{"id":300,"date":"2014-10-17T07:31:39","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T11:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vyapin.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2014\/10\/17\/connecting-sharepoint-to-line-of-business-lob-applications\/"},"modified":"2021-05-27T13:51:52","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T13:51:52","slug":"connecting-sharepoint-to-line-of-business-lob-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vyapinsoftware.com\/blog\/connecting-sharepoint-to-line-of-business-lob-applications","title":{"rendered":"How to Connect SharePoint to Line of Business (LOB) applications?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Running SharePoint as your corporate data sharing platform allows you to keep your employees connected and updated. But when your data is spread across platforms, systems and applications, you need to connect to each of them, source data and synchronize as necessary. If you were storing the necessary data distributed across secured, Line of Business (LOB) applications, then you will need to to import in the required data into SharePoint from the application.<\/span><\/p>\n

The External Data Connector for SharePoint<\/a><\/strong> (EDC) is a tool that connects to external data sources, for example LOBs, fetches the required data subsets and adds them to SharePoint Lists. This enables sharing and updates as necessary. The EDC provides the advantage of a simplified method of connecting to the external sources of data. For example, if you store customer data in your CRM application running on an SQL DB, containing all relevant fields like the one shown below, then EDC provides you with the required means to import them into SharePoint.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"connecting<\/a><\/p>\n

EDC allows you to connect to the appropriate record in the SQL and import its content into SharePoint, while also updating the metadata in SharePoint. Such a scenario is highly useful to the Sales team as they need to view and update the customer database often with inputs being provided by various personnel, agents, contractors, as well as the field updates for payments made.<\/p>\n

The imported records can be updated in SharePoint by various teams granted access for this purpose. The steps below show you how to import external data into SharePoint using the EDC<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Select the external data base by indicating its type and by providing the required credentials. Next you need to select the record where the tables are listed. Check the screenshot below to see how it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

\"select<\/a><\/p>\n

Next, indicate the SharePoint List where you want this data added as an Item. If necessary you can create a new list of the required type to add the external data into. See how it\u2019s done below.<\/p>\n

\"indicate<\/a><\/p>\n

During this step you also have the option of indicating what to do under different scenarios. For example you can choose to:<\/p>\n