How to Add Metadata to SharePoint Document Subgrid in Dynamics 365 / Model-driven Apps

As mentioned in the Dynamics CRM Tip Of The Day Tip #1185, you can customise the SharePoint document subgrid for server-side integration. At the time of publishing that post, the view was not customisable via solution explorer yet but in this forum answer, the Document Associated Grid of the SharePoint Document entity can now be editable via solution explorer.

 

These are the list of columns that you can add to the default Document Associated Grid of Model-driven Apps in Dynamics 365.

But what if you want to add another SharePoint column that is not available in the list? (e.g. Version of the document)

What if you have created a new custom column in the SharePoint library and you want to show that that in the documents subgrid?

The good news is that you can show those columns by adding a new column to the Sharepoint Document table. I got this tip from one of my colleagues, Chadi, who shared with me how he added the Version column to the SharePoint document subgrid.

In the following sample SharePoint library, I have added the Version column and two other custom columns. One of the custom columns is a Single line of text column and the other one is of Number data type.

To add these columns to the SharePoint document subgrid, create a new field in the Sharepoint Document entity with the same Display name and add it to the Document Associated Grid view.

🛈 Important 

The Display Name of the new field needs to be exactly the same as the column name in the SharePoint library. The logical name or prefix of the field can be anything. The Data Type of the fields needs to match with the SharePoint column data type except Choice and Yes/No data types (refer to the Update 3).

This is the final result of the SharePoint document subgrid after adding two Text fields (Custom Column & Version) and one Whole Number field (Custom Number).

Update 4: The Lookup data type SharePoint columns are not supported in the Documents subgrid.

As a workaround solution, create a "Single line of text" column in the SharePoint document library, copy the lookup column text value into that new column using a Power Automate cloud flow, and show that new column in the Documents subgrid by adding a new column to the Sharepoint Document table with the same name.

Update 3: To display Choice and Yes/No data type SharePoint columns in the Documents subgrid, create the columns with the "Single line of text" data type instead of the equivalent data type. Otherwise, the subgrid loading fails with an "Invalid Argument" error.

Update 2: (Solution for the Update below) Jahangir has commented that he also encountered the same problem for translations against custom columns in SharePoint and he resolved with the following solution.

Export the translation against alternate language from SharePoint, you will get a .resx file. Change the labels accordingly. Also, export the translation from Dataverse against SharePoint document entity and add values for your alternate language over there. One thing to be very careful of is to name the display name of the field as your column name in SharePoint.

Update: One of the readers had a question that "What if my environment is used in different UI languages? Will it only work for the base language?"

Refer to the solution in Update 2 above.

I tried it out in my environment by installing the German language and added the German translation of a couple of custom columns. When I change the user's language to German and opened the Document Associated Grid, those columns with translated Display Name no longer shows the SharePoint custom column anymore (as highlighted in red in the image below). That is because the display name of the custom column is not the same as SharePoint column anymore. (it might be working if you can also localise the SharePoint custom column too but I have not tried that yet). Otherwise, the suggestion is not to add the translation for the custom columns and just show them in the base language.