This article outlines the ClickDimensions use of Microsoft CRM entities and the security requirements for ongoing use.
Deployment Setup
To provide the ClickDimensions service access to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-premise, we recommend that CRM be setup in Internet Facing Deployment (IFD) mode with a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate in place.
Due to deprecating support of TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 by most major technology vendors, ClickDimensions will soon only support encrypted communication using TLS 1.2. For more information on these TLS changes and their potential effects, please see our TLS article here.
To learn about deployment for CRM 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016 and Dynamics 365 - click here.
Entities and Actions
The ClickDimensions marketing automation service tracks web visitor information and copies it into Microsoft CRM. Doing so requires continuous access to the CRM application. ClickDimensions utilizes a designated CRM User known as the ClickDimensions Service User to facilitate communication with your CRM environment.
One method of authentication for the service user is Username/Password authentication. When using this authentication method, it is recommended to have a dedicated user with a fixed password explicitly for the purpose of being used as the ClickDimensions Service user to avoid connectivity issues due to password changes.
ClickDimensions can also make use of an Application User Authentication (available in CRM Online environments) to communicate with your environment. Application User Authentication provides a way to create a license free method for services to integrate with dataverse. For details regarding Application Users, please see this Microsoft Application User article. You can also read more about the additional benefits in our Application User article.
The operations that are made by the service are:
- Retrieving and Updating Contact records: visitors which are identified by the service as contact records are synchronized into the identified contacts. Contacts information is also used for merging with email template during email send.
- Retrieving, Creating and Updating Lead records: if the service cannot find an existing contact in the CRM that possesses the visitors’ email address, a new lead is created with the visitor information. Alternatively, if a lead is found with the visitors email address and there is no contact record with the same email, the lead is updated. Leads information is also used for merging with email template during email send.
- Retrieving and Updating Account records: ClickDimensions retrieves account information in order to map web site form data to account records. Accounts information is also used for merging with email template during email send.
- Retrieving, Creating and Updating ClickDimensions custom entities: the list of ClickDimensions custom entities currently includes:
- Anonymous Visitor
- IP Organization
- Visit
- Page View
- Posted Form
- Posted Field
- Domain
- Filter
- Form Capture
- Form Capture Field
- Form Field
- Option Mapping
- Profile
- Setting
- Email Send
- Sent Email
- Email Event
- Unsubscribe
- Execute Send
- Email Template
- Excluded Email
- Send ClickDimensions Email
- Posted Subscription
- Posted Survey
- Subscription List
- Subscription Preference
- Survey Answer
- Survey Question
- Web Content
- Category
- Campaign Automation
- ClickDimensions Import
- Event
- Event Participations
- Nurture Program
- Bulk Text Message
- Score Models
- Scores
- Retrieve Metadata: ClickDimensions service queries the metadata for mapping, display and sync purposes.
- Opportunities, Email Activity, Campaign Response, Campaign and Campaign Lists: These MS CRM entities are retrieved for display purposes in the Profile Page and while sending emails.
- Campaign entity: retrieved for the purpose of associating with ClickDimensions records.
- System User entity: The MS CRM user entity is retrieved for authentication purposes and while sending emails.
Record Ownership
All records created via the ClickDimensions service will be owned by the user that is set as your Service User. This process works the same way for both Application User or Specific User. After creation, you can re-assign these records to different users, if necessary.