Salesforce storage solutions depending on business requirements

Question

We have a business requirement to use cloud storage with Salesforce. Below are major requirements on the storage.

1. The storage provides an independent way for people to browse the files stored in the storage and sync the file structure in Salesforce with the storage. (e.g. I can see Dropbox provides a way to do so. It has security for different roles and when I browse in Dropbox, it has folders with names of objects and sub-folders for each record in the objects.)

2. Say, a customer sends email to us with an attachment. Now the attachment can be added to the particular record using LinkPoint in Outlook. Later, if we are using a cloud storage, the attachment should be stored in the cloud storage and the file should be related to the particular record. (the file should be stored in the folder named the record and from the record, the files should be seen, if we take Dropbox as an example. Other ways are acceptable but it has to sync with email attachments and Salesforce records.)

3. The Salesforce system is generating attachments to particular objects using Apex code and S-Docs. We should be able to transfer the auto generated attachments into the storage and be mapped to the correct folder.

4. The Salesforce system has validation rules depending on the attachments/files related to the record. If the record has required documents attached, the system will proceed the workflow to next step. If we are going to use cloud storage, the system should be able to check whether there are required documents stored in the storage and decide whether to proceed to next step or not.

Is there any storage provider that can fulfil the requirements listed above? We would prefer to have these all done without API callouts. However, if there aren't providers to provide the services, API integration is acceptable.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

We are about to use Amazon S3 and tailor it by ourselves.