is to use a Jira addon, Elements Connect, to fetch key information from an external data source and display it inside Jira issues.

How it works: Elements Connect

Elements Connect allows to fetch external data from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM and populate custom fields with it.

In this Support portal use case, it can be linked to the customer ID. This way, when customers raise a request on the Support Portal, their ID is used by Elements Connect to fetch the corresponding data from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Key information that support agents need, such as services used, location or contact details, can be displayed only in the Agent view. The app lets you configure how data is displayed and how often it is refreshed to keep it up-to-date.

How to set it up

Requirement: have the Jira administrator role

Step 1: Set up the data source connection to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM

First, you need to create a new datasource in Elements Connect administration.

Select the type URL and fill in the connection details to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM REST API:

• URL: [Organization URI]/api/data/v[X.X]
• Authentication: add authentication credentials (HTTP Basic and OAuth2 are both available)
• Content type: JSON

Check the Microsoft API documentation for more information.

Step 2: Fetch external data to populate custom fields

Let's retrieve a list of all accounts from the CRM. This is an example with one field, but the Microsoft Dynamics CRM datasource gives access to plenty of information like Customer type, Account Manager, Account contacts, Site name & address, etc.

• Create an Elements Connect field of type Live Text, name it.
• Select the "Microsoft Dynamics CRM" datasource created previously.
• Adapt the query ("URL Path") to your needs, check out the Microsoft API documentation to discover what you can do with it.
• Click the "Save" button, the field can now be used from an issue.

Result in a Jira ticket:

You can now fetch more external data from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM and display it inside Jira issues.

Check on the Elements Connect documentation to go further.