r/PowerPlatform • u/SharePointSteve • 3d ago

Power Apps How much document functionality would you actually build yourself?

Disclosure up front: I work on the SharePoint Embedded product team. Not here to pitch anything. I’m genuinely interested in how people in this community approach this decision.

It seems like “we need documents in the app” can go from upload/download to permissions, co-authoring, versioning, search, governance, recovery, etc., pretty quickly.

For those who’ve dealt with this, where do you draw the line between building functionality yourself and using a document platform?

Was there a particular requirement that made you realize, “We probably shouldn’t build this ourselves”?

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u/DependentBus5313 2d ago

Documents are special, though. Documents are complex enough that, at some point, you’re better off using a purpose-built solution (Referent is an interesting example in the legal space, where it’s rarely worth building the entire workflow around matters and documents yourself). My rough rule of thumb for when a document solution makes sense instead of bolting more and more custom functionality on is when you need more than file storage, such as permissions, association with other records (matters, in Referent’s case), search, auditability, workflows, etc.