Throughout my career at Inetium, I have had a love/hate relationship with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Outlook.  I have loved it, for the value it has provided me – the ability to track activities to CRM directly from Outlook, and at the very least sync CRM contacts to Outlook (and ultimately – my phone!) have been incredibly helpful.  And HATED it for its instability issues (anyone run the client in the 1.x days?  Ouch….).  But Microsoft has really taken strides to make this a stable, usable tool.  Is it perfect?  No.  But it is miles ahead of where it was in the early days.  I thought I’d give you some pointers, tidbits, opinions, etc about the wonder that is the CRM Outlook Client.

Before I begin – DISCLAIMER – This is just me talking.  I make no guarantees.  I make no statements that are anything beyond my experience and opinion.  But it just may prove helpful to you, if you were to stumble upon this post before another post that might be even more helpful.

·         Performance and Stability – this is always a spotty area.  There are various reasons.  First of all, as we know, any time a new piece of software comes out –  or even an update – the playing field is drastically changes.  Even with the 4.0 client, which was slated as “more stable than previous versions” had issues right out of the gate.  There was an issue with birthdays and anniversaries stored in CRM contact records that caused the client to crash.  There was an issue with the CRM client causing Outlook, or the add-on to load very slowly or crash entirely.  Microsoft has rectified these and many other issues over the last year, with several hot fixes.  You can get most of them in Update Rollup 1, which is now available.  http://support.microsoft.com/Kb/952858

Some things that might affect stability:

o   How does your computer perform?  If your PC is sluggish, or tends to crash, the CRM client will probably not be stable.  I recommend fixing the core issue, if this in fact it, before trying to troubleshoot CRM Client performance or stability issues.

o   How does Outlook perform?  The same recommendation goes for Outlook – if it crashed before the CRM client was introduced to the mix, it will probably crash after it’s installed as well.  I would strongly recommend you start with an extremely stable Windows and Office environment. 

o   Have you met the minimum requirements for the CRM client?  (software and hardware) – You can find them in the implementation Guide, downloadable here:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1ceb5e01-de9f-48c0-8ce2-51633ebf4714&displaylang=en – page 3-30 of the Planning Guide has all the info you need.

I should point out that yes, the memory requirements are pretty high (1GB for a desktop/online client, 2GB for a laptop/offline client).  Microsoft is trying to account for the fact that most people don’t JUST run Outlook and the CRM Client.  They typically work in several other applications as well.  While you “could” probably run these with less memory – I would recommend you look at these minimums as just that – MINIMUMS.  “Less is more” does not apply here.  If you can swing even more than the minimum, this is definitely a good idea.  I realize there are limitations with what a 32 bit operating system can support.  This will get better over time, as we all move to 64 bit operating systems (If we haven’t already).

o   Have you applied the latest hot fixes (For Windows, Office, CRM)?  For CRM Online (Or if you have deployed updates via the CRM Server for an On-Premise deployment), you can run the CRM update program on your PC – click Start-All Programs-Microsoft Dynamics CRM-Update.  Then follow the wizard to download and install the latest fixes.

Also of note – since Update Rollup 1 is out for On-Premise deployments – you can get most of the updates for your client in one fell swoop.  You CAN install the rollup for the client without installing it on the server or router, and vice-versa – so I would definitely recommend you at least look at deploying RU1 on your client PCs ASAP for your On-Premise deployments.

o   Does your Office installation include Business Contact Manager?  Running BCM and CRM at the same time can wreak havoc on your machine.  This is supposed to be fixed in RU1 for On-Premise deployments, and via a new update for CRM Online deployments.  You may however be better off just removing Business Contact Manager, unless you are using it.  But – if you have CRM, why would you use BCM?

You can find the uninstaller for BCM in Add/Remove Programs.

Also note that if you are having issues with other Outlook add-ons, you may still have to evaluate them as well.

o   Are you running CRM in an Internet Facing Deployment (IFD)?  If so – have you had issues with remote users connecting to CRM via the Outlook client?  Microsoft has a hot fix that addresses this issue as well.  It is not available via Update Rollup1, but you can download it here:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951432 .

·         Troubleshooting – Microsoft has developed several cool tools to help troubleshoot the CRM Outlook Client.  With previous versions, you could get the Diagnostic Tool from Microsoft to create an output file that tells you about your computer (hot fixes, OS version, Office version, etc), and you could turn on client-side tracing.  With CRM 4.0, they included this tool with the installation, and they added several other cool features:

o   You can run a simple diagnostic, that will do a “health check” of your PC and environment

o   You can turn off certain features while troubleshooting potential stability issues

§  Address Book Synchronization

§  Outlook Synchronization

§  Background Send E-Mail (If you are using Outlook to send all CRM email)

§  Background Track E-mail

§  Automatic E-Mail Tagging

§  Offline Data Updates (For laptop/offline client)

o   You can turn on client-side tracing.  When you do this, the files are located:

§  C:\Users\’username’\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\MSCRM\Traces for Windows Vista

§  C:\Documents and Settings\’username’\Application Data\Microsoft\MSCRM\Traces for Windows XP

o   You can delete temporary CRM client files

o   You can create an output file for Microsoft while troubleshooting – just like the 3.0 diagnostic tool did.

Here is a great link that describes using the CRM Client Diagnostic tool:  http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/01/22/introducing-mscrm-client-diagnostics.aspx

·         Deployment – Microsoft has improved the ability to deploy the CRM 4.0 client for larger environments.  You can actually deploy it “silently” for most deployments, using something like SMS/System Center Configuration Manager or Altiris Software Delivery Solution.  You will need to write your own deployment package, and obviously need to have expertise in whatever tool you use to deploy applications.  But the Installation Guide has information on how to create silent installation packages and configuration files that you can deploy with your tool.

I don’t think deployment tools work well when trying to silently configure a CRM Online client, or any client you may deploy via IFD.  This is because you need to provide your logon credentials during the configuration (Either your Active Directory credentials for On-Premise, or your Microsoft Live ID for CRM Online) – something your deployment tool cannot and should not be able to do for all end users in your environment. 

Also of note for CRM Online deployments – depending on the environment you work in, you may need to allow certain URLs through your firewall that your end users don’t necessarily know about (more than your CRM Online organization URL).  The following blog post explains this a bit more:  http://blogs.inetium.com/blogs/tedh/archive/2008/10/03/microsoft-dynamics-crm-online-client-configuration-some-tidbits-of-information.aspx

So – I’m hoping this post provides you some sort of help, as you are deploying the CRM 4.0 Client for Outlook.  This is a very powerful tool, if installed, configured and maintained correctly.  The key here is end user experience.  Without happy end users, you will not have a successful CRM deployment.  Hopefully following these guidelines, as well as those spelled out in the Implementation Guide will get you there.

If you do not have the installation files for the CRM Client you can download them  here:

·         For On-Premise:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=60c4a6cc-59d7-416e-9f44-0ae8ff249768&displaylang=en

·         For CRM Online:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8e6c81a-b7b2-4e57-8599-604967617396&displaylang=en

Have a wonderful, safe holiday season!