“We didn’t have to look at each individual user and apply the security individually. It did it for us! There was no time lost, waiting for the documents to be securely delivered.”
– Ivanhoé Cambridge
Customer: Ivanhoé Cambridge
Headquarters: Quebec, Canada
Activity: Real Estate
Product application: CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator
Founded in Quebec in 1953, Ivanhoé Cambridge holds interests in more than 1000 properties through its subsidiaries and partnerships, focusing mainly on office, retail, residential and logistics real estate.
Thanks to its team's dedication and smart business decisions, the Canadian company Ivanhoé Cambridge has become one of the all-time greats in international real estate investments.
The Challenge
With such a high number of properties to manage, the amount of documentation was considerable. And documentation is crucial in the real-estate business, as it helps evaluate the risks and supports timely and accurate decision making while ensuring legislative compliance.
Back in 2017, Ivanhoé Cambridge was using Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the solution seemed to be rather straightforward, as Dynamics CRM offered a standard out-of-the-box integration of SharePoint, enabling organizations to link SharePoint documents with CRM records. This solution also enabled users to manage SharePoint documents and utilize many of the document management features of SharePoint directly in the Dynamics CRM user interface. However, as Dynamics CRM and SharePoint's security models differ significantly, this out-of-the-box integration did not guarantee the same level of access to records in CRM and SharePoint.
Although the document management capabilities of SharePoint were integrated into Dynamics, the security permissions of the CRM were not enforced in SharePoint. This presented a potentially high-risk security issue when dealing with confidential and proprietary information.
The Solution
Ivanhoé Cambridge found the solution in an out-of-the-box solution by Connecting Software, CB Dynamics CRM – SharePoint Permissions Replicator. This solution evolved over the years and is now CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator. In 2018, Microsoft wrote a short case study on this.
CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator covers the whole Dynamics 365 security model. It ensures the enforcement of proper user rights to SharePoint folders (such as libraries, sites and document sets). Thus it ensures that each document in SharePoint will be accessible only to those users who have access to the respective records in Dynamics 365. Any modifications to the Dynamics 365 privileges for any record will be automatically applied to the permissions in SharePoint. Whenever a new document is uploaded and stored in SharePoint, it is immediately protected following the inherited permissions.
The Result
“The SharePoint documents appeared on the newly created teams’ SharePoint sites in a matter of minutes. They could begin to work right away. There was no time lost, waiting for the documents to be securely delivered.”
With CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator, Ivanhoé Cambridge has a solution that seamlessly and automatically meets business and legislative requirements of data privacy and confidentiality. And due to the ultimate stability of the solution, they also managed to mitigate the need for outgoing maintenance.
“We didn’t have to look at each individual user and apply the security individually. It did it for us! That was unusual.”
With their documents safely stored, they have the most sensitive information of their customer records safe and they can focus on what they do best – investing in real estate.
This is how it works for Ivanhoé Cambridge. If you want to discuss how it can work for your organization, get in touch with our experts. They will be more than happy to answer your questions.