What makes Dynamics 365 stand out from the crowd is its native integration with the Microsoft Stack. SharePoint, the web-based document management collaborative platform is no different. This quick guide shows you how you can enhance your CRM by synchronising and accessing documents associated with entities that are stored on your SharePoint instance.

1. Setup your SharePoint installation inside Dynamics 365 CRM

a) You will need to install SharePoint, so it synchronises with CRM. To do this, navigate to Dynamics 365 > Settings > Document Management.

b) Click on Enable Server-Based SharePoint Integration. A popup will appear on your screen.

c) Select your deployment type, cloud or on-premise and prepare your SharePoint sites.

d) Next, click on "Document Management Settings" and select all of your required CRM entities that will be integrated with SharePoint. When finished, hit next and continue to follow the process until the popup window disappears.

e) Navigate to Settings > Document Management > SharePoint Sites.

f) Click "New +" in the top left of your screen.

g) Fill in the popup form fields as shown below, you will need to have an already installed SharePoint instance with an active URL for this to work.

h) Click "Save"

i) Your SharePoint site should be synchronised with the CRM (assuming no errors!)

2. Using the SharePoint integration

Now your SharePoint site is installed and synchronised, we can attach documents to entities such as contacts or accounts.

In this example, we'll show you how to attach documents at the account level.

a) Navigate to Accounts in your Dynamics 365 installation.

b) Click on an Account such as a competitor, a partner or customer.

c) On the top of your screen, click the arrow to the right of the account name, a drop-down menu should appear.

d) Click on 'Documents' on this drop-down menu

e) You will be taken to a new view called Document Associated Grid.

f) At this stage, you can see all existing documents attached to this account listed below that is pulled from your SharePoint instance.

You can also upload or create new documents, edit or add new SharePoint locations.

These files could be images, PowerPoint, Excel, Word - whatever your business needs!

Let's say you have a prospect, you may want to attach marketing collateral that is due to be sent once it has been personalised to the customer. You can store it here for you or other team members to edit

You'll also be able to go directly to the SharePoint site location where the file is stored, but being able to do it from CRM is extremely powerful, as new folders won't need to be manually created for each entity in the CRM.