As a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online user, you might be aware of the default storage usage limits of your CRM Online instance. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscriptions include 5 GB of storage at no additional charge per tenant, which is increased by 2.5 GB for every 20 Professional licenses, with a maximum of 50 GB per tenant.¹ Additional Storage is available for purchase as an Add-On in 1 GB increments, up to 5,000 GB (5 TB). As you can imagine, this can add up over time. So what are your options to keep your usage under control?

Before we get started, it will be worthwhile determining what your current usage is. For this, you will need to login to the Office 365 admin center for your Tenant. From within the Office 365 admin center, on the left menu click Admin > CRM, and then select the Service Health tab to view your usage.

These tips are a summary of the recommendations from this Microsoft TechNet article. If you need detailed steps on how to go about doing anything mentioned in this article, you can refer to the TechNet article. You should also consider whether the recommendations mentioned are suitable for your situation. Deleting data is permanent and cannot be undone. We recommend tip 3 below, to move attachments to SharePoint, before deleting any data.

Tip 1: Purge Logs

CRM logs activity of system jobs, which can add up over time. These are for things like workflows, bulk delete jobs, duplicate detection jobs and bulk import jobs (check System Jobs entity). Setting up bulk delete jobs to purge older logs (more than 3 or 6 months old) can help keep these under control. Another point of mention here are suspended workflows. Workflows will enter a suspended state because of a condition that will never be met or some other reason that will not allow the workflow to complete. These will need to be cancelled before you are able to delete the related logs.

Tip 2: Purge Audit History

Just like system job logs, audit history logs can also build up over time. When enabled, Audit History will keep a copy of all changes made to a record – if a field on a record was changed 10 times, this will be recorded 10 times in the audit history logs. If you have these enabled you might want to consider how long you need to hold on to these for. Purging these can also help to reduce the database size.

Tip 3: Store Email and Note Attachments in SharePoint

Email and Note Attachments are usually the single biggest contributor when it comes to database storage usage, especially if you have several people tracking email’s – image all those 5 MB emails with brochures all stored in CRM. Email tracking is an important aspect of any CRM system, for obvious reasons. The TechNet article suggest deleting old Email and Note Attachments but maintaining this history is important to most organisations. A solution is to store these in SharePoint instead of CRM. SharePoint is included in most Office 365 subscriptions, and includes 1TB of storage! We have created a solution (available here) that can be configured to run in real time or can be run on a schedule to seamlessly manage the storage of these in SharePoint.

So there it is. Storing your attachments in SharePoint instead of CRM, and purging old logs can help reduce your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Storage, and keep your CRM system running smoothly. If you have any questions about any of the recommendations mentioned in this article or our SharePoint Attachment Storage Plugin, please get in touch.

If you would like to check how much space attachments are consuming within you CRM system, you can do so by following the steps mentioned on this blog article. You can also download a prebuilt version here.

References
1. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online pricing and licensing guide
2. TechNet – Free storage space in Microsoft Dynamics CRM