Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

Account Entity/Sharepoint - Creating a new (and separate) files tab in the account entity with it's own documents that still connects to the same account entity?

Hello!

I am trying to help my company do some basic contract management in Dynamics - Sales. Really all we need is a form to enter data related to the contract and then a place to store contract documents and such.

I'm very new to Dynamics in general, but so far I've created a new tab in the Account entity called, "Contract." This is a simple form with lots of text data fields and all is good here. Next my team wants me to add a new tab that will essential act just like the "Files" tab. This new tab would need to connect to our sharepoint location to save these contract documents.

The original files tab works great. When an account is created, a folder is created under accounts in sharepoint (Account --> Account name --> documents). What I'm trying to figure out is how I can connect my new contract document tab and point it to the same sharepoint account folder, but then also create a new folder (maybe Account --> Account name --> Contract --> documents) specifically for these files. I realize it's probably easier to just create a "contracts" folder under the original files tab and then set up security roles and such to manage access/viewability, but this is the workflow/UI my team wants at the moment.

My thought is that maybe the contract documents tab can just be logically a duplicate of the files tab, and then maybe I can just use Power Automate to take anything that's uploaded to the contract documents tab and then create a new contract folder under the account (if it doesn't already exist). After that I can use security roles to manage who can access each of the two files tabs and who can see what folders/files etc.

Is there a simpler solution for this sort of thing? I also realize if I created the contracts as a brand new entity, I could turn on document management and link the entity to accounts so file upload folder management is mostly done out of the box with dynamics, but the team specifically wants the info under a tab in accounts. Adding a new CONTACT, for example will create a folder within the account. I want that same functionality but for CONTRACTS uploaded within my custom upload tab. Having an entity subgrid within the accounts entity or any similar flow is a little too complicated for me to wrap my head around right now but maybe that's the way I need to go? This all seems like a simple problem on the surface, but I'm too new to really have a solid idea of how to do this.

Hi,

For your requirement, you can use Power Automate Flow to create an account record and create the Contracts folder inside the Account folder in SharePoint, as you have said.

However, if you are going with the approach of creating the Entity of Contracts in the CRM and following the hierarchical structure for Accounts, then you can easily achieve your scenario and create the below-mentioned folder structure in SharePoint, but you have to create the entity of Contracts for this.

Now, if you are creating the entity of Contracts and want more functionality revolving around your business use-case, like implementing security to the Contract and Account folders in SharePoint, then we have a product in our portfolio named SharePoint Security Sync, which provides the best feature called Attach2Dynamics UI. Using this user interface, you can stand on Contracts record, set the account record, hit Attach2Dyamics UI, and easily upload the documents directly in the below folder structure in SharePoint.

Folder Structure :- Account >> Account_Record >> Contracts >> Contract_Record >> Documents.

Using our feature, you can do multiple operations like uploading the documents, dragging and dropping the files, emailing those documents to other users in CRM, etc. Our SharePoint Security Sync, in addition to document management, also provides security and replicates the security mechanism of Dynamics CRM to SharePoint. The users will be able to see folders in SharePoint depending on the privileges assigned to them for those entities in CRM.

Please find this document to learn more about our product, SharePoint Security Sync, and you can also contact us at crm@inogic.com for further queries.

Thanks!

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