Hey everyone! I'm working in a small IT department in finance, and we're trying to transition from scanning directly to network shares to using SharePoint Online. My boss has tasked me with proposing a solution, but I've hit some roadblocks. We're using a lot of legacy scanners that can't scan directly to SharePoint Online. Some can scan to SharePoint, but that's not our main goal because we want to get off on-premises solutions.
Using scan to email with Power Automate is problematic due to huge PDF sizes, especially during busy seasons when they can reach 130-180mb. We've explored scanning to NAS, but that would require extra investment which isn't likely to get approved.
The best method I've found so far is scanning via SFTP to an Azure storage account, then using Power Automate to transfer files to the correct SharePoint folder. I'm curious if this approach seems viable or if anyone else has suggestions or experiences with this kind of transition. We have around 500 users across 20+ offices, so any insights would be super helpful!
4 Answers
Another possible method is to use Azure Files. You could set up your multifunction printer (MFP) to scan to an SMB share that's synced with Azure, and then utilize Logic Apps or Power Automate to transfer files from Azure Files to SharePoint. It keeps things manageable since the MFP will see the Azure connection as a standard file share.
You might want to look into scanning to a local fileshare (like SMB or SFTP) first, and then using something like `rclone mv` to get those files uploaded to SharePoint Online without too much hassle.
One option is to invest in a dedicated scanner that supports scanning directly to SharePoint Online, like MYQ X or KWIZ. If you're looking to stick with your legacy scanners, you could potentially use Power Automate with Azure Storage to facilitate the transfer, especially if email scanning isn't feasible due to file sizes.
Have you considered syncing a SharePoint folder with a local file server? It wouldn't be the cleanest solution, but it could be a straightforward way to scan into a network folder and have it reflected in SharePoint.
Thanks for the suggestions! I'm definitely looking into those scanners. Just to clarify, are you saying Power Automate can work directly with scanned files, or would it require the Azure storage step for that?