You are a Dynamics 365 online sales user. You want to quickly and easily store and access files related to sales opportunities, accounts, quotes, contacts, etc. It could be a contract, quote, proposal, image, whatever. If this is you, read on.
The enlightenment you seek is Dynamics 365 to SharePoint integration. It is one of my three no-brainer integrations for Dynamics 365 sales users. Why? Because:
- It’s easy to learn.
- It is easy to store and find what you need.
- Files get backed up.
Prerequisite
If it’s not turned on already, ask your admin or a power user to enable the connection between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint. It’s a native integration and takes less than 5 minutes to set up.
How to use it to manage documents
We’re going to work this from the Opportunity record. Let’s say you have a prospect called Wonderful World, and you’re working on their big opening order. You are moving through your sales cycle, generating documents such as NDAs, specs, proposals, estimates, images etc. You want a place to store this stuff, so they get backed up, are easy to get to, easy to work on and share within your organization.
Note the Files tab outlined in blue. Click that little guy, and two beautiful things happen in the background.
- A new folder gets created in SharePoint–a place to store all the files related to the opportunity.
- The opportunity folder is nested within a new Wonderful World account folder.
The empty new opportunity folder looks like this. Here, I have the option of creating a new document, uploading a file from my device, or changing SharePoint locations. We’ll keep it simple and upload three documents from my laptop: an image, a PDF and a Word doc.
Click on Upload, and you’ll see an Upload Document dialog box.
Choose the files from your PC (or OneDrive even).
Here’s what you see now in the Dynamics 365 opportunity record, under the Files tab. There are links to the files stored in SharePoint. Click, and they open up. You can work on these files too. For instance, I can open the Word doc, edit it and save it. If you need to upload a file larger than 50 MB, or open the actual SharePoint folder, click the ellipse.
Now you’re in SharePoint. You can see the three files within the opportunity folder. And you can see the opportunity folder nested in the Wonderful World account folder. Piece of cake. The other nice thing about this–SharePoint users can access these files. They don’t have to have a Dynamics 365 license. In other words, other members of your org can collaborate on these documents if needed.
The next level
Taking this to the next level, you can create sales documents and save them in SharePoint. But that’s for another day. If you want to tackle the setup yourself or share the instructions, click here.
By Mark Abes, Vice President, Dyn365Pros, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Partner, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, Southern California
