SharePoint document management or CDS?

[Anonymous]

Hi all!

I'm setting up an app for my business where I can easily dump a bunch of PDFs into some kind of document management system and then process those documents in a (preferably Canvas) PowerApp by using PDF viewer. Basically, in my canvas app, the user would have the ability to see the document that was uploaded and then fill out the custom fields in my custom entity related to the documents I uploaded to some document manager.

I'll give a related example: say I'm the receptionist at a doctor's office, and I have a bunch of scanned PDFs of patients medical forms that they fill out in the waiting room at a doctor's office. I have a custom entity called "Patients" where I record things like their name, height, weight, blood type, etc. I want to be able to easily upload 100s of patients' scanned forms to some kind of document management system, and then have those patient forms viewable in a PowerApp as I fill out the custom fields for 100s of records in my "Patients" entity. AKA In PowerApps, I want to be able to see each patient's scanned form individually and then input the information on that patient's health form into a new record in my custom CDS entity.

I wanted to know if I should be storing my documents directly in CDS or in SharePoint. My initial thought is that SharePoint is good at document storage, and I could easily upload hundreds of PDFs at a time with a couple of clicks. But I'm wondering if document retrieval from SharePoint in my Canvas app will be too slow.

I also will probably have images mixed in with my PDFs. Keeping with my previous example, I might have a picture of the patient to go along with their patient form. I have a "Patient Photos" custom entity where I could then upload metadata about the photo, such as which patient is in the photo, are they smiling, what's their hair color, etc. Would having images mixed in with PDFs in SharePoint overly complicate my process of retrieval in a Canvas app?

Please let me know if any of you have experience with storing documents in SharePoint and their metadata in CDS. The two most important things are that uploading PDFs/images to some document manager must be easy and able to be done with hundreds of PDFs/images at a time, and I must be able to see those PDFs/images in a PowerApp while I fill out records in the relevant CDS custom entity.

Thanks!

[EricRegnier · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

There's also another storage option that might be worth looking into Blob Storage which would be cheaper in terms of cost/licensing than SharePoint and CDS and faster to upload/retrieve. Here's more info about it:

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/upload-files-from-powerapps-using-the-azure-blob-storage-connector/

I'm not a big fan of storing documents in CDS. Although you do get some default data storage, and additional storage space is expensive compared to SharePoint and Blob. I also think it might be more complex to retrieve documents and surface in the canvas app. Also document management capabilities in CDS are very limited (e.g limited documents security, no metadata support). SharePoint is a good alternative but maybe overkill? My preference based on your description would be Blob.

Hope this helps...

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Eric!

What exactly is different between Azure's blob storage and the "Export to Data Lake" function you have in CDS?

Thanks!

[EricRegnier]

Azure Blob Storage simply a storage repository configured as per your storage requirements. It is not directly a component of the Power Platform stack. "Export to Data Lake" function is an Power Platform export service to replicate CDS data in the same schema to Data Lake Storage Gen2. It is mainly for data analytics and reporting purposes.