Low Storage! Poor Document Management!
If you ask me, that’s what people hate about Salesforce the most.
And that’s where SharePoint comes into effect.
Honestly, I find SharePoint the perfect platform that most of the enterprises use for managing as well as securing their documents. However, that’s it. It doesn’t do anything more than that. And that’s the reason many companies simply prefer to integrate Salesforce with an external document management system to get themselves set up.
Let me tell you this! SharePoint is the one I would choose over any external document management system to integrate with Salesforce. Integrating Salesforce along with SharePoint will not only help the small business function effectively, but it can also help a chain of large organizations to function in coordination with each other in an effective manner.
In this blog post, we will take a look at how you can successfully integrate Salesforce along with SharePoint to prepare a perfect tool for your business.
The question is, “How will we perform the integration?”
Are there some steps that you need to follow, or is there a perfect tool for it? Well, there actually is! And the Name of this tool goes by “Files Connect.”
Here are some of the benefits of integrating both of these platforms and how it can seriously help you:
- Reduced Costs
- Real Time Availability
- Single View Of All Of The Salesforce files
- Enhanced Security
- Increased Efficiency
- Document Version Control
Let’s dig in a little deep and learn what Files Connect is all about.
What’s File Connect?
Files Connect is simple tool released by Salesforce to meet up with the integration demands. You can easily integrate Google and Microsoft products with Salesforce. All you need to do is to click and use. Now, that we have shared the basics, let’s learn how you can integrate Salesforce and SharePoint using File Connect.
Integration Steps
Follow the steps in order to achieve success.
Step I
First of all, you need to enable Files Connect in your instance. It’s really simple. All you need to do is:
- Build -> Customize -> Salesforce Files -> Settings -> Files Connect.
- Choose Edit. Now, click on “Enable Files Connect.”
Are you able to see a “Copy” option in front of you?
That’s for those scenarios when you are required to share your files with the Salesforce users that don’t exactly have access to SharePoint. Another option that you would be able to take a look at is “Reference.”That’s for the scenarios where you want to the similar permissions for user access in SDFC just as in SharePoint.
Step II
It’s now time to set the user permissions up. In case of permissions for managing users:
Permission Set -> System Permissions -> Edit -> Click on “Files Connect Cloud” -> Save.
However,
in the case of on-premise SharePoint version, you would be required to select
“Files Connect on Premises.”
Step III
In order to set up the required permissions, you would have to set up the auth provider.
You can do it like this:
- Go to Quick Find In Setup.
- Find Auth. Provider
- Click “New.”
- Choose “Provider Type.”
This is where the real stuff begins.
Follow these steps to proceed further.
- We are learning how to integrate SharePoint. For that, go to “Microsoft Access Control Services.”
- Enter Name as well as URLSuffix. Enter just any dummy value for Consumer Secret, Consumer Key, Token Endpoint URL, Authorize Endpoint URL for right now.
- Click on Save. You’ll now be redirected to Auth Provider Detail Screen.
- You’ll be seeing some important details such as “Callback URL.” Keep this in mind as that’s what we are going to use in the next steps.
Step IV
Login to SharePoint. Visit any Site Collection of your choice. Note down its path.
Let’s just start with the steps required to create a simple Microsoft 365 application. Follow these steps:
- Visit https://[your companyname].SharePoint.com/[site collection path]/_layouts/15/appregnew.aspx
- You will be directed to “App Information” page.
- Click on “An app running on the web browser.”
- Select “Generate ID.”
- Generate “Client Secret.”
- Write the title of your choice.
- App domain is the Salesforce Domain now. Check SDFC’s subdomain. Insert in the app domain values.
- Select Create. And a new app will be created. You will be redirected to an entirely new page. You will be able to check the newly inputted and generated values.
Step V
It’s time that you configured the app that you newly created.
Visit https://[your companyname].SharePoint.com/[sitecollection path]/_layouts/15/appinv.aspx
Can you see a new form?
Remember the client ID that we generated in the steps before?
Well, it’s now the AppID. Copy and paste. Select Lookup.
Reconfigure Salesforce Files Connect
It’s time that we configured the Salesforce file connect settings. It’s time that we changed the dummy values.
- Open Salesforce Files Connect again.
- Enter the value that corresponds to the ClientID in SharePoint in the Consumer Key’s field.
- Consumer Secret is now the Client Secret.
- Enter https://[your companyname].sharepoint.com/[site collection path]/_layouts/15/OauthAuthorize.aspx in field of Authorize Endpoint URL.
- Enter https://accounts.accesscontrol.windows.net [your company name].onmicrosoft.com/tokens/OAuth/2?resource=00000003-0000-0ff1-ce00-000000000000/[yourcompanyname].sharepoint.com@[your company name].onmicrosoft.com in the field of Token Endpoint URL.
- Use any label and Name of your choice.
- Save
Step VI
Here, we will create an external data source in Salesforce.
- Setup -> Build -> Develop -> External Data Source
- Click on New.
- Select Files Connect SharePoint online in type.
- Add the SharePoint site collection URL in the URL section.
- Identity Type’s Per User.
- OAuth 2.0 is the authentication protocol.
- Click Lookup on Authentication provider. Select the one created in the past steps.
- Save
Step VII
- Permission Set -> External Data Source -> Edit
- Add the data source created newly to Enabled Data source section.
- Save
Conclusion
And that’s it. We are done with the integration process.
It’s quite simple and straightforward. You can use similar steps in case of Google Apps, Google Drive, etc. Some small tweaks are all you need to worry about.
Well, I hope that we were successfully able to help you with your problems related to this topic.
You can check our blog section to get more of your queries resolved.
Who are we?
Katpro is a leading Microsoft Partner for managing your Cloud investments such as Office 365, Microsoft Azure, building digital process automation solutions, SharePoint Customizations, Teams App Development and Dynamics 365. Contact us for more details.
