What is an annotation (CRM note)?

An annotation is what Dynamics 365 calls a note: a snippet of text attached to a record, a contact, an account, an opportunity, optionally carrying a file attachment. In the underlying Dataverse platform, notes and their attachments live in a table called AnnotationBase.

What it actually means

Notes are the informal filing system of every long-running CRM. When someone needs to keep a document with a constituent, the note is the nearest container: scan the agreement, open the record, attach the PDF. Multiply that instinct by a diligent team and a decade, and AnnotationBase becomes one of the largest tables in the environment, holding much of the institution’s paper history.

Why it matters

Two reasons, one visible and one quiet. The visible one is storage: note attachments accumulate in Dataverse capacity at Dataverse prices, and they are a usual suspect when the capacity report shows an environment near its limit.

The quiet one is worse. A note attachment is stored but not managed. Search cannot read the pages inside it, retention schedules do not know it exists, and finding it depends on someone remembering which record and which note. The document is on the right record and still effectively lost, which is why the note attachment is where documents go to die.

Related

See how note attachments can be extracted into an archive while the note keeps showing its file. Related terms: Dataverse, full-text search, retention schedule.