SharePoint Template Storage

Using SharePoint to store templates certainly has its advantages such as version control, finegrained permissions, secure preview and sharing of templates between team members outside D365FO, etc. This manual will help you set up SharePoint Online as a template storage.

SharePoint connection

Open Document management parameters and specify Default SharePoint server, then click Test connection. The process should complete successfully. If not and you are using OneBox on-premises, learn how to configure SharePoint Online integration in D365FO OneBox. Otherwise, contact your system administrator.


Default template storage

Open Organization administration > Docentric AX > Docentric AX parameters and select the Templates tab:

Enter Site URL that you want to use as the default template storage on SharePoint. If you are using a subsite, you have to specify it as part of Site URL. As for Folder path, please note that it always starts with a document library. For example:

  • Site URL: https://docentric.sharepoint.com or https://docentric.sharepoint.com/<subsite>
  • Folder path: <document library>/path

These are automatically used as default values later when you decide to use SharePoint as the current storage type for a particular template.


Security

Next, open the Security tab, where you can set up the user permissions for SharePoint access. If you leave them blank, by default the SharePoint template reader/writer permissions of the currently logged on D365FO user will apply.

The READ permission on the destination SharePoint folder path is required to be set for all users that will be running reports, i.e. reading the templates. On the other hand, a user who will upload or change the templates already stored on SharePoint needs the WRITE permission.

If you want to simplify access to and modification of report templates, consider setting up integration user(s) who are responsible for accessing and/or writing templates in SharePoint. For security reasons, please limit the integration user's permissions to only those document libraries and folders that are associated with the templates.

Setting up an Integration user

As good practice, we recommend creating an integration user with appropriate permissions in SharePoint for viewing (and writing) templates and setting this user as impersonation user on the Docentric AX parameters > Security tab. This way you can restrict the use of templates via SharePoint but also simplify permission management for the templates storage in SharePoint.

Below is an example with two explicitly selected integration users who have been assigned the access permissions as SharePoint template reader (1) and SharePoint template writer (2). If you decide to follow such an example, please note that these integration accounts are used for all D365FO users.

As far as the Report user (3) is concerned, this is the account used to save generated reports to SharePoint. If you leave it blank, the current D365FO user account will be used, in which case it will require the WRITE permission on the SharePoint location specified in the Print destination settings form.

Also note that after creating the integration user(s), and before actually trying to use the account(s) to access SharePoint, you must first log into D365FO as those users to obtain ExternalID. As you can see from the Users form below, ExternalID is missing for the newly created integration users.

Note that from Docentric version 3.4.3 you can use SharePoint extended security settings that applies not only to Docentric templates stored on SharePoint but also when accessing SharePoint in other cases, e.g. when saving reports to SharePoint. Learn more on SharePoint extended security >>

See also

How to Set Up Report Templates >>
How to Use Deployment Tools >>
SharePoint Metadata Fields >>

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