SharePoint - Inbound Storage

1 inbound storage description inbound storage allows documents added to sharepoint online to be linked to objects in sap as the objects are linked, sap metadata is returned and updated in sharepoint columns docuflow has a process to query the sharepoint online system looking for documents to link to sap these are called ‘inbound rules’ and are only available with ecm server ecm server is a communication specification based on sap’s rfc socket protocol called jco (java connector) the ecm server unlocks remote function calls and docuflow provides an api within sap to leverage this technology, allowing enhanced functionality over standard content server documents to link are determined by a metadata flag that is set to true and some optional filters to help specify a sub set of documents to process in addition to this metadata flag, additional business information in metadata is required to identify the object in sap to link to this additional metadata is based on the business process/sap object to be identified the following is a high level overview of the inbound process the documents and any configured metadata (columns) are returned docuflow calls an sap rfc and sends the list of documents and their metadata sap finds the corresponding object for each document and creates an archive link entry for it sap returns a success and additionally, any configured metadata to update sharepoint with docuflow updates the documents in sharepoint with sap required metadata along with any configured custom metadata 2\ custom metadata custom metadata can be set in sharepoint as columns in content types custom metadata is any values from sap beyond those required by docuflow and sap for linking during the inbound linking process, once the sap object is found and the document linked, custom metadata can be pushed back to sharepoint columns on the document custom metadata is most valuable when there is the desire to allow end users to access sap linked documents directly in the sharepoint interface, especially through search enables microsoft search enables access to search refiners in sharepoint trigger a power automate workflow allow other business systems to access/link to documents stored by sap (i e salesforce) metadata enables inbound scenarios for example, a document arriving in sharepoint can link to an existing sap object trigger an sap workflow with container values trigger custom abap code custom metadata considerations pros can enable metadata based searching and search result filtering for users accessing content within sharepoint enables the ability to do inbound rules when using ecm connectivity cons requires additional transaction time and sharepoint graph api calls please see the section ‘application throttling’ in the following microsoft information page https //learn microsoft com/en us/sharepoint/dev/general development/how to avoid getting throttled or blocked in sharepoint online