Top 12 challenges with Dynamics 365 Document Management

The problem with the standard document management feature of Dynamics 365 

SharePoint Online meets all the above criteria better than Dynamics 365 Attachments. Does it mean that the criteria are also met by the  Standard Document Management Feature? The answer is No. Although SharePoint is better than Dynamics 365 Attachments on all criteria, SharePoint must be configured to meet the requirements. Therefore, not all issues will be solved by enabling the standard feature. 

Challenges with the standard document management feature of Dynamics 365 

If you plan to enable the Dynamics 365 Document Management feature, consider the following challenges:

1. Permission management 

The Dynamics 365 Document Management feature does not support permission transfer in the standard. That means the permissions of the record in Dynamics 365 are not synchronized to SharePoint. If you want to limit the access to the documents in SharePoint, then you need an individual developed solution between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint here.

2. Standardized filing structures 

Standardization is an important part of business processes. The standard feature of Dynamics 365 cannot create predefined filing structures. The filing structures must be created manually by the end users every time. The manual creation of the storage structures can be error prone. 

3. Navigation 

Documents are usually stored in different locations in SharePoint. If you do not customize the default SharePoint navigation, end users will have a hard time navigating to the documents. By default, the Dynamics 365 feature only provides the standard SharePoint navigation, which needs optimization. The SharePoint navigation can be customized manually. As a rule, dynamic adjustments of the SharePoint navigation based on the stored documents are required.

4. Search

The default Dynamics 365 feature can only store the documents in SharePoint and the documents can be found through SharePoint Search. If you configure SharePoint Search, you have much better options like filtering, sorting or SharePoint Search verticals. If SharePoint Search is not configured, IT can be reproached by the end users that the end users cannot find the documents. The Dynamics 365 Document Management feature does not provide a pre-configured search by default and search must be configured by IT or end users. If you are not a SharePoint search expert, then you can quickly become overwhelmed with the configuration. 

5. Versioning

SharePoint offers a versioning feature by default, which can be consumed directly with the standard Dynamics 365 Document Management feature. In addition to this, SharePoint offers other versioning options, such as "Minor & Major Versions". If you want to use the variant, you need to enable the option yourself. In the case of creating documents on different document libraries, you need to make the settings on each document library. This can be time-consuming.

6. Release processes 

The Dynamics 365 Document Management feature does not provide any release processes in the standard. If you need approval processes for your documents, then the processes need to be developed individually.  Deploying the approval processes on multiple document libraries can be error prone and costly.

7. Document templates 

The use of the document templates with the document management systems is not uncommon. Although SharePoint supports document templates, the SharePoint functionality cannot be consumed by the Dynamics 365 Document Management feature by default. If you want to actively use document templates, you need to extend the standard Dynamics 365 feature.

8. Naming conventions

The Dynamics 365 Document Management feature can store the documents from Dynamics into SharePoint. You again do not have the option to store and create the documents or filing structures with naming conventions. If you want to work with naming conventions, then you need to extend the standard Dynamics 365 feature.

9. Archiving & deletion of documents (retention)

If you want to apply your data protection policies to your documents and automate them, you will encounter the limitation of the standard Dynamics 365 feature at this point. Archiving and deletion is not covered by the standard Dynamics 365 feature. You need to connect the standard Microsoft 365 features with SharePoint and extend the standard Dynamics 365 feature to support these mechanisms.

10. Centralized access 

With the default feature of Dynamics 365, the end users have no way to access the documents from a central location. The end users must first find the record in Dynamics 365 and from there they must navigate to SharePoint or documents which is very cumbersome. To increase end user adoption, you need a central entry point to quickly navigate to the documents. You can only ensure this with custom SharePoint development/configuration.

11. Scaling 

Although SharePoint offers many advantages over Dynamics 365 for document management, it also has corresponding limitations that you need to consider. Basically, it is not a good idea to store all documents under one document library. There are different disadvantages and limitations when you store many documents under one document library. To deal with the limitations better, you should file the documents in different document libraries. In some cases, the documents need to be stored on different site collections and within the site collections on different document libraries. Scalable document storage is not supported by the Dynamics 365 Document Management feature in the standard. Scaling must therefore be implemented individually.

12. Information security

If you have the standard Dynamics 365 Document Management feature in use, the Information Protection Features are not provided pre-configured. The interaction must be configured first and has to be applied to each document repository. For this, you again need a customization in SharePoint.

How to deal with the challenges of Dynamics 365 standard document management features

Although SharePoint offers numerous document management options, the Dynamics 365 Document Management feature does not support the requirements in the standard. This means the standard Dynamics 365 feature must be extended through custom development to support the requirements. You can implement a solution yourself using various Microsoft cloud services. One option is to buy a  3rd party solution to shorten the project timeline and reduce the operational overhead with the maturity of 3rd party Dynamics 365 & SharePoint integration solutions.

3rd party solutions with which you can work around the challenges

Unfortunately, there are a few solutions that can help you solve your problems in a short time and with high quality. Dynamics Integrator by Valprovia is one of the best solutions you can use.