SharePoint–Salesforce Integration for Fast and Convenient Document Management
Client
The Client is a telecom company providing its services nationwide.
Challenge
The Client was using Salesforce Sales Cloud to support their sales activities and SharePoint Online as a system for storing, managing, and sharing their sales documents (contracts, orders, proposals) and marketing content (marketing demos, presentations, videos). The Client’s sales and marketing employees had hampered document management workflows because of working with the two systems separately. Additionally, the communication with the Client’s clients and prospects was not efficient enough as the sales and marketing specialists were unable to share sales documents and marketing content stored in SharePoint directly from Salesforce.
Solution
ScienceSoft’s business analysts investigated the Client’s business challenges and used them to elaborate detailed technical requirements to the application. Using the requirements, Salesforce developers created a custom application for Salesforce–SharePoint integration with the Lightning Component framework. The application appeared as a separate section in the Salesforce Account, Contact, and Opportunity records. The application enabled on-the-fly synchronization with SharePoint Online, which allowed:
- Searching for SharePoint files from Salesforce.
- Uploading files from Salesforce directly into SharePoint.
- Uploading files from Outlook integrated with Salesforce into SharePoint.
- Previewing and downloading SharePoint files right from Salesforce.
- Relating SharePoint files to particular Salesforce Account, Contact and Opportunity records.
- Sharing a link to SharePoint files with Salesforce contacts via email.
To enable user access to Salesforce Sales Cloud and SharePoint Online via one set of login credentials, ScienceSoft’s Salesforce and SharePoint developers set up a single sign-on (SSO), using Salesforce SAML settings and Azure AD.
The application was made easily configurable for users, which could set up an optimal mode of working with it. To provide detailed information about user settings of the app and the ways of their configuration, Salesforce developers created a user guide.
Results
The Client got a reliable application to align Salesforce Sales Cloud and SharePoint Online. The application allowed the easier way of managing (searching, downloading, previewing, etc.) SharePoint files right from Salesforce. It also streamlined the sharing of the necessary files with Salesforce contacts, thus facilitating communication with customers and prospects.
Technologies and Tools
Salesforce Sales Cloud, SharePoint Online, Lightning Component framework, REST API, OAuth 2.0
