This is a question we have heard now and then for many years. And the answer has usually been something like; yeah – but it will take a vast amount of hours to make it happen and you will only get a limited amount of functionality.

Well, this is not entirely true anymore. Din ERP AS took this challenge and turned the question into a requirement: We want to be able to run full featured IFS forms within SharePoint. A bold task it was, but this requirement is now a full blown possibility with our brand new framework “SharePoint Integration Platform for IFS”.

So, where did we start? How did we get here? And where are we now?

To start with the beginning; the employees of Din ERP AS have been working with IFS from all possible angles for many years. And all of us have had focus on making business processes smoother by setting up well tuned Personal Portals for the end users. And this experience was a crucial key factor for the task that we took upon ourselves, to make this happen within SharePoint. But then, what about the SharePoint side of the equation? 

We had some knowledge about this portal platform, but we quickly discovered that SharePoint itself was not, out of the box, a platform suited for running advanced ERP functionality. We needed help, and from what we had seen, we needed to start looking for help at the top shelf. One person in particular seemed to be the best man suited to take on this challenge, Sahil Malik, founder and principal of Winsmarts, Inc. We needed an expert, and when talking SharePoint, if Sahil doesn’t know it, it’s not yet invented! He’s been a Microsoft MVP and INETA Speaker for the past 8 years, author and reviewer of many books and numerous articles in both the .NET and SharePoint space. Basically, a brilliant guy to go with our very challenging task. Winsmarts, with Sahil as lead advisor, was hired to be the architect of our integration framework between IFS and SharePoint. That was the start. Winsmarts Inc. is now a strategic partner of Din ERP AS, and Sahil is working full time on this project.

So, where are we? We are now working intensively with a few selected pilot customers and the plan is to be in production with advanced IFS functionality in SharePoint during the year. To start with we are developing solutions for invoice handling, travel expense, time sheet and BI. We are also working on plans for an extended B2B solution with SharePoint as the front end. Our developers have done an amazing job and the project is so far ahead of schedule.