Sonoma Partners Microsoft CRM Blog

Known issues and related support articles for Outlook client in CRM 4.0

We received this information from Microsoft partner support manager, and we thought we'd pass it along:

1. Outlook hangs during initialization (progress toolbar displays “Loading…” and never finishes)
This must-have fix is likely the most common perf/stability issue out there, especially on Outlook 2007. This fix resolves the issue. A current workaround exists by turning off the To Do bar.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952724 (not yet published, but fix available from support)

2. With E-mail Auto Promotion Enabled, Outlook may not close cleanly/properly.
This fix addresses a memory allocation issue that can occur somewhat unpredictably. If your users are using e-mail auto promotion, I encourage you to deploy this hotfix.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948121

3. Contacts with birthdays earlier than 1/1/1970 causes Outlook to crash
This was caused by an API change by one of our dependencies.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948045

4. Hoster process can crash on startup of CRM for Outlook with Offline Access (Laptop Client)
This fix addresses a memory allocation issue that occurs rarely, but worth checking out if your hoster process inexplicably crashes.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951884

5. Items in Shared Calendars will report Sync Issues
We do not support Shared Calendars in CRM 4.0, we encountered a couple of cases where some code was getting executed against a shared calendar and causing problems.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949086

6. Appointment attendees do not resolve properly
This problem occurs when you set to option to only “Match against contacts synchronized to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.”
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949141

7. Unable to Go Offline with a MUI pack installed
This fix resolves a parsing error that occasionally appears in the Go Offline process, causing a failure.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951179

8. Changing CRM website port after re-configuring IIS
We’ve encountered some customers who have made changes to the CRM IIS configuration after installation (such as adding host headers) and then had trouble with configuring clients. This is because certain config values are stored during setup which become invalidated after these IIS changes. The KB article below talks to this issue.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947423/

When does support end for Microsoft CRM 3.0?

I was on a conference call today and the customer asked me a question I didn't know the answer to off the top of my head: "When does Microsoft stop supporting Microsoft CRM 3.0"? After the call, I looked up the published support lifecycle for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0:

• Product release date: 12/1/2005
• Mainstream support retired: 4/12/2011
• Extended support retired: 4/12/2016

This is interesting because the total support duration for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is more than 10 years! In the past, Microsoft offered a three-year Mainstream Support Lifecycle policy but they obviously changed that policy to offer longer windows of support. Consequently, customers can invest in the Dynamics CRM platform without worrying about being forced to upgrade on their vendor's timetable. Microsoft allows plenty of time for customers to make the upgrade decision when it is right for them.

We'd like to thank the Academy...

In the past week, Sonoma Partners received two great awards:

• Microsoft awarded Sonoma Partners as one of three finalists for the Global Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner of the Year. We won this award twice before (in both 2005 and 2003), and it's a great honor for us to receive this type of recognition again. More than 2,000 companies applied for this award worldwide, so finishing in the top 3 is amazing.
  
• The National Association for Business Resources recognized Sonoma Partners as one of Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For. This award means a lot to us because it indicates we're doing a good job of creating an excellent work environment. Hiring and recruiting people in the information technology industry is VERY competitive, so we know we need to offer a great employment experience because people have lots of options. Like the Microsoft Partner of the Year award, we won this award in the past too...and it's a great feeling to get the nod again!

If you're interested, you can read our official press release describing these awards.

Step by Step book wrapping up

We've been burning the midnight oil to get our Microsoft Dynamics CRM Step by Step book done to hit our deadlines. The book is coming along just fine and I am excited to see the final product in print this fall! Here's what we're planning from a chapter and page count perspective. This is about 95% accurate/finalized, but of course it's subject to change.

Section	Chapter #	Chapter Title	# of Pages
Overview	1	Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics CRM	10
	2	Getting Around in Microsoft Dynamics CRM	15
	3	Working with Account and Contacts	15
	4	Working with Activities and Notes	15
	5	Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook	20
Sales	6	Leads and Opportunities	20
	7	Quotes and Orders	15
Marketing	8	Using Marketing Lists	20
	9	Managing Campaigns and Quick Campaigns	20
	10	Campaign Activities and Responses	20
Service	11	Tracking Service Requests	15
	12	Using the Knowledge Base	15
	13	Contracts & Queues	20
Data Management	14	Duplicate Checking	10
	15	Reports and Views	15
	16	Using the Report Wizard	15
	17	Reporting with Excel	15
	18	Importing Data	15

The one thing that consistently amazes me about these books is that we've written over 1,000 pages of content about Microsoft CRM, and I still feel like we're just scratching the surface in some areas!