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Is there a way to replace attachments with links to third party systems in Dynamics CRM?

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Posted on by T.Wansing

Hey Community,

I want to replace attachments from annotation entities with a link to a third-party system. The background is that we have developed a solution which automatically exports attached documents to our document management system (DMS). Since storage space in Dynamics CRM is a little pricy and we do not want redundant document storage (CRM and DMS), the idea is to remove the exported documents from CRM and replace them with a reference link to the document inside our DMS.

I want to replace the attachment from inside a plugin and already have tried out some ideas, which include creating a .url file containing the URL to the exported document and replacing the original document with said file. That is also the closest I got to functioning, but I want to achieve a similar behaviour to what CRM is doing by default, which is downloading the attachment when a user clicks on it.

For the past two days, I have been searching the community and other sources but could not find anything that could help me achieve this goal. The closest thing I found was blog posts describing how to delete an attachment from inside a plugin, which only partially fits my scenario.

Is what I am trying to accomplish even possible?

Thanks for any help!

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Ray 1,505 on at

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RE: Is there a way to replace attachments with links to third party systems in Dynamics CRM?

Hi Timon Wansing,

I have done this before.

My poor solution is below:

Plugins:

Post Create ---- this plugin moves the attachment to target system and then update the annotation's content to null.

Post Delete ---- this plugin delete the attachment from target system.

Post Retrieve ---- this plugin get the content from target system when annotation get retreived.

Post RetrieveMultiple ---- this plugin get the content from target system when annotation get retreived.

WebResource:

HTML page to show attachment list and preview.(This should be replaced by a PCF control.)

My solution works but still with many problems:

Plugin may get timeout because it need time to transfer/get attachment content.

RetrieveMultiple plugin may slow down the page loading if any subgrid or timeline content annotation with attachments.

My solution is an one-way soluton, and I think you may need a two-way solution so that the attachment can sync between CRM and DMS? Then you may need to create extra Custom APIs for it.
T.Wansing 5 on at

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RE: Is there a way to replace attachments with links to third party systems in Dynamics CRM?

Hey Guido,

I have not yet looked into PCF controls, but I will do now. Thank you for the hint!
T.Wansing 5 on at

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RE: Is there a way to replace attachments with links to third party systems in Dynamics CRM?

Hey Ana,

Thanks for the reply!

I have seen this solution, but since we are currently building our own, it would mean we have to be dependent on another solution to get this feature, which we do not want. As far as I know, this solution does also not support our DMS so completely switching is also not an option.
Guido Preite 54,087 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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RE: Is there a way to replace attachments with links to third party systems in Dynamics CRM?

you probably can solve it with a PCF control
ananeto 144 on at

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RE: Is there a way to replace attachments with links to third party systems in Dynamics CRM?

Hey!

If you eventually decide to go for a pre-built solution for this, I would recommend CB Dynamics 365 Seamless Attachment Extractor which does exactly what you are trying to achieve.