Integrating with Office 365 and SharePoint Online

You can integrate your Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution with Office 365 and SharePoint Online to store documents online.

When you export Microsoft Dynamics NAV data to Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, or other Microsoft Office products, you can configure Microsoft Dynamics NAV to store the data on SharePoint Online and access the data with Office 365.

Managing Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Office 365

In Microsoft Dynamics NAV, you can set up information about your Office 365 account so that Microsoft Dynamics NAV will connect to the Office 365 and SharePoint Online services.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV saves temporary versions of the files in the configured document library when a user exports data to Excel or opens a document in Microsoft Word. We recommend that you delete the temporary files from the document library. For example, you can set up a job in the Microsoft Dynamics NAV job queue that empties the relevant folder, or you can use other tools to remove temporary document library files.

If you want to use the same folder to store temporary files for all users, you must specify a shared user account. Otherwise, each user's temporary files are stored in their personal document repository on the SharePoint site.

You must set up a folder for each user that will store the temporary documents when they export data to Excel, for example. Then, when a user exports to Excel or opens a document in Microsoft Word, they must specify the user name and password for their Office 365 account. The document then opens.

Security Considerations

When you use Office 365 with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, you have two sets of permissions to consider:

• Access to Microsoft Dynamics NAV data.

• Access to SharePoint Online.

The Microsoft Dynamics NAV security system controls access to data through permissions sets. For example, a user can have permission to export a budget to Excel, but if they do not have access to the relevant folder on SharePoint Online, they cannot read the exported data in Excel.

In the CRONUS International Ltd. demonstration database demonstration data, the BASIC permission set includes read access to the Document Service table. For example, this means that the configuration can be read when a user exports data to Excel. If Microsoft Dynamics NAV is set up to use Office 365, and the user can log on to Office 365, the relevant document opens.

The user who sets up the Office 365 configuration must have permission to read, insert, and modify records in the Document Service table. If your current permission set does not allow this, you must modify your permission set accordingly. For more information, see How see comment Define Permissions for Users.

Working with SharePoint Online

Your Office 365 account gives you access to create sites and subsites on SharePoint Online. You can configure the SharePoint Online sites according to your needs, and then configure Microsoft Dynamics NAV to use the relevant document libraries.

The following list describes our recommendations for each user to have a smooth experience of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV integration with SharePoint Online:

• Add the SharePoint site to the trusted sites in each user’s browsers.

  For example, if your browser is Internet Explorer, add the equivalent of https://Cronus.sharepoint.com to the trusted sites in the Internet Options window. If you use a subsite under https://Cronus.sharepoint.com, such as https://Cronus.sharepoint.com/Subsidiary, add the subsite to the trusted sites.

• Use the Connect to Office action in SharePoint Online, to add the document library to Office applications such as Word and Excel.

  This makes it easier for users to save documents to the SharePoint document library. Alternatively, users can type or paste the path of the document library into the Save As dialog when they want to save a document.

• Make sure that all users have the relevant permissions to the SharePoint Online document library.

  If you configure Microsoft Dynamics NAV to use personal document repositories for each user, they do not have access to the documents in other repositories. However, if you configure Microsoft Dynamics NAV to use a shared account and a shared document repository, you must configure the SharePoint Online accordingly.

  • All users must have read access to the document library.

  • Each user must have write access to the folder that contains their temporary files in the document library.

    This is typically a personal subfolder under the folder that is specified in the Folder field in the Microsoft SharePoint Connection Setup window.

  • We recommend that you restrict access to the files on SharePoint Online by setting permissions on the individual folders so that only the relevant users have access. For example, all users can send a list of customers from Microsoft Dynamics NAV to Excel. However they must have read access to the specified folder on SharePoint Online for the Excel workbook to contain Microsoft Dynamics NAV data.

  For more information, see Introduction: Control user access with permissions in the Help for SharePoint Online.

Integration Components

When you install Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server, components that manage the integration with the online services are automatically installed. This includes the SharePoint Server client components and Microsoft Dynamics NAV assemblies.

The following table describes the Microsoft Dynamics NAV components that install with Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server.

Your C/AL code should only access the types in the Microsoft.Dynamics.Nav.DocumentServices.dll and Microsoft.Dynamics.Nav.DocumentServices.Types.dll assemblies.

When you install Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server, SharePoint Server client components also install. Microsoft Dynamics NAV uses the client components to communicate with SharePoint Online. For more information, see the SharePoint Server client components SDK.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Configure Online Document Storage

Other Resources

Microsoft SharePoint Connection Setup
Document Service
Data Security
How to: Create Microsoft Dynamics NAV Users