Tag Archives: crm

microsoft, Notes from the field, rants, tech

Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM 2016/365: part brilliant, part perplexing, part downright sloppy

I have just completed a test installation of Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM on-premises; it is now called Dynamics 365 but the name change is cosmetic, and in fact you begin by installing Dynamics CRM 2016 and it becomes Dynamics 365 after applying a downloaded update.

Microsoft’s Dynamics product has several characteristics:

1. It is fantastically useful if you need the features it offers

2. It is fantastically expensive for reasons I have never understood (other than, “because they can”)

3. It is tiresome to install and maintain

I wondered if the third characteristic had improved since I last did a Dynamics CRM installation, but I feel it has not much changed. Actually the installation went pretty much as planned, though it remains fiddly, but I wasted considerable time setting up email synchronization with Exchange (also on-premises). This is a newish feature called Server-Side Synchronization, which replaces the old Email Router (which still exists but is deprecated). I have little love for the Email Router, which when anything goes wrong, fills the event log with huge numbers of identical errors such that you have to disable it before you can discover what is really going wrong.

Email is an important feature as automated emails are essential to most CRM systems. The way the Server-Side Synchronization works is that you configure it, but CRM mailboxes are disabled until you complete a “Test and Enable” step that sends and receives test emails. I kept getting failures. I tried every permutation I could think of:

  • Credentials set per-user
  • Credentials set in the server profile (uses Exchange Impersonation to operate on behalf of each user)
  • Windows authentication (only works with Impersonation)
  • Basic authentication enabled on Exchange Web Services (EWS)

All failed, the most common error being “Http server returned 401 Unauthorized exception.” The troubleshooting steps here say to check that the email address of the user matches that of the mailbox; of course it did.

An annoyance is that on my system the Test and Enable step does not always work (in other words, it is not even tried). If I click Test and Enable in the Mailbox configuration window, I get this dialog:

image

However if I click OK, nothing happens and the dialog stays. If I click Cancel nothing happens and the dialog stays. If I click X the dialog closes but the test is not carried out.

Fortunately, you can also access Test and Enable from the Mailbox list (select a mailbox and it appears in the ribbon). A slightly different dialog appears and it works.

I was about to give up. I set Windows authentication in the server profile, which is probably the best option for most on-premises setups, and tried the test one more time. It worked. I do not know what changed. As this tech note (which is about server-side synchronization using Exchange Online) remarks:

If you get it right, you will hear Microsoft Angels singing

But what’s this about sloppy? There is plenty of evidence. Things like the non-functioning dialog mentioned above. Things like the date which shows for a mailbox that has not been tested:

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Or leaving aside the email configuration, things like the way you can upload Word templates for use in processes, but cannot easily download them (you can use a tool like the third-party XRMToolbox).

And the script error dialog which has not changed for a decade.

Or the warning you get when viewing a report in Microsoft Edge, that the browser is not supported:

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so you click the link and it says Edge is supported.

Or even the fact that whenever you log on you get this pesky dialog:

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So you click Don’t show this again, but it always reappears.

It seems as if Microsoft does not care much about the fit and finish of Dynamics CRM.

So why do people persevere – in fact, the Dynamics business is growing for Microsoft, largely because of Dynamics 365 online and its integration with Office 365. The cloud is one reason, which removes at least some of the admin burden. The other thing though is that it does bring together a set of features that make it invaluable to many businesses. You can use it not only for sales and marketing, but for service case management, quotes, orders and invoices.

It is highly customizable, which is a mixed blessing as your CRM installation becomes increasingly non-standard, but does mean that most things can be done with sufficient effort.

In the end, it is all about automation, and can work like magic with the right carefully designed custom processes.

With all those things to commend it, it would pay Microsoft to work at making the user interface less annoying and the administration less prone to perplexing errors.

microsoft, professional

Microsoft Outlook 2010 annoyance: tasks do not show in contact activities

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I discovered an Outlook 2010 annoyance over this long weekend. A user I’m in touch with uses Outlook 2007 as a simple CRM system. He creates tasks that are linked to contacts, using the Contacts button at the bottom of the New Task window, things like “Call John” with some notes. If he then looks at the Outlook contact record for John, he clicks the Activities tab and sees all the tasks linked to that contact listed.

Trouble is, he upgraded to Outlook 2010 recently and the feature no longer works. The Contacts button is not in the New Task window by default, but you can get it back by selecting Show contacts linked to the current item in File – Options – Contacts. Even if you do though, the Activities list in a Contact window is broken and the tasks do not appear.

It turns out that this is a bug, possibly caught in the crossfire as Microsoft develops the Outlook Social Connector, which has its own Activities record.

Bugs are unsurprising in a product as complex and multi-faceted as Outlook; but Microsoft could do much better in its communication. This thread on “Microsoft Answers” lacks any official response; we do not even know if it is fixed in the Office 2010 SP1, now in private beta, or whether the feature has been removed and it is just the user interface that needs cleaning up.

While it is unimportant to most of us, clearly if you do use Outlook as a simple CRM system it is crucial. In fact, I recall when contact linking was introduced in Outlook it was touted as a major new feature.

Some users have resorted to re-installing Outlook 2007, which turns out to be rather awkward thanks to the interdependence between Outlook and Word, though it can be made to work.

Incidentally, I was interested to note that Microsoft performed a u-turn with regard to the availability of Business Contact Manager (BCM), an Outlook add-in and companion product. This used to be installed by default with Office Small Business edition, and was something that I used to uncheck or uninstall as I never used it and it could cause problems. Nevertheless, some people did use it, and were upset to find it missing from Outlook 2010 Home and Business. The updated Business Contact Manager was only available by download if you had a volume license for Office.

This was a silly decision, since Business Contact Manager targets very small businesses (including one-person businesses) who are least likely to have a volume license. Microsoft therefore changed its mind:

After careful consideration, we decided to simplify the Office 2010 lineup by including Outlook with BCM, a business product, only in volume licensing. We understand it is not ideal for every user. When we made this decision, we underestimated the importance of BCM to our small business customers and those who purchased previous versions of Office in retail stores or pre-installed on PCs. Worse yet, we left many of our customers, who didn’t want to buy through volume licensing, stranded with their data locked in previous versions of Office.

Since September, you can download BCM if you have any licensed copy of Outlook 2010.