Migrating Notes And Attachments From Dynamics CRM 2011 To Dynamics 365 Online

In Microsoft Dynamics 365, Notes and Attachments are attached to almost every entity. Attachments lets you to attach documents of any type (doc, images, pdf etc.) to a other entity records in Microsoft Dynamics 365.

All Notes are stored in annotation base table in CRM database. Attachments associated with a note are stored in this table.

As it happens, in a migration scenario, there is no standard way of exporting and importing notes and attachments from one Dynamics CRM installation to another. This is very frustrating for functional consultants and users where their important notes cannot be migrated to the newer versions.

In this blog we will be explaining about the steps on how you can migrate your notes and attachments from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on premise to Dynamics 365 online.

For migration, we will be using Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012 and Kingsway Soft third party SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Please refer the below link for installing BIDS and SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Before migrating the notes of the related entities, you first have to migrate its related entities. This is to avoid the issue while mapping the lookup attribute “objectid” of notes from source to destination. If the lookup record is not present in the target system then your SSIS package might fail.

In this example we will be migrating Lead entity and its related notes and attachments. Below are the steps:

1. Create your Integration Services Project in BIDS as shown below.

2. Drag and drop two Data Flow Task from SSIS Toolbox and rename as Insert Leads and Insert Notes.

3. Double Click on Insert Leads to navigate to Data Flow Task. Drag and Drop Dynamics CRM Source and Dynamics CRM Destination.

4. Double Click on Dynamics CRM Source and create a new Connection Manager with your CRM 2011 onpremise credentials.

5. Select Source Type as Entity and select the Source Entity as lead and click ok.

6. Double Click on Dynamics CRM Destination and add new Connection Manager to add your Dynamics 365 online login credentials. In Action select the operation as Create, Destination Entity as lead and click on Map Unmapped Fields and then click ok.

7. Now go back to Insert Notes Data Flow Task then Drag and Drop Dynamics CRM Source and Dynamics CRM Destination component. For Dynamics CRM Source add Connection Manager for CRM 2011 onpremise then select Source Type as Entity and Source Entity as annotation.

Similarly, for Dynamics CRM Destination add Connection Manager for Dynamics 365 online then select Action as Create, Destination Entity as annotation then click Map Unmapped Fields and click ok.

8. Now go back to the Control Flow tab and run the entire package by clicking on Start. Once the package has finished executing your notes and attachments will be migrated to the new instance.

The above example was just to give an idea on how to go about migrating your notes without having to write scripts in SSIS to retrieve and create notes from one instance to another.

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