It is a known fact that D365FO in the cloud cannot route the documents created during the report printing process to the local file system. As a result, users don’t have simple access to the printed documents, but even bigger problem is that legacy integrations via shared folders on File System cease to function. Until recently, the only available work-around was to use the Docentric Printer print destination configured with the Print as PDF option.

In this article we will explain a new, much more configurable way to route the Sales invoice report printed from the D365FO in the cloud to the local file system. The trick is in using the Docentric File print destination to save the generated documents to a configurable Azure file share, because it can be mounted as a network drive.

Azure Files introduction

Azure Files is Microsoft’s easy-to-use cloud file system. Azure file shares can be seamlessly used in Windows and Windows Server. Good news is that with Docentric File print destination we can send the documents printed from D365FO to Azure file shares under the internal D365FO or external Azure accounts. Then we only need to mount our local file system to Azure file share, as described in this article by Microsoft, and the documents such as Sales invoices will be accessible through the local file system.

Here is one file share as visible on Azure Files and mounted to a local network drive:

Docentric File print destination, option: Save to Azure Files

Image below shows the Docentric File print destination setup necessary to save the generated reports to this folder:

1. Azure storage account: pick the account under which the Azure file share is accessible.
2. Azure file share: docentric-report-output
3. Folder path: ByAccount/@InvoiceAccount@
4. Overwrite file if exists: Yes
5. Create non-existing folders: Yes

Learn more on configuration for saving to Azure Files >>

Result

This is the information provided upon printing one Sales invoice based on the above setup:

Report (Show invoice) with ID (SalesInvoice.Report) is successfully saved to Azure Files (Azure storage account: Docentric_Storage_Acc, file share: docentric-report-output, folder path: ByAccount/US-001). Report output filename: US-001 Invoice #CIV-000553.pdf.

Result on Azure:

Result as visible from the local file system:

See also: Azure Blob Storage vs. Azure Files > >