Attachments in D365 can be various types. One type is called "Note". A Note type attachment is plain text. For example, it looks like this…
As you can see, the type is "Note", and under General/Details/Notes, there is the plain text note that is just the text "This is the note message."
Another type of attachment in D365 is called "File". A File type attachment is just like an attachment in an email message. It could be a DOCX document file, an XLSX spreadsheet, a PDF document, or any other file type at all. In my case, I'm testing the file attachment import using a DOCX file, but the type of file is irrelevant for this process.
For example, here is a File type attachment in D365.
You can see in the screen capture that the type of attachment in this case is "File", and in the Attachment fast tab it shows the file information. The file can be previewed in the "Preview" fast tab.
This is what I expect the end result to look like when I import a D365 "customer attachment" record of type "File." The challenge I'm facing is how to include the file itself in the import process. Every time I try to import a D365 attachment of type "File", I get these errors:
Results. 'FileContents' is required when attaching a file
Results. validateWrite failed on data source 'DocuRefEntity (DocuRefEntity)'
Unfortunately, there is no documentation on this that I can find, and so I don't know how to properly format the Excel file to make this work.
I opened a case with Microsoft's LCS support (really "Tek Experts"), and so far they haven't been able to tell me how to make it work. Here are the steps they suggested:
Create a data export job
Add export entity: customer attachment
- destination format file: excel
- Importable fields only
- Enable Staging
Enable "data package"
Run export job (click "Export Now")
Click "Download package" in export results page button bar at the top
Extract the package
Add a folder named Resources
Add the file(s) to the Resources folder that you want to import as file type attachments
Edit the Excel file.
Delete the existing entries, leaving the header row
Generate GUID using website: https://www.uuidgenerator.net/guidand put it to DocumentID column, with curly braces
Save the changes to the XLSX file
Compress all 3 files and the folder to a zip file
Their instructions stopped their, so I made some assumptions and tried these steps to import it...
Create an Import job.
Add file
- Entity name: Customer attachments
- Source data format: package
- Upload and add
Click Import now
Unfortunately, those steps don't work for me. I get the same error as above.
Has anyone else used the "Customer attachments" (or similar) data entity to import File type attachments to D365? If so, how did you get it to work?
Thanks in advance for any and all advice about this.
