Requirements for Documents Folder in Infor CRM

In a normal installation of Infor CRM, almost everything is stored in the database.  Customer data, user info, client web page layout; all stored in the database.  The main thing that is stored outside the database is the file attachments.  I have blogged about how to set this up fairly recently (here), but that was just a how-to.  Today I am going to explain things is little more depth, especially the relation to Windows security.

When using Infor CRM, if you make a change such as adding a Contact, or changing the primary phone number on an Account, that change is stored in the database.  However, if you attach a file anywhere in Infor CRM, things work differently.  In this case, the database stores a record of the location of the file, but the actual file is saved to the Widows folder path specified for the Documents folder in the Administrator program. This means that, in order to save the attachment, the user must have Windows rights allowing them to write to that path, and any user needing to access that file must have the rights to read items in that folder.

You can set up any shared folder for this, as long as there is enough space on the hosting computer, and all CRM users are able to reach it.  The standard way to do this is to give Everybody read/write permissions to the share, and read/write/modify (check everything except full control) to the folder in Windows.  If it not possible to use Everybody for that permission, the best way would be to make a domain group containing all the Infor CRM users, and grant that groups the rights described above.  The downside of this would be that you would need to manage membership of this group along with managing uses within CRM.