I do not want this to sound like a rant, but I really want to poll the group
to guage if everyone is experiencing the same issues as I have and hopefully
offer MS some constructive critism if there is a concensus.

I have been implementing CRM since v1.0, from small to large implementations
and while I believe Dynamics CRM is a great platform for managing business
information and processes, one consistant annoyance is the fact that CRM's
greatest selling feature is also its greatest area of headaches.

I am talking about CRM for Outlook.

I find that at most, if not all my clients there is at least one, if not
more installations of CRM for Outlook that will have issues such as "Toolbar
is disabled", "Problem with CRM add-in" to Outlook.exe just not shutting
down, etc, etc

When I do a follow up with a customer after an implementation, a very
typical response is, "this is great, we are tracking information, we like the
reports, but we are finding we are getting some CRM error messages in
Outlook..."

Overtime some of these issues get resolved (thank you v3c and Rollup 2!)
However I am greatly disappointed to see now with CRM 4.0 we are taking a
step back and starting to get the same error messages quite regular again. I
had a customer try CRM live and gave it up after week. He liked it but his
reason for going to Goldmine (ick) was "too many mini-crashes with Outlook, I
can't have that"

Yes, I have tried the diagostic tool and found that it really doesn't give
much helpful information.

Part of my process to alleviate these issues is ensuring all latest service
packs are installed, I apply latest rollups (for CRM 3) and strongly suggest
that the customer use the "workstation" client as opposed to "offline
enabled", plus other suggestions as posted in these newgroups or
partnersource.

However I still find that there are consistantly issues where MS
"resolutions" are not realistic. (Some people just do not want to clean up
their 5 gig OST/PST file!)

I am currently in the process of upgrading a client from CRM 3 to CRM 4, and
as of this moment *all* workstation's CRM toolbars are crashing, currently
have a case logged, but is the spark that made me write this post.

To be fair, I have tried other Outlook plug-ins, and have noticed similiar
things, so this may not specifically be a CRM issue, but an Outlook one, but
you would think the CRM dev team should have some kind of inside track or
influence?

What I am looking for is if there is anyone out there with at least 5 CRM
projects under their belt that can honestly say that they are having NO
issues with the CRM for Outlook component, and what they are doing to ensure
that?

And what I suggest to Microsoft is to take a serious look at this issue and
not just "band-aid" it. Unfortunately I am seeing customer confidence
dropping with CRM specifically because of the Outlook issue, which is a shame
because I think CRM is a great solution.

Sorry for the long winded post.

--
Nick Doelman
www.readybms.com

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Hi Nick,

I'm unfortunately not that person saying CFO is working properly. I have
experienced the same problems in the projects I have participated in the last
years - huge projects of up to 2000 MS CRM users. It is realy a pain bringing
CFO to work by EVERY user - I have experienced many issues descibed by you -
Toolbar disabled, Menubar not visible, Outlook crashing permanently etc. But
the worst is, it is as good as impossible to identify the source of the
problems, Microsoft Support was serious in trouble to fix them.
But I'm wondering that you have the same problems with the 4.0 - my
impression after playing with this release for some 6 months in several
projects is very positive. Maybe the issues appear only on updated clients.
Please describe your experiences with the 4.0 CFO more detailed here - it
would be very helpful for the group.

Regards,

Robert


"Nick Doelman" wrote:

Thanks for the reply Robert!

Actually, my experience in "on-premise" brand new CRM 4.0 installations seem
to be OK, so far, but not without a few troublespots here and there with
Outlook.

With CRM Live I was getting about an Outlook CRM related crash a day a
couple of weeks ago, however this has seem to stablize but since CRM Live is
still early access, it is hard to tell.

One of my "reference" customers I upgraded to CRM 4.0 from CRM 3.0, server
side went OK, uninstalling the client and installing the new CRM 4.0 for
Outlook first off still wants to "upgrade" the client, even after a good
directory and registry cleaning. And now the CRM 4 toolbar crashes, always,
on all workstations. I have posted this elsewhere but it appears that a lot
of others are having the same issues specifically with upgrades and can only
resolve by rebuilding profiles, etc, etc. I am not having much luck with
those steps and have a pending case with MS support.

I think as a result of the hours I spent the last few years trying to
resolve these types of issues I was really hoping CRM 4.0 would resolve that,
but it appears not. I am hoping MS gets the message and puts a serious
effort into resolving this. I realize that we can never expect to get rid of
all bugs or issues, but I think the issues with this particular aspect is too
high.

Looking forward to CRM v4c!

Thanks
Nick

--
Nick Doelman
www.readybms.com


"Robert Rybaric" wrote:

We have also had alot of issues with the CRM3 client, finding that it has be
reinstalled quite often on some machines.
We have also been using CRM4 for a bit now, and have to say that I am
finding it much more stable. The only times we have had an issue was on
machines which have been upgraded from CRM3, both by uninstall and reinstall,
or upgrade.
One machine I just rebuild as it was quicker then trying to work out why the
client would not work correctly. Since then is has been fine.


"Nick Doelman" wrote:

The problem is not uncommon, the reason is very simple. Updates to both
Office and Windows do not do a quality job of testing the impact on CRM or
other add ins, in almost every case of problems in Outlook with CRM it has
been either the fact that the add in pops the disable message (due to time of
syncing) and users disable the add in, or it has been a update to Office,
MSXML, or a Windows update. It happens so often that we have a large number
of users that have either quit using CRM, or use the Outlook client. The
largest issue we have seen is the MSXML issues, which are easy to fix (but
still a pain) with a delete CRM tool bar, remove add on, shut down Outlook,
reopen Outlook, add the add on back in and it works 99% of the time. I t has
been rare to have to do a reinstall and to be completely honest a large
portion or our issue has been slowness in getting all the udpates for all the
different configurations of machines that we have, but better testing of
udpates and their impacts on CRM and other add ons is a very large step in
the right direction. I hope this happens when CRM moves from Dynamics to the
Office product line, but I am not holding my breath.

"Rob Mottram" wrote: