Dataverse and SharePoint Document Management

[Brendan1]

Hi Community!

I've built a few solutions now using a SharePoint list to store photos as part of functionality in a canvas app. While this works well enough, I se Dataverse for the majority of my solution building.  I am interested to explore using SharePoint document management on dataverse tables to achieve the storage and retrieval of photos in a canvas app. I am hoping to do this to eliminate using a Flow to get the images into SharePoint.  I'm struggling to find good documentation on how one would achieve this though.

The use case is simple enough.  One dataverse table record per image, so I can have the image in one field and relevant metadata in other fields.

Has anyone done this before?  What has your experience been.  Would you do it again?

[EricRegnier]

Hi @apper, no they are not passed to Dataverse. RBAC/privileges in SharePoint would need to be handled seperately. So even if a user has access to the record and SharePoint link in Dataverse, once redirected to SharePoint he/she will not have access if their access wasn't managed in SP. Cheers

[johnpgootee]

I am using the built in document management with SharePoint for a custom entity in a model driven app.  I am trying to do something simple:   For a document that is loaded for one of the custom entity records, I want to get reference to it from Power Automate and send it out for e-signature, all done inside the model driven app.

The problem I have is there appears to be no way to get a direct reference to the document while being inside the model driven app.   I am triggering my Power Automate with the "When a record is selected" legacy dataverse connector on the Documents table.  This fires ok for the specific file, but the trigger doesn't have any useful data in it for figuring out which document is selected, so I can't process it.   

Looking directly at the Documents table, there is nothing in it.  It seems like this table is just not getting populated and therefore can't return any data to the Power Automate.

I can do all this if I go directly to SharePoint and put the Power Automate there...but jumping the user from the model app over to SharePoint to do this is a terrible user experience.

Anyone deal with this already?

[EricRegnier]

HI @johnpgootee, I recall doing this a wee back so should be possible. Suggest to open a new thread on this to get better support. I'll do a little resesarch in the meantime. Cheers 

[Smith001]

Hello, I am dealing with a similar issue using a canvas PowerApps. I have all of my data sitting inside of Dataverse but wanted to use the SharePoint Document library to house my attachments/files. I got my attachments box to upload to my SharePoint document library using a flow on the "OnAddFile" property for my attachment control, but I am wondering if anybody knows away from me to be able to grab simple metadata like a document number from my Dataverse table and add it to the document library so that the files know which documents go with each record.

[Brendan1]

Hi @Smith001,

To do this, I setup an additional column in my SharePoint library called "RecordGUID", and every time I put a file into the library, I write the GUID of the dataverse record into the RecordGUID column.

As long as you Index the column in SharePoint, this works fine for speed/end user.

[Smith001]

Are you getting the and transferring the GUID using the same flow that you are using to put the files in the SharePoint Library?

[Brendan1]

Yes, I pass the GUID into the flow.  My flow has a few other things going on, but here is a screenshot:

 

[AlexAllach]

Hi @EricRegnier , integration of Sharepoint into Dataverse works well and is easy to install. But my problem is how I can move files to Sharepoint by a flow.

My usecase: Management of invoices. An invoice is scanned and automatically stored in Sharepoint Doc Library. There a trigger starts analyzing the invoice by AI so that invoice number, date etc. is written in Sharepoint columns. Then a canvas app is used to fill in the remaining data for the invoice (lookup to a project, to a contract etc.). Finally I want to move the invoice record to Dataverse and store the PDF containing the invoice into sharepoint (the invoice table has the integration with sharepoint). The reason for this is of course to reduce license costs. I was wondering whether using a sharepoint list that is integrated into dataverse as a virtual table is better / easy to handle. There I would use a file column containing my PDF invoice. The best solution for me would be: Access the PDF inside a model-driven app so that I can show the PDF directly on my form in model-driven app.

thanks in advance for your help!!!

Alex

[Smith001]

Okay I think I get what you are doing. I created a "RecordGUID" in my SharePoint list. Then set my flow up as such, but when I try and run the flow in my app, I get an error message. Am I supposed to add something else?