Forum Discussion
Large document libraries in SharePoint Online
This is a very interesting discussion - I'm curious what have you considered for an archival strategy? Do you just keep the files for unlimited time, or are there any rules based on Document Type? For example do you store contracts/SOW's in this library? Do those need to live forever? Are there other artifacts that could perhaps be retired?
Hi JaredMatfess,
Even content types aren't used when using this kind of CRM integration it's just a file store.No metadata, no content types. Just folders (or equivalent things like Libraries and document sets) that can be addressed with a single Url.
Within the entity instances wihtin CRM this url can be specified and that is it.
Of course it is possible with CRM add-ins to build something more advanced.
Thanks to all for their replies to this discussion.
It helps me to make a decision which way we go in this case.
First a good news from my sales manager: We don’t need to synchronize the Documents for Offline use.
Now we don’t need to create a new library for each opportunity. Very good.
(Additional Info: With the new sync client it is not possible to sync a list with 100.000 Elements. I didn’t see the sync button in my big list. And it is also not useful.)
Here is the way we go:
- We create a Folder with his subfolders, all templates and permissions we need for each opportunity. Like we do it in the moment.
- When we create the folder we also create a separate list entry for the peoples to found the folder they need faster. Also they can use search in this list.
- In CRM a link is generated to the folder in SharePoint
- Also we get an status update from CRM – based on this we can move old Data to an archive.
I think this is the best way and we don’t need to move the exists documents to a new structure.
We only have to create the list – but it is no problem to write a small tool with CSOM to do this.
As the out of the box SharePoint integration isn't very good, I'm building a custom integration for most of my customers:
- I tend to provision a site per CRM customer.
- In that site I create several document libraries (e.g. quotes, opportunities, projects etc)
- During the provisioning of those document libraries, I also provision a site content type to the document library.
- The site en document locations are wirtten back to CRM as SharePointSite and DocumentLocation records.
- You can even consider using document sets to add metadata. E.g. create a document set with metatdata from CRM and make sure all documents inherit that metadata.
After the custom provisioning is done, you end up with an out of the box CRM / SharePoint integration, fully supported and highly scalable. Setting permissions is also more manageable, as you can set permissions on site, library and documenset level. Using content types and document sets with inherited metadata also enables good search scenario's.
The only scalability issue you need to considere are these:
- Every site collection has a limit of 2000 subsites. So you probably need to implement logic to split up your CRM record over several site collections (e.g. use a autonumber solution)
- With bulk import you need to consider throtteling issues.
Martijn,
How do you maintain the folders in SharePoint without losing the connection to Dynamics? Our consultant did not spellcheck/de-dupe before setting this up. I've gone into Dynamics and corrected spellings and merged duplicate organizations but the folders in SharePoint are not updated accordingly. What do you do if someone misspells a folder?
