Could you help with me with an architectural decision with how to store and access employee data in Office365?
We intend to build multiple ‘tools’ across various SharePoint sites that require access to ’employee data’. Currently, the Employee data is NOT in ActiveDirectory, but rather AzureSQL. BCS exists, and is setup to access this employee list (and the others referenced below).
Most people in the group with me want to use a 3rd party tool on a local server to hard copy the entire “employee list” to each site that needs access to it. This would be refreshed on a schedule every night (daily). However, I believe using the BCS is the proper way to go and to code around any other issues that need handled.
Accepting the “copy entire AzureSQL based list” methodology would result in a minimum of 8 copies of that data within Office 365, and also sets an example for future use, and a minimum of another 5 AzureSQL based lists being copied to many sites redundantly within SharePoint Online.
Main Issue:
Much of the access to these SPO Lists is done via an iPAD out in the field and sometimes requires OFFLINE functionality.
I feel like there is no option here.
I wish to move to a proper model with Azure and Custom App, but the team appears to want everything done NOW, and are not willing to accept a dev time increase since we know how to “get it done immediately”. Follow-on support will increase significantly with the “right now” method, as seen already in other ‘solutions’, data refresh is slow (daily) but accepted as a standard by executives, and limits growth and ease of future development in my opinion.
Current accepted plan is to :
- Copy all SQL based data to every site within SharePoint that needs it
- Use SharePlus iPAD app to provide Offline functionality
- Nintex Workflows in background (even when normal SP2013 workflows will do job)
Is there a better way? I’m at a loss at this point?
The thought of copying the entirety of multiple AzureSQL based tables to multiple SPO sites makes my head explode. Thoughts?
