During a recent implementation of Business Portal for Dynamics GP 10.0 for a customer, we inevitably encountered the question of where the Business Portal content should reside. Before we dig in, here is a little bit of background…

Background
Business Portal for Microsoft Dynamics GP delivers browser-based, role-appropriate access to Microsoft Dynamics GP information and processes and can be installed on Windows SharePoint Services or Office SharePoint Server. We implemented Business Portal for our customer as a way to extend the reach of their Human Resources and Payroll information in Dynamics GP to all 2,200+ employees. Employees are now able to log into the company’s intranet to view their HR profile, submit changes such as enrolling in benefits, updating education records and emergency contact information, and view their pay stubs as a way to save on paper costs associated with distributing paper copies.
 
Our customer already had a company intranet built on Office SharePoint Server 2007. They had one web application housing one site collection with many sites and subsites. All of this was contained within a single content database.
 
With the implementation of Dynamics Business Portal, you have many options when it comes to planning for and managing the content storage in SharePoint. For example, you can install Business Portal into an existing site collection or a new site collection. In SharePoint you can have one or many site collections per content database. The final decision on how best to manage the content storage of a Business Portal solution is ultimately made by balancing the business, legal, and IT considerations that surround your organization.
 
This article is not intended to cover the best practices for managing SharePoint content databases in terms of database size limits and scalability. A lot of factors are involved in that type of discussion, such as number of existing sites, expected short and long-term growth of the company, sites and content, as well as your company’s backup and recovery plan.
 
What we will cover is one scenario for planning for and managing your SharePoint content databases as it relates to a Dynamics Business Portal implementation. Read the rest of this entry »