Once we have the DocDrive App installed into our Tenant of Dynamics 365, we can open the App and start exploring how this integrates Dynamics with SharePoint.

If we open an Account Record in the App, this will Open the Record via a simple Dynamics Form.

This Form contains the DocDrive Panel, this will ‘peek’ into SharePoint to show the list of Documents for this Account.

DocDrive365 will create the Document Location in SharePoint for the Account when this Panel is first viewed, or when the Account Record is added to Dynamics, whichever comes first.

This ‘peek’ into SharePoint can be viewed in one of two views - first, the DocDrive Panel itself:

Second, the standard view of viewing Documents from SharePoint in Dynamics:

Both ways offer the option to open the SharePoint Location directly, and this will Open SharePoint to show how the Documents for that Account are being stored:

This tells us the SharePoint Location that has been created for the Account.

The initial configuration for DocDrive that comes as from the wizard will create a new Document Library in SharePoint for ‘Client Documents’ and a Folder per Account Record based on the Account Name - a simple default configuration of DocMan.

This configuration can be viewed or edited from the DocDrive365 Configuration element of the App.

Within here, we would visit the DocDrive Entities Area and open the ‘Account’ Entity Record here:

This record in the DocDrive App defines how Account records should interact with SharePoint - from the more obvious Entity Settings under Core Actions, to the Rules for what Document Location should be created for an Account.

Here we can see four types of DocDrive Rules for each Entity:

(1) The Record Rule that defines a new Document Location per Record in Dynamics - whether this be a new Folder, Document Library or Site in SharePoint for each Record.

For the initial default config, we can see a Rule here to create a new SharePoint Folder per Record, and name this Folder after the ‘name’ field of the Account Record.

(2) The Bucket Rule that defines a parent or fixed location in SharePoint for the Record Rule to make use of - this could be a Fixed Document Library, a Library based on another field on the Account, or a Parent Folder based on a Fixed or Flexible Field.

In our initial config this is a simple Document Library based on a Fixed ‘Client Documents’.

(3) The Parent Rule that sets whether this Entity should use a Parent Document Location based on a Lookup Field in Dynamics - this allows Document Hierarchies to be built based on the Relationships in CRM.

The initial default for Account does not have a Parent Rule but we will see this later when we look at Contacts, Opportunities or Cases.

(4) The Site Rule that informs which SharePoint Site (from the list defined in Dynamics) should be used.

Leaving this option blank will default to the SharePoint Site ticked in Dynamics as the Default Site.

This gives a walkthrough of how the the initial configuration of DocDrive now services a Record Folder and Bucket Document Library when creating a new Account or viewing the DocDrive Panel for an existing Account.

However these rules are entirely flexible and we can define any set of rules for an Entity in Dynamics that we want to integrate with SharePoint.

We will see this in Day 2 when it comes to looking at the Contacts and Opportunities that relate to an Account.