Create SharePoint Document Locations in CRM 2011 - Part 1

This post is the first of three on how to programmatically create SharePoint 2010 Document Folders in CRM 2011 so that documents can be uploaded.
Part 2
Part 3

There is quite a lot of code for this solution which is why I've broken it up into 3 parts. This first part outlines the scenario and the assumptions.

So here is the scenario. I have CRM 2011 and I want to store documents related to the Contact entity in SharePoint 2010. In my development environment I have both of these on the same virtual image but I've designed the code to work as a web service so it can sit it anywhere.

What CRM 2011 does is create a document library for each Entity that is enabled for document storage, and then creates a folder for each record. This example focuses on the Contact entity but it can be easily applied to other entities. When a new entity record is created in CRM 2011 and the Document menu item is clicked, it will create a) a SharePointDocumentLocation record in CRM that has the path to the SharePoint folder and b) warns you that it is about to create a document folder. The name of the folder for a Contact if based on full name. So what happens if you have two John Smiths? If the first already has created a document folder it detects that and prompts with 'the folder already exists do you want to use it?' If not, then you can modify the name of the folder to ensure it is unique.

This is an imprtant point. Assume you have a contact called Robin Wright. When you create a document folder it will be called 'Robin Wright'. When Robin gets married and changes her name to 'Robin Wrigth-Penn' then the document folder name remains the same name. CRM 2011 uses the SharePoint document location record to point to the orginal folder name. So you need to be careful, you can't assume that the full name in CRM is the same as the document folder name.

For this example I am going to assume you have the Guid for the Contact in question. This unique identifier will be used to determine if there is already a SharePoint Document Location created for this record. If so, it returns the url for you. If not, it will create the SharePoint Document Location in CRM and then create the actual folder in SharePoint based on the full name and finally returns the url to the folder.

So this code either uses the existing SharePoint Document Location or will create a new one for you and create the folder in SharePoint.

I have made another assumption. I assume you have created the SharePoint site already with the document library for the entity "Contact". It will help if you have a few SharePoint document locations already created because then you will be able to see how the database field 'ParentSiteorLocation' is populated in the SharePointDocumentLocationBase table. You need to use the 'root' Guid for the Contact document library and it should be obvious what this is if you have a few records in the table.

You can recognise this row in the table as the relativeurl reads 'contact' and the RegardingObjectID is null. The Guid you need is the SharePointDocumentLocationId from this record. It will become clearer (I hope) when you see the code.

There is another issue you will need to be aware of. Folder names in SharePoint will not allow certain characters. If they exist in your CRM Contact record e.g. the first name reads 'John & Jane' then CRM replaces the & with -. I have not checked all illegal characters are substituted with hyphen but it is my working assumption. So be warned, you will need to modify full name of contact to replace illegal characters. Also please note this code does NOT handle duplicate names - you will need to check for a duplicate and create a unique folder name.


So the next blog has the CRM code for using an existing SharePoint Document Location or create a new location. There is a reference in the code to a function that will create the actual SharePoint folder but the code for that is in the last blog.