Extending collaboration capabilities to external data

A computing device includes instructions that, when executed by a processing unit, cause the processing unit to: create a business data catalog module that accesses and manipulates data residing on an internal data store and an external data store, wherein the business data catalog module receives a request for data, determines whether the data resides in the internal data store or the external data store, and access the data residing on the external data store, and create a external data provisioning module that provisions data accessed from the external data store, wherein the external data provisioning module maps external data from the external data store for presentation on a client computing device. A user can access and manipulate the data from the external data store in a same manner as accessing and manipulating data from the internal data store.