Attachments in CRM have always been a touchy subject. They are the joy of users and the bane of administrators. Storing documents in the CRM database has a host of considerations that go along with it and is generally considered taboo. SharePoint integration also has its own set of considerations as well. Some customers have to flight battles with other internal infrastructure teams to store documents in SharePoint. There are still other customers who have taken a novel approach of creating customizations to store documents in Azure blob storage to move them out of the CRM database. Soon we will be faced with a new set of options for consideration when it comes to attachment storage.
It is on the roadmap to integrate One Drive for business which will be another option for customers. The challenge there is that there are some customers that will face compliance issues with potential PII (personal identifiable information) or even PHI (personal health information) being stored there.
Even better we are on the eve of One Note integration with CRM. One Note integration is slated to debut in CRM Online Carina in the next couple months. This is yet another interesting twist to the challenge of data compliance because what this entails is a whole new option for users to store file attachments. While on the surface this is a great capability and should increase productivity for individuals and teams it also presents an interesting compliance challenge.
Questions like how can a governance committee regulate and monitor data compliance come to mind?
What kind of documents are acceptable and which are not?
When does it make sense to store documents in One Note versus SharePoint versus One Drive?
There is no one right or wrong answer that applies to everyone making the usage of the various data stores for attachments more of a strategic consideration than anything. In a sense you can say the good news is a new set of attachment storage options is quickly coming. You can also say for some, the bad news is a new set of attachment storage options is quickly coming! As a system architect if you were bored things are about to get much more interesting.
