What are the Quirks of Server-Based SharePoint Integration for Dynamics 365

Dominic Jarvis, 22 November 2017

SharePoint integration for Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a great way to free up space taken up by files or attachments that are usually stored in Dynamics 365 itself. Enabling this integration can be incredibly helpful, but there are a few quirks when using this service.

Also just note that this article is primarily to do with enabling and using server-based SharePoint 365 integration with Dynamics 365 online.

Same Tenant

When enabling server based integration for SharePoint online with Dynamics 365 online, both instances must fall under the same Office 365 tenant. Note that this is the case with enabling integration with SharePoint online only, as Dynamics 365 online can also enable server based SharePoint integration with SharePoint on premise instances.

(Refer to: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn792527.aspx)

Office 365 Global Admin

An error that we have encountered with setting up server based SharePoint integration with Dynamics 365 online and SharePoint online is in the permissions required. The server based integration requires an Office 365 global admin to enable the initial integration.

This means that even if the user attempting to enable the integration is a system administrator in Dynamics 365 and a site admin in SharePoint online, this integration will still fail with a generic error. As this error does not offer any specifics as to the cause, this can be somewhat confusing.

However, once the server-based integration has been enabled, a user who is a system administrator in Dynamics 365 and a site admin in SharePoint online can enable ‘Document Management’ for entities in Dynamics 365 and choose a target site in the SharePoint instance.

Folder Names

Within the specified SharePoint site, the out of the box SharePoint integration will create a document library in the site for each of the entities specified for the integration. I will refer to these as the ‘base level’ folders in the site. These base level folders are created with the display name of the corresponding entity in Dynamics 365.

For example, by default the ‘Article’ entity is enabled for Document Integration. The corresponding base level folder will also be called ‘Article’.

 
While this is handy, and makes these base level folders look a lot nicer, particularly for custom entities, it is important to note that the URL for these folders is the schema name of the entity. This means that while the name of the folder will be ‘Article’, the URL of the folder relative to the site will be ‘kbarticle’. If you are writing custom code to interact with this SharePoint integration, it is important to keep this in mind, as the view presented to the user will be different from what the code displays.