Upload and manage document templates in Dynamics 365

Article
11/28/2016

Applies To: Dynamics 365 (online), Dynamics 365 (on-premises), Dynamics CRM 2016, Dynamics CRM Online

Use document templates in Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online & on-premises) to export your Dynamics 365 data as Excel or Word files, which can be used as templates to generate Excel or Word documents with standardized and up-to-date Dynamics 365 data for analysis and reporting purposes. Using document templates ensures consistent and standard data representation for your company and customers. More information: Help & Training: Work with templates

After you have created a document template using the web client, you can programmatically upload the template file (.xlsx or . docx) to your Dynamics 365 instance, update the name or the template file associated with a document template record, retrieve the document template record, and delete the document template record. Use the DocumentTemplate entity to upload and manage organization-owned document templates, and the PersonalDocumentTemplate entity to upload and manage user-owned or personal document templates. You can share or assign personal document templates to other users.

To upload a document template, specify the path to the document, the name, the document type (Excel or Word), and the content (file to be uploaded) as a base-64 encoded string. The following code sample demonstrates how to upload an organization-owned Excel template. Before you upload the template, you must have created an Excel template file using the web client.

string filePath = @"C:\ActiveAccounts.xlsx";
DocumentTemplate myTemplate = new DocumentTemplate
{ 
      Name = "Sample Excel Document Template"; 
      DocumentType = new OptionSetValue(1); // For uploading an Excel template. 
      Content = Convert.ToBase64String(File.ReadAllBytes 
         (Path.Combine(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), filePath))) 
}; 
_templateID = _serviceProxy.Create(myTemplate); 
Console.WriteLine("Uploaded template: '{0}'.", myTemplate.Name);

If you want to upload a Word template file instead, specify the path to a Word template file in the filePath variable, and change the DocumentType parameter, as shown in the following example.

DocumentType = new OptionSetValue(2); // For uploading a Word template.

After you upload a template, activate it so it can be used to generate documents. Use the SetStateRequest message to activate the entity instance that you just created.

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Upload and manage document templates in Dynamics 365

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