Using DocDrive365 for a Documents Roll-up View in Dynamics

   Words by CRM Consultancy

   on 18/10/2018 11:11:00

RollupWe working with Documents in Dynamics we will want to see not just the Documents connected with a particular Record, but all the Documents connected to that Record or any of the Record’s Child Records – the traditional ‘roll-up’ view.

The most typically example is where we have a Company Record in our CRM and want to see all the Documents connected to any of the Projects or Cases for that Company, and so see this full roll-up view of everything connected to this Company.

In SharePoint this can normally be achieved easily using a hierarchy Folder Structure:

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Example of how SharePoint could be structured using a simple Hierarchy Folder Structure

But what if we do not want to use Folders, and instead want to bring different areas of SharePoint (and maybe even completely different hierarchies!) together and present as a single view in Dynamics?

In this example we may have a structure similar to the following:

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Example of a more distributed SharePoint structure that we want to bring together when viewing the Documents within Dynamics

Showing this structure in a single view would normally be impossible to achieve.

However DocDrive365 gives us an option to look at how we want to present Documents from multiple areas – this can be implemented by adjusting the Parameters we supply when adding the DocDrive365 Panel Webresource to our Form in CRM.

We can add the following Parameters to the Webresource to implement this as a ‘read_down’ which will show Documents for the Parent Record plus each of the Child Records for that particular relationship:

read_down_entity=exeia_legalmatter,read_down_lookup=exeia_relatedinvestment,read_down_name=exeia_name,read_down_includeparent=true

read_down_entity The Child Entity we want to show Documents for. new_legalmetter
read_down_lookup The Lookup Field from the Child Entity to the Parent Entity new_associatedinvestmentid
read_down_name The Display Name we want to use when describing the Child Entity Legal Matter
read_down_include_parent True or False – do we want to show the Parent Record at all?  Setting this option to ‘true’ will then only show Documents for the Child Records and ignore this Record altogether.  In our example, this would show the Documents for the Legal Matters connected to the Investment, but not show the Documents directly related to the Investment. True

This will then appear in Dynamics showing the List of Documents grouped by the CRM Record that each Document relates to – in this case, the Investment or Legal Matter Records that the Documents are grouped by:

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This then gives us the Roll-up view of Documents for both the Investment and the associated Legal Matters – even if the Legal Matters are using a very different set of SharePoint Locations in a different Topology to the Investment.

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This can be useful when we need to show various different record’s documents in a single consolidated view from a parent or master record.

The view here combines with the security model in DocDrive365 to ensure that any Child Records that the User does not have access to are not shown in the list – and so only Documents for the Child Records that the User is able to view are shown from the Parent Record. (in our example, the user only sees the Documents for the Legal Matters that they have access to – omitting any Legal Matters that might be related to the Investment but the User does not have access to)

This article touches on SharePoint Security and how to manage SharePoint Permissions between different Records in Dynamics – a more detailed view of using DocDrive365 to manage security between Dynamics and SharePoint can be found here: Using DocDrive365 to integrate Security from Dynamics to SharePoint

For further information on DocDrive365 as an App to bring Dynamics, SharePoint, Xperido and eSignature together, our Mini-Site can be of use:

Find out more about DocDrive365 here

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