This article provides an in-depth understanding of the AttachmentExtractor online scheme. We will walk you through how to set up AttachmentExtractor and how the service retrieves content from the Dynamics 365 instance, moves them to an alternative storage location and delivers it back to Dynamics 365 upon user request.
Please refer to Figure 1 for a schematic representation of the AttachmentExtractor Online Scheme:
Setup
AttachmentExtractor runs as a cloud service within our Microsoft Azure tenant. The service is placed in the same data center where the Dynamics 365 environment is hosted to ensure high performance.
Data flow
- Based on the configuration, the AttachmentExtractor service checks for new documents in notes and email attachments or email content every X seconds and moves them to the alternative storage location (SharePoint or Azure Blob Storage). At the same time, a 2nd query starts working through historic entries.
- The service moves file attachments and email content to the corresponding storage location and replaces the reference inside Dynamics 365.
- Finally, the extracted content is accessed. For more information, please see here.
Note: For users, access to extracted files inside Dynamics 365 is unchanged.
Security
The cloud service is securely communicating with Dynamics 365 web services using methods provided by the Dynamics 365 SDK (TLS 1.2, OAuth authentication)
Please note:
- We employ Server-to-Server authentication or App-Access for communication between the cloud service and Dynamics 365, thereby eliminating the need for login credentials storage.
- Our Azure account hosts the document generation service. To guarantee high performance, the service will be located in the same data center as the Dynamics 365 instance.
- The service engine never stores documents.
IMPORTANT: For clients with specific security considerations, AttachmentExtractor offers the flexibility of installation on their own Azure VM or local hardware. This eliminates the need to transfer any data to mscrm-addons.com. However, to ensure optimal performance, we recommend installation on the VM.
The installation can be done directly from our website.