With the advent of new companies in the technology landscape, the competition in one’s industry has increased exponentially. When various other companies also provide similar kinds of solutions & services to customers, enterprises must maintain an edge over their competitors by continuing to offer the best quality services to their end-users. For this purpose, enterprises turn towards automated solutions that can efficiently handle their business procedures. 

One such automation solution is the world’s #1 cloud CRM platform, Salesforce. Its valuable services across different departments like marketing, sales, customer service, finance, etc make it the most trusted platform among enterprises. When enterprises can generate more leads, make better-informed decisions & drive forth success, what more will they need, right? But that’s not the case over here!

One major issue with Salesforce is the limited nature of its primary file storage space which is fine until the voluminous files generated in the process of managing the customers’ information are not brought into the picture. And then there is also the high additional file storage cost, which is a challenge in itself. Thankfully, being a customer-friendly platform, Salesforce can be easily integrated with different external storage to handle this issue with file storage limitations.

SharePoint: A Reliable Salesforce File Storage Option

One such viable secondary storage option is SharePoint. SharePoint is one of the most popular document management and storage platforms today with over 200 million monthly users worldwide. Being used by a huge chunk of Fortune 500 companies, SharePoint offers storage, retrieval, searching, archiving, tracking, management, and reporting of electronic documents and records regarding any customer. Owing to such features, Salesforce can be easily integrated with SharePoint which enhances its collaboration & document management capabilities. 

Some of the primary reasons to choose the Salesforce-SharePoint collaboration for your business growth are:

• Cost Efficiency– In contrast to opting for more Salesforce licenses to increase document management capabilities (which is a costly option), an enterprise can simply choose SharePoint-based collaboration where full-fledged collaboration among large cross-departmental teams will cost less.

• Cross-departmental collaboration– Even though Salesforce was intended for multiple departments like sales & marketing, several colleagues collaborating on a single project proves to be extremely challenging. Using the SharePoint employees company-wide can connect, promoting & letting them engage in cross-departmental collaboration.

• Document Versioning– SharePoint also allows real-time co-authoring and offline work with documents with greater data storage limits. It automatically tracks changes and maintains a history of document versions, enabling users to revert to previous versions if needed. This makes sure everyone is working on the updated version of the document.

• Centralized Document Management– SharePoint serves as a single hub for all your documents. Instead of juggling multiple locations and handling version conflicts, all your Salesforce files are stored in one well-organized place. This makes it easier to find and manage your documents without the hassle of scattered folders.

Setting Up Salesforce-SharePoint Collaboration

When you have decided to set up a seamless collaboration between your Salesforce system & SharePoint storage, there’s just the question of how to do that. For this purpose, there are several means through which the Salesforce-SharePoint integration can be established. These range from ready-made tools to the ones built from scratch. 

A standard list of possible integration tools includes:

• Salesforce Files Connect– Offered by Salesforce itself, the Salesforce Files Connect framework allows users to access, search, and share Salesforce files stored in external sources in real time & allows Salesforce admins to set up the integration themselves with simple point-and-click tools. It can also be configured to take into account SharePoint’s custom properties like custom columns, custom content type, & metadata from Office 365 documents during Search, SOQL, and SOSL Queries which allows simultaneous search results for a particular file in both Salesforce & SharePoint. The only downside is that this solution is rather pricey. 

• Custom-built integration applications– This is a very flexible option since such applications can be designed in line with specific requirements and can address a need for multiple integrations, without exceeding the costs. However, it is important to mention that the internal Salesforce administrator might not be able to build the custom integration app himself so it becomes imperative to seek external help, which adds to the cost.  

• Salesforce AppExchange integration applications– There are several options available on the AppExchange that can be installed by the Salesforce admin. In case further features are required, such apps can nearly always be modified by the Salesforce developer. 

WEBINAR ALERT: Integrate SharePoint & Salesforce using XfilesPro – An Advanced File Management & Collaboration Solution for Salesforce

XfilesPro: Your Salesforce File Management Partner

One such AppExchange application that can help enterprises seamlessly store and collaborate files with SharePoint is XfilesPro. XfilesPro is a highly customizable, admin-friendly application that performs exceptionally well with several Salesforce solutions like Service Cloud, Community/Experience Cloud, Sales Cloud, & Salesforce Platform. With XfilesPro, Salesforce customers can not only significantly reduce their file storage costs but can also seamlessly enable 360-degree file collaboration, including integration with various external storages like SharePoint. 

XfilesPro has leveraged the capabilities of SharePoint to the fullest. The tagging feature of SharePoint helps users access files faster, while the multisite feature allows for seamless management of interconnected sites, making it easier to collaborate across different teams and departments. To get more details on why Salesforce admins prefer Sharepoint as their external cloud storage platform, read the blog. 

In addition to SharePoint, XfilesPro can also be used to collaborate the Salesforce system with various other external file storage systems. These include Cloud-based storage systems like OneDrive, Amazon S3, Google Drive, & Dropbox. 

As the world goes digital, document management is evolving too. Enter XfilesPro’s DocuPrime, a game-changer in the document management cycle. This app simplifies and streamlines the document generation process, from template creation and approval to obtaining e-signatures. By leveraging the capabilities of SharePoint and DocuPrime, you can eliminate paperwork hassles and elevate your document management. 

To know more about XfilesPro and how it can facilitate Salesforce-SharePoint integration and document generation all within a single platform, get in touch with us or schedule a live demo with us.