Enable document suggestions to recommend related documents

When you enable document suggestions, your Dynamics 365 apps web browser and mobile users see important documents related to what they're working on in Dynamics 365 apps, such as a big sales opportunity. You, as the admin, define relevant fields. A recommendation engine that uses Azure Text Analytics and keyword matching associates related records to find similar documents. You create similarity rules in Dynamics 365 apps to provide your own similarity logic. Dynamics 365 apps then presents a list of suggested documents to the user while the user works in the current record.

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

Requirements

Document Suggestions works with a web browser, Dynamics 365 for tablets, and Dynamics 365 for phones. To use Document Suggestions with Dynamics 365 apps, a system administrator needs to:

• Confirm subscriptions and access to:

  • Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
  • SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2013, or SharePoint 2016.
  • Azure services to use Azure Text Analytics.

• Confirm the following is set up:

  • Dataverse search is enabled and configured. More information: Configure Dataverse search for the organization.
  • Document management is set up in Dynamics 365 apps. See Set up SharePoint integration.

• Complete the following tasks:

  • Enable the Azure Text Analytics connection in Dynamics 365 apps.
  • Define a similarity rule for each entity type that's included in Document Suggestions. More information: Use advanced similarity rules to view similar case suggestions.

How it works

Use Document Suggestions with the Case entity.

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

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

It searches locations where documents are found in the following order:

1. SharePoint default site.
2. Other SharePoint sites.
3. OneDrive.
4. Microsoft 365 Groups (when solution is installed).
5. External URL (when configured).

Document Suggestions doesn't search attachments that you add to Notes in Dynamics 365 apps records.

Adding an external URL to search another site

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

When you add the external URL to the enabled document suggestions feature, your users experience the following features.

• Web browsers: When users run Dynamics 365 apps from a web browser, after selecting Document Suggestions, they can select Other Recommendations in the Document Suggestions page to display another page that might include more document suggestions found on the external site. The user might be prompted to sign in to the external site.

• Mobile apps: For the Dynamics 365 for tablets and Dynamics 365 for phones apps, after selecting Document Suggestions, users can select Other Recommendations, which opens the external site in the device's default web browser. The site might include more document suggestions found on the external site. The user might be prompted to sign in to the external site.

Constructing the external URL

You should construct the external URL in a format that the external site understands. 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 come from similar record rules that include entity mappings of Text Match. More information: Use advanced similarity rules to view similar case suggestions.

The values found in the text fields of the similarity-rules mappings are the keywords used to build the query that's passed to the external site. In the following URL, keyword is the text value 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 the following URL, where mysharepoint is the website 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, you need to configure an Azure text analytics connection.

Define and activate similarity rules

If you have not already defined similarity rules, see Use advanced similarity rules to view similar case suggestions.

Enable Document Suggestions

To enable Document Suggestions, complete the following steps:

1. Go to the Power Platform admin center and sign in with administrator credentials.
2. In the Manage pane, select Environments.
3. On the Environments page, select an environment.
4. Select Settings > Integration > Document management settings > Manage Document Suggestions.
5. In the Select Entities area, select the Case entity to include in Document Suggestions, then select Apply.

1. Set external URL to include in Document Suggestions. By default, Document Suggestions searches in Microsoft 365 services like SharePoint or OneDrive. If you want to search an external site in addition to the available Microsoft 365 services, such as an on-premises SharePoint site, enter the base URL to the external system. Dynamics 365 apps append a search query string to the base URL you provide. More information: Adding an external URL to search another site.