The FedEx Shipping manager software has a suite of integration features.  This allows one to import and export fields from external data sources including files, and ODBC connections.  After creating an ODBC connection to the CRM Database, imports were simple to setup.  But, the export was not working.  All the fields registered as read-only not matter how I set up the permissions.  I set about trying a number of work arounds.  First I started with trying to create an Access database to link to the CRM tables, but to no avail.  The FedEx integration assistant would not see the linked tables at all.  After trying a few more things with ODBC, I finally created a new database.  Within this database, I set up a single table with two columns (I was only wanting to export the tracking number for now).  An ID column and the tracking number.

I set up the integration in FedEx to insert a new row into this table everytime a shipment completed.  Then, to update the CRM SalesOrder.  I set an ‘on insert’ trigger on this table.  The trigger updated the appropriate record in CRM.

It’s a hack, but it worked.