Enable document suggestions

Article
06/02/2017

Applies To: Dynamics 365 (online), Dynamics CRM Online

Enabling Document Suggestions helps your Microsoft Dynamics 365 web browser and mobile users be aware of important documents related to what they're working on in Dynamics 365 such as a big sales opportunity. You, as the admin, define relevant fields. A recommendation engine using Microsoft Azure text analytics uses keyword matching to associate related records to find similar documents. You create similarity rules in Dynamics 365 to provide your own similarity logic. Dynamics 365 then presents a list of suggested documents to the user while the user works in the current record.

Document recommendations feature diagram

Note

The Document Suggestions feature doesn't require a connection to the Azure Text Analytics service. If you choose not to use Azure Text Analytics, Document Suggestions will use the built-in keyword matching logic available in Microsoft Dynamics 365. However, we recommend that you use Azure Text Analytics service for more advanced keyword matching.

Document Suggestions searches other like-entities to determine similarities found in documents located on a Microsoft SharePoint site, OneDrive, or external location. Suggested documents can be in several different formats such as Word, Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, OneNote, Adobe PDF, and text files. When similar documents are found Document Suggestions presents them offering you the ability to open the document or make a copy.

Requirements

The following are required to use Document Suggestions with Dynamics 365.

Dynamics 365 (online)
To suggest documents located on SharePoint:
- Access to SharePoint Online, Microsoft SharePoint 2013, or SharePoint 2016.
- Document management must be set up in Dynamics 365. See Set up SharePoint integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Relevance Search must be enabled. More information: Configure Relevance Search for the organization
Document Suggestions works with Web browser, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for tablets and Dynamics 365 for phones.
To use Azure text analytics with Document Suggestions:
- An Azure subscription is required to use the Azure Text Analytics service.
- A system administrator must enable the text analytics connection in Dynamics 365. More information: Set the text analytics connection
A system administrator must define a similarity rule for each entity type that is to be included in Document Suggestions. More information: Create similar record suggestion rules

How it works

The entities that can use Document Suggestions are Contact, Opportunity, Lead, Account, Case, and custom entities.

You can use the built-in pattern matching that is included natively with the Document Suggestions feature, but we recommend that you use Azure Text Analytics service for more advanced keyword matching.

Document Suggestions searches only the locations and documents that the user has access to.

Locations where documents are found are searched in the following order:

SharePoint default site.
Other SharePoint sites.
OneDrive
Office 365 Groups (when solution is installed).
External URL (when configured).

Currently, Document Suggestions does not search attachments that are added to Notes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 records.

Adding an external URL to search another site

External sites, such as an on-premises SharePoint document library can be included in Document Suggestions by adding an external URL for the site to be searched.

Note

For the best results when using an external site for document suggestions, we recommend that you use Azure Text Analytics, which provides more advanced keyword matching logic. Set the text analytics connection

Once you add the external URL to the enabled document suggestions feature, here is what your users will experience.

Web browsers. When you run Microsoft Dynamics 365 from a Web browser, after clicking Document Suggestions, users can then click Other Recommendations in the Document Suggestions page to display another page that may include more document suggestions found on the external site. Notice that the user may be prompted to sign in to the external site.
Mobile apps. For the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for tablets and Dynamics 365 for phones apps, after clicking Document Suggestions, users can click Other Recommendations, which opens the external site in the devices default web browser that may include more document suggestions found on the external site. Notice that the user may be prompted to sign in to the external site.

Constructing the external URL

The external URL should be constructed in a format that is understood by the external site. For example, for sites that use a construct similar to https://contoso.com/search?{0}, where https://contoso.com/search? is the search URL structure and {0} is the keyword string, Document Suggestions passes the keywords in the {0} parameter. The keywords that are passed to the URL are derived from similar record rules that include entity mappings of Text Match. More information: Create similar record suggestion rules

The values found in the text fields of the similarity rule mappings are used as keywords to build the query that is passed to the external site, similar to the below URL, where keyword is the text values found in the similarity rules mappings and & represents a whitespace that Document Suggestions uses to separate each keyword.

https://contoso.com/search?keywordA\&keywordB\&keywordC

For an on-premises SharePoint server, you can add an external URL that points to a subsite similar to this, where mysharepoint is the web site name sites is the site name and subsitename is the subsite name.

https://mysharepoint/sites/subsitename/_layouts/15/osssearchresults.aspx?&k={0}

Set up the Azure text analytics connection

To use Azure text analytics with Document Suggestions, an Azure text analytics connection must be configured. More information: Set the text analytics connection

Note

Define and activate similarity rules

If you have not already defined similarity rules, see Create similar record suggestion rules.