Document management
Document management supports saving record attachments in Azure Blob storage and SharePoint Online. Database storage is obsolete. Azure Blob storage is equivalent to storage in the database because documents can only be accessed through the application, and it offers the added benefit of providing storage that doesn't negatively affect the performance of the database.
Azure blob storage is the default and works immediately. SharePoint storage will work immediately if you have a Microsoft 365 license because it auto-discovers the SharePoint tenant, such as a user on the TenantA.onmicrosoft.com. Microsoft 365/Microsoft Entra tenant gets TenantA.sharepoint.com as the SharePoint site. If document management has been turned off by the user, turn it on by selecting Common > Setup > User options > Preferences > Miscellaneous and setting Document handling active to Yes.
On any page that has data, an Attach button will be available in the upper-right corner. The Attachments page provides a view of the attachments (documents) that are associated with the record that was selected on the previous page. You can add new attachments to the record by selecting the New button (+) in the app bar. For the File and Image document types, you will be prompted to provide the associated file.
A preview for supported file types is provided on the Preview FastTab. Basic document types, such as PNG images and text files, are supported by default. Office document types, such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, must use a production Office Web Apps Server, which might not be available in a OneBox configuration.
The automatically generated Open in Excel experiences that are created for entities have a single table binding.
A developer in your team can help you achieve the following by using Visual Studio.
- You can suppress the static Export to Excel mechanism for a grid or change the label that appears on the Open in Microsoft Office menu.
- The list of fields that are added to that table binding is defined by the AutoReport field group if the table binding contains fields. Otherwise, the key and mandatory fields for the entity are automatically added. The order of fields in the AutoReport group determines the order of fields in the table binding.
- Templates that are registered as system-defined templates are loaded at deployment. This behavior is useful for independent software vendors (ISVs) and partners that want to package templates together with other model artifacts.
Preview documents
You can specify the destinations for various print management actions for configurable business documents. This means that for a preview, the scenario Preview/Print > Original can be used, and for email and printing, Preview/Print > Use print management can be used.
Templates
When a template listed in the Common > Common > Office integration > Document templates page (DocuTemplate) has ShowInOpenInOfficeMenu set to Yes and has the same root datasource (table) as the current page, it will be added as an option in the Open in Excel section of the Open in Microsoft Office menu.
A template is an artifact that needs to be maintained and versioned.
Create a template if:
- You need additional content or formatting in the template.
- You want to combine multiple entities or data sources in the same workbook.
When creating a template for an entity that has country or region-specific fields, you should leave those region-specific fields out of the template. Otherwise, all users will see the country or region-specific fields.
Templates should cater to most users by default and region-specific users can add those fields by using the easy-to-use design experience of the Excel add-in. The region-specific fields and columns can be added by users as needed. That template can be either saved to local computer for reuse by a single user or uploaded via the Document Templates page for reuse by any user of that instance. A couple of other considerations:
- If a region has a country or region-specific entity, then a country or region-specific template could be created.
- If a region is important enough, then you could define a country or region-specific template and a country or region-generic template.
Scan file attachments for malicious threats
When working with file attachments, your organization may want files to be scanned for any malicious threats before the document is uploaded to Dynamics 365. There is an extension point in the application that lets you integrate file scanning software of your choice into the file upload process. There are also similar extension points that are available for scanning attachments.
The FileUploadResultBase class exposes the delegateScanStream() delegate. The delegate applies to any file upload where the Upload strategy class has been specialized. If the scanning software determines that the upload is malicious, the upload process will fail.