In previous articles in this series we've talked about the differences between Server Side Sync and the old List Component. Since I published the first articles, a new MSDN article on the topic has been posted which I thought would be good to signpost folks to => Important considerations for server-based SharePoint integration.
One of the topics that has come up recently for people using Server Side Sync to SharePoint is the 5000 item limit of Document Libraries which has led to a bit of panic amongst some so I thought I'd dispel the rumours!
Here are the facts about the Throttling Limitation
1) You can see how many items you have in a Document Library by opening the site in SharePoint and selecting 'Site Content' from the left hand navigation menu. The number of items will show below the Document Library name – this includes documents and folders.
2) If you have more than 5000 items you can still use Server Side Integration with SharePoint provided that you only use the default sort order of the document view in CRM.
The default sort is by Location Ascending. You can change this to sort Descending but if you change the sort to any other column you will receive the error "Throttling limit is exceeded by the operation"
3) If you have a record with only 2 documents in the associated document locations folder you will still not be able to sort by any other column other than Location if the root Document Library has more than 5000 items overall.
3) If the user clicks on 'Open SharePoint' then they will be able to do all the sorting they need since the limitation is not experienced by the native SharePoint interface – only the CRM document lists.
I find that this sort limitation is not an issue because I encourage users to use SharePoint freely due to its rich interface. Don't try and hide SharePoint from them because it's important to understand the way in which documents are stored and the additional features that SharePoint has to offer. The documents view in CRM is simply to be used as a quick reference for documents associated with the CRM Record.
Hope this helps!