CRM 2016 – Insufficient Permissions Error when Downloading a Word Template

Problem

We recently ran into an issue with CRM 2016 where the user was trying to download a Word Template to begin to work on a new report, and kept getting an error about Insufficient Permissions.  We could easily reproduce this error by navigating to Settings, Templates, click New, Select Word Template, pick any entity from the list, and click Select Entity.  Once you select any related data, then click Download Template.  This error message would appear:

Insufficient Permissions
You do not have permission to access these records. Contact your Microsoft Dynamics CRM administrator.

To the Documentation!

Microsoft has some pretty good documentation on how to use the Word Templates, you can check out the docs page here: Using Word templates in CRM.

On this page if you navigate to the Additional Considerations area at the bottom, it describes the security rights needed.  After assigning these rights, we asked the users to try again…but the error persisted.

Solution

After much trial and error, and review of practically EVERY SINGLE security right available, we finally found the one that was needed.

On the Business Management Tab, in the Privacy Related Privileges area, there is an option for Document Generation. Turning that on for the security role assigned to the user fixed the issue.

We will be reporting this oversight to Microsoft using the Was this Information Helpful option on the page and hope it will be addressed in a future update to the documentation.