How to Integrate Dynamics 365 with SharePoint

If you’ve been manually hunting for files attached to CRM records, emailing documents back and forth, or running out of Dynamics 365 storage — this guide is for you.

Integrating Dynamics 365 with SharePoint is one of the simplest things you can do to instantly boost your team’s productivity. And the best part? Microsoft built this integration natively. You don’t need third-party tools or a developer to pull it off.

Here’s what you’ll get out of this:

• Documents stored in SharePoint, accessible directly inside Dynamics 365
• Real-time collaboration across teams — no extra licenses needed
• Version history, check-in/check-out, and metadata tagging out of the box

Let’s get into it.

Why You Should Care About This Integration

Before jumping into the steps, let’s quickly talk about why this matters.

Dynamics 365 is not built for heavy document management. It handles CRM and ERP workflows brilliantly, but storing and searching large volumes of files? That’s where it struggles. Files attached to Note records are often unsearchable without custom logic. Storage costs can balloon fast.

SharePoint solves all of that.

• Companies save an average of $15.13 per user per month by replacing other file-sharing tools with SharePoint and OneDrive.
• A study of small and medium-sized businesses found that each user saves an average of 1.5 hours per week thanks to better collaboration and file access — adding up to over $519,000 in value over three years for a 150-person company.
• SharePoint Online sees approximately 50% year-over-year growth in enterprise adoption.
• Organizations using Microsoft 365’s collaboration apps reported around 72% of their workforce using at least two of these apps every single week.

That’s not a small win. That’s a system-level upgrade.

How to Integrate Dynamics 365 with SharePoint

Here’s the complete step-by-step process. This guide covers Dynamics 365 Online with SharePoint Online — the most common setup.

Before you start, make sure you have:

• System Administrator role in Dynamics 365
• Site Collection Administrator access in SharePoint
• Both Dynamics 365 and SharePoint on the same Microsoft 365 tenant
• Matching user email IDs across both platforms

Step 1 — Set Up Your SharePoint Site

Go to your SharePoint Admin Center → Active Sites.

Create or identify the SharePoint site you want to link to Dynamics 365. Make sure this site is accessible to your Dynamics 365 users.

Copy the URL of the SharePoint site’s main page — you’ll need it in the next step.

Step 2 — Enable Server-Based SharePoint Integration in Dynamics 365

This is the core configuration step.

1. In Dynamics 365, click the gear icon (⚙️) in the top right corner
2. Select Advanced Settings
3. Go to Settings → System → Document Management
4. Click “Configure Server-Based SharePoint Integration”

A wizard will open. Here’s what to do:

• Select Online (since you’re using SharePoint Online)
• Enter your SharePoint site URL from Step 1
• Click Next — the wizard will validate your URL
• Once validation succeeds, click Finish

🔑 Important: Once you enable server-based integration (which uses server-to-server authentication), you cannot revert to the older client-side integration. The old client-side method was phased out by Microsoft in 2020 anyway, so this is the right path forward.

Step 3 — Configure Document Management Settings

Now you’re telling Dynamics which entities should store documents in SharePoint.

1. Return to Settings → Document Management
2. Click “Document Management Settings”
3. A list of entities appears (Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Leads, Cases, etc.)
4. Check the entities you want to enable document management for
5. Enter the same SharePoint site URL at the bottom
6. Click Next

The wizard will now automatically create a separate document library in SharePoint for each entity you selected.

Step 4 — Define Your Folder Structure

This is often skipped but it matters. Dynamics gives you three options:

Option A — No automatic folders Folders won’t be created automatically. You manage structure manually.

Option B — Based on Account (recommended for most teams) Folders are structured under Account names. Any entity related to a specific account (Opportunities, Contacts, Cases) gets nested under that account’s folder.

Example path: /account/Acme Corp/Opportunity/Deal Q2

Option C — Based on Contact Similar to above, but Contact is the top-level organizer.

Choose the option that matches how your team works. For most sales and customer success teams, Account-based is the cleanest.

Step 5 — Verify the Integration Is Working

Open any record in Dynamics 365 — an Account or Opportunity works well.

• Navigate to the Documents tab (or Related → Documents)
• Dynamics will automatically create a folder in SharePoint for this record
• Upload a test document directly from the Dynamics interface
• Confirm the file appears in your SharePoint document library

Once the integration is in place, users can create, upload, edit, and delete documents — all from the familiar Dynamics interface. Advanced features like version control and metadata tagging also become available, increasing user adoption and simplifying training.

Step 6 — Set Up Permissions (Recommended)

By default, Dynamics 365 doesn’t automatically mirror its security model to SharePoint. You’ll want to handle this to avoid accidental data exposure.

Quick setup:

• Create SharePoint groups (e.g., CRM Users, CRM Managers)
• Assign folder or library-level access per group
• For automated permission syncing, tools like Power Automate or third-party add-ons like Attach2Dynamics can mirror Dynamics 365 security roles into SharePoint automatically

Step 7 — Enable Document Management for Custom Entities (Optional)

If you have custom entities in Dynamics 365 (beyond the standard ones), you can enable document management for those too.

Go to Settings → Document Management → Document Management Settings, select your custom entity, and enable it. You can also customize the folder structure for each entity independently.

What You Can Do After Integration

Once you’re live, here’s what the experience looks like day-to-day:

• Upload, view, edit, and delete documents stored in SharePoint — right from Dynamics 365
• Check documents in and out to avoid version conflicts
• View full version history on any document
• Non-Dynamics users (like finance or legal teams) can access documents directly in SharePoint without needing a Dynamics 365 license — just a SharePoint license, which is included in most Microsoft 365 plans.
• SharePoint events can trigger Power Automate flows inside Dynamics, reducing manual steps and enhancing efficiency — especially when handling high volumes of data.

Common Issues and How to Fix Them

“No default SharePoint site found” message Don’t panic. Just complete the Document Management Settings Wizard and it’ll resolve itself.

Validation fails on the SharePoint URL Double-check that both platforms are on the same Microsoft 365 tenant and that the URL is the root site collection (not a subpage).

Documents not showing in the Documents tab Make sure you’ve enabled document management for that specific entity in Step 3. It won’t appear unless it’s been activated.

Permission errors for certain users This usually means the user doesn’t have the required SharePoint permissions. Add them to the correct SharePoint group or use Power Automate to sync roles.

Conclusion

Integrating Dynamics 365 with SharePoint takes about 15–20 minutes to set up and delivers benefits your team will feel immediately — cleaner document management, better collaboration, and more storage without ballooning costs.

SharePoint offers much more storage space than Dynamics 365 itself, so you stop worrying about your CRM instance running out of storage or facing increasing costs to expand your limits.

The steps are straightforward: enable server-based integration, select your entities, define your folder structure, and validate. That’s it. You now have a connected document ecosystem that works for everyone — whether they’re inside Dynamics 365 or just in SharePoint.

If you’re already running Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365, there’s no reason to wait on this one.