It sounds like a small thing. It isn't.
The Real Cost of "Just Switching Tabs"
Research on app-switching (often called the "toggling tax") suggests that each time someone moves between two applications to do a related task, it costs a few seconds — not because the click itself is slow, but because of the mental re-orientation involved. Multiply that by every metadata field, on every document, for every user, and the time adds up fast across a CRM team.
There's a second, quieter cost too: when filling in metadata requires an extra trip to another system, people are more likely to skip it or do it inconsistently — which undermines the whole point of having a metadata taxonomy in the first place.
Connecting Software built an add-on specifically to remove that friction: .
What It Actually Does
The add-on adds a custom grid inside Dynamics 365 that handles two things natively, without a SharePoint detour:
- Metadata editing, in-line. An "Edit metadata" button opens an "Update managed metadata" panel right inside Dynamics, pre-populated with your organization's own managed metadata fields — no separate SharePoint session required.
- Drag-and-drop uploads. Users can drag files straight from a folder into the grid to upload them — any file type, any number of files, up to 50MB each.
Because the grid talks directly to SharePoint's managed metadata behind the scenes, anything entered in Dynamics reflects back in SharePoint immediately.
What You Need Before You Turn It On
Two prerequisites matter here, and they're organizational, not technical:
- A working understanding of managed metadata. This is the practice of tagging content against a controlled taxonomy rather than free-text labels — it's what makes documents findable and governable at scale in SharePoint.
- An actual taxonomy already built in SharePoint. Departments, data sensitivity levels, document types, client codes — whatever categories matter to your business need to exist as term sets before the add-on has anything to plug into.
If your organization hasn't formalized a taxonomy yet, that's the step to do first; the add-on makes using metadata easier, but it doesn't invent your metadata structure for you.
Two Ways Teams Are Using It
- Cutting document search time down to seconds.
The most immediate payoff is retrieval. When metadata gets entered consistently — because it's easy to do without leaving Dynamics — search filters actually become useful. Instead of scrolling through a client's record hunting for "that one contract," a user can filter by tag and land on it directly. The upside compounds: better tagging habits lead to better search, which leads to faster, better-informed decisions. - Feeding retention policies automatically.
Managed metadata isn't just a search convenience — it's also the input compliance teams need for retention automation. In Microsoft Purview, retention labels can be applied at the library, folder, or file level, and rules can be built to act on metadata tags (auto-archiving or deleting content after a set period, for example). The workflow generally looks like:
- Tag consistently — the add-on's structured metadata editor (including lookup-list style fields) helps enforce consistent tagging rather than relying on free text.
- Build retention rules around those tags in Purview, so content is archived or deleted automatically based on how it's classified.
- Periodically audit both the tagging accuracy and whether the retention rules still match current regulatory requirements.
Done well, this turns metadata from a "nice to have" into the backbone of a compliance workflow that runs largely on its own.
See How It Would Work in Your Dynamics 365 and SharePoint Setup
If you're already using SharePoint managed metadata, the next question is whether this approach fits your existing taxonomy, document volumes, and Dynamics 365 configuration.
We can walk through your setup, show how Drag & Drop and Metadata for Dynamics 365 CE works with your existing SharePoint structure, and answer your technical questions around configuration, deployment, and day-to-day use.
Prefer to explore it yourself first? Review the .
Related Reading & Tools
If document management inside Dynamics 365 is a priority for your team, a few other Connecting Software resources are worth a look:
- - the broader product family this add-on belongs to, for teams that want a full document-management layer between Dynamics and SharePoint.
- - automates the creation of consistent SharePoint folder structures from Dynamics 365 records, which pairs naturally with a solid metadata taxonomy.
- - keeps SharePoint document permissions in sync with Dynamics 365 security roles, so better-tagged documents are also correctly access-controlled.
- - useful if you're migrating legacy Dynamics attachments into SharePoint before rolling out metadata practices.
- - ongoing tips on Dynamics 365, SharePoint, and CRM productivity integrations.
The full article was originally posted on September 28, 2026, on the CRM Software Blog.
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