Attachments in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (D365FO) are a simple but powerful way to add context to records - images, documents, URLs, or notes. Everything that helps users understand what’s really going on.

You might attach a scanned invoice to a purchase order, or a product manual to a released product.

It works well when you’re dealing with a single attachment on a record. But let’s be honest. The standard attachment framework shows its limits pretty quickly.

Bulk updates? Not supported. Downloading multiple attachments? Painful. Seeing everything in one place? Not really possible.

That’s where Docentric AX enhanced attachments feature comes in. It extends the standard experience and makes it easier to manage attachments at scale with:

• Tabular view of the attachments form.
• All attachments form for cross-record browsing.
• Bulk download (with PDF merging), update, and delete.
• Instant previews.
• Richer attachment metadata.

New attachment views in Docentric AX

Docentric AX introduces two new ways to work with attachments, designed for different scenarios:

• Tabular view for managing all the attachments on a single record.
• All attachments form for browsing and managing attachments across records.

Each form solves a specific problem that the standard D365FO experience does not address.

Tabular view

If a record has multiple attachments and you want to modify them in the standard attachment form, you must do it one by one.

The Tabular view changes that. It displays attachments in a grid, so you can:

• Update and delete attachments in bulk.
• Download multiple attachments at once.
• Filter and sort more efficiently.
• Preview attachments instantly.

To open it, click View in grid in the attachments form.

You can always switch back to the classic view by clicking View by attachment.

Working with attachments in a grid makes browsing, filtering, and managing them much easier. If you like this view, you can even make it your default.

Go to User options > Account > Tabular view (Docentric) and set Tabular view (Docentric) as the Default attachments view.

The tabular view is ideal when you’re working with attachments for a single record. But what if you need to find or manage attachments across many records?

All attachments form

Sometimes you need to find an existing attachment, but you don’t know exactly to which record it’s attached.

The All attachments form solves this problem. It lets you browse all attachments in the current legal entity.

Open it at Organization administration > Docentric AX > Attachments > All attachments.

From here, you can:

• Sort and filter attachments.
• Update and download multiple attachments.
• Quick preview the attachment.
• See details about the source records.

This form gives you a global view of attachments, something the standard D365FO experience doesn’t offer.

Security

Access to the All attachments form is controlled by specific privileges. To use it, users must have one of the following:

• DocentricAXAllAttachmentsAdmin: allows full access, including delete operations.
• DocentricAXAllAttachmentsUser: provides read-only access.

This ensures the right access for each user.

Filter attachments

When a legal entity has many attachments, finding the right ones can be difficult. That’s why the All attachments and the Tabular view of the standard form include additional filters.

You can filter by:

• Type: File, Image, Note, or any custom type.
• Active period: All, Active, or Inactive.

Download, update, and delete attachments in bulk

Attachments often need post-processing after they’re created: cleanup after integrations, corrections to metadata, or preparation for audits and reviews.

Docentric AX adds bulk operations to speed up this work.

Bulk download (with PDF merging)

To download multiple attachments, select the records you wish to download and click the Download button:

You can then choose how you want to download them:

• Files: downloads each attachment as a separate file.
• Zip: downloads all selected attachments as a single ZIP file.
• Merge PDF: combines selected PDF attachments into one PDF file. Non-PDF attachments are skipped automatically.

Bulk delete

Select the attachments you want to remove, and click Delete. All selected attachments are deleted in one step.

Bulk update

This is especially useful when attachments were created by an integration or imported with incorrect data.

Instead of fixing each attachment manually:

1. Open the attachments in Tabular view or the All attachments form.
2. Select the attachments you want to update.
3. Click Update attachments.
4. Enter the new values and confirm.

You can update the following fields in bulk:

• Category ID
• Language
• Tags
• Restriction
• Active from
• Active to

Quick preview

You can toggle it using the Show preview/Hide preview button. When enabled, a preview of the selected attachment appears on the right side of the form.

This lets you quickly inspect attachments without opening or downloading them.

Open attachment

To open a single attachment, you can use the Open button from the Attachments in Tabular view or from the All Attachments form.

The attachment is downloaded, just like in the standard details view.

In the All attachments form, you also get two more options.

First, the Go to attachment button opens the attachment in the standard details view:

And second, the Go to origin button opens the source record of the selected attachment:

Add metadata to attachments

Docentric AX extends the attachment framework with additional metadata fields, available across all attachment forms:

• Language
• Category
• Tags
• Active period
• Attached to table
• Is Global attachment

These fields are especially useful when configuring additional email attachments using the Additional attachment rules on the Docentric Email print destination.

In the All attachments form, you also see extra information about the source record:

• Linked record: a caption based on the DocuRef title fields.
• Reference table: the name of the referenced table.
• Reference record ID: the RecId of the referenced record.

This makes it easier to understand where each attachment comes from.

Wrapping up

Standard attachments in D365FO work fine for single files on single records. Beyond that, they get in the way.

Docentric AX enhanced attachments give you what's missing: a grid view for everyday work, a global form for cross-record browsing, bulk actions, quick previews, and richer metadata. Less clicking, more control.

The result is simple. Cleaner attachment data after integrations. Faster access to the documents you need. And an attachment experience that feels predictable and under control, even at scale.