While the focus of the previous chapters has been mostly on customizing Dynamics CRM and using data internal to the application, this chapter will focus on bringing various other data feeds into the application.

This chapter is a light approach to integrating various social media sources into Dynamics CRM 2011. We will only focus on the client-side scripting aspect. You can do a lot more by using plugins, but the value brought by integrating other sources on the client side is, in many instances, more than enough. It also shifts the load from the server to the client, which in some instances is a desirable outcome.

In order for all of these recipes to work, the machine you are developing on, as well as the client machines need to have direct access to the internet. No caching takes place, and all data is retrieved dynamically from external sources.