What is so cool about a CRM query data source? The query Data source is one of the things that make SmartConnect stand up above other tools when it comes to integrations between GP and CRM. SmartConnect does not require you to do all the hard work – much of that has been done by the eOne dev team. With many generic integration tools you will be directed to go and select the tables you want in your data source – but not with SmartConnect.
If you want to move data from CRM to GP – you first need to tell the system where the data is coming from. You could (like most integration tools) go direct to the SQl tables to find the data. As we all know this fraught with danger. The CRM query data source instead shows you graphically all the entities inside CRM, allows you to link them together and select the required fields for the data source.
The beauty here is that you only deal with friendly names, and without writing any code you generate all the code to pull this data together from the CRM web services. The query builder handles all the GUID’s automatically so you need not battle these as you would if you went direct to the tables.
To build a CRM Query Data source you:
1. Select the Data source type
2. Then use the query interface to select the entities and fields you need. On the bottom part of the screen you are also able to define restrictions on your data source so only records that meet your criteria are selected. 
3. All the hard work is done by SmartConnect by generating the code to collect all the data you need in your data source.
