Media Bridge¶
Media Bridge by The Framework moves pictures out of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central database and into external storage, such as Azure Blob Storage or SharePoint. It uses the standard Business Central External File Storage module, so it works with any file account you already have.
Business Central stores pictures as embedded media by default. Over time that makes the database bigger and increases backup and storage costs. Media Bridge redirects every upload, read and delete of a picture to the storage you choose. Users keep working with pictures on the same pages as before.
What Media Bridge does¶
| Capability | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Two storage sources | Keep pictures in Business Central (Tenant Media, the default) or in External File Storage. |
| Item and variant pictures | Items and item variants each have their own picture. An image carousel on the Item Card shows the item and all its variants together. |
| Employee pictures | Employee photos follow the same storage choice. |
| Drag and drop | Drop an image file from File Explorer onto the picture area to upload it. |
| Migration wizard | Move existing pictures from one storage source to the other, in the foreground or as a background job, with a per-record log and resume support. |
| Media source company | One company can serve item pictures to the other companies in the same environment. |
| Clean-up tools | Remove orphaned media, and, in sandboxes, clear test pictures safely. |
What it saves¶
Business Central online shares one database capacity pool across all environments of a tenant, and every sandbox copied from production stores the pictures again. Extra capacity costs about €5 to €10 per GB per month; Azure Blob Storage costs about €0.02. Use the Capacity calculator to work out what Media Bridge frees and saves in your tenant.
Where to start¶
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How Media Bridge works, permissions, and the one-time setup of external storage.
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Add, view, export and delete item and variant pictures, and use the carousel.
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Manage employee photos.
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Move your existing pictures to another storage source and follow up on the result.
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Share item pictures across the companies of one environment.
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Clean up orphaned media and test data.
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Architecture, and how to add a storage provider or a new kind of record.
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Error messages, permission sets, storage layout, capacity calculator, FAQ and change history.
Looking for a specific error message?¶
See the Error message index. It maps every Media Bridge message to the page that explains it.