Jukka Niiranen

Tag: Office

  • Look Out for The End Of Outlook Client

    Look Out for The End Of Outlook Client

    It’s been a while already since Microsoft announced they were deprecating the Outlook Client for Dynamics 365. This announcement applied to the release formerly (and partially still) known as July 2017 Update, which everyone should rather be calling by its version number, i.e. v9.0. Since this version has only very recently become available for existing customers to schedule their CDU dates, it’s a good moment to remind everyone what this means in practice.

    You’ve Been Replaced By An App

    They all keep saying that robots will take away our jobs, but in the meantime it’s apps that are taking over Dynamics 365. Like I explained in my earlier blog post “What’s An “App” in Dynamics 365 Anyway?”, one of the many uses for the term “app” is now the way you integrate Outlook with your CRM system. Unlike the earlier COM add-in of Outlook Client for Windows PCs, this App will now work in any client environment – both in the browser and in mobile environments. That’s why the App is the future and the Client is the past. Well, actually that’s just one of the reasons, but let’s keep it simple for now, since the outcome remains the same nonetheless.

    So, if we’re just getting more of everything then isn’t this the easiest thing to sell in the world? It probably is a no-brainer for the IT guys who’ve had to struggle with the installation, configuration and updating of the locally installed Outlook Clients for years, as the administration overhead is reduced significantly. For the real end users of the CRM system, the perspective may differ, though. A user will immediately see the things that work differently with the App than they did before. Regardless of all the improvements, it will mean changes to their personal workflow, which is why you should pay attention to how the replacement is communicated and what support the users will need in this process.

    In your initial tests of the new features with a V9 environment and the App for Outlook, it’s good to keep in mind that this is still work in progress. The V9 Readme / Know Issues page has a list of technical glitches and unsupported environments for the App that is today still in Preview mode. It’s expected that by the time the current customers get their V9 updates the fully supported App version would also be available. Even with these hotfixes, you should prepare to see some usability gaps remain in the product for a while, as we’re dealing with a technology that’s fresh from the oven: the Unified Interface.

    In The Name Of Unification

    The Dynamics 365 App for Outlook is one step on the long road towards a Unified Client Infrastructure. The earlier v8.x incarnation of the App was a limited side pane that would show information about records related to the email while browsing your inbox. The V9 App is a miniature app module built on the same Unified Interface that will power all the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement UI’s in the future. This means that the feature set available is far greater, with the ability for you to scroll through the entire contents of a contact form while remaining in your inbox – or even navigate to related records. Similarly the commands at your disposal will allow completing tasks like adding new competitor records into your CRM database from within the single UI.

    For anyone who’s used the Outlook Client mainly for tracking items from their mailbox, calendar or contact list into the shared Dynamics 365 customer database, this will surely seem like a big step forward in terms of the new contextual actions being offered. These users will have gotten used to opening a browser tab whenever they’ve needed to actually view and search the contents of the CRM database in full screen mode.

    Then there is the group of users who’ve been in the Dynamics game for a longer time – at least from the CRM 2011 version. Back in those days the whole concept of Dynamics CRM might have been sold to them as “never leave your Outlook”. These people may not have actually seen a lot of the UX enhancements that have taken place in the browser and mobile clients in the past few years, since to them CRM has always looked like this:

    A “next generation Microsoft Outlook Experience” revealed seven years ago. Yeah, you probably wouldn’t buy a Customer Engagement solution today that looked like an ERP built into Office 2010. That doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be power users out there who still rely on the feature set of the trusty old Outlook Client to keep them productive, because they have mastered the Ribbon, the panes, the tabs, the whole shebang.

    The End Is Near …ish

    Microsoft has stated that by the time V10 rolls out, the client UI pictured above won’t work with Dynamics 365 anymore. That’s kind of understandable we consider that the Unified Interface will also replace the web client at some point in the future – possibly at the very same moment. If that is the case, we might not yet be all too close to the final removal of the Outlook Client yet.

    There’s going to be a lot of work needed before every last bit of legacy client infrastructure will have been replaced with the UCI based components. Microsoft remains committed to the guidance they’ve given to customers about the update schedule, which states there should be two new releases per year. However, we don’t really know much anything about at what point in time the next major release will arrive. Even things like rebranding Dynamics CRM to Dynamics 365 were handled over a minor update of v8.2, so who knows if we’ll see v9.1, v9.2, v9.3 etc. before the plug is finally pulled on the Outlook Client and (presumably) a whole bunch of other deprecated features in V10.

    It also remains to be seen whether Microsoft intends to evolve the desktop experience of using Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. For example, at the moment the documentation states that the offline functionality is available via the phone and tablet apps. The table app for Windows 10 could of course be used on a regular PC as well, but it’s not completely unrealistic to expect some more targeted client applications appear for the desktop environments. When it comes to the App for Outlook on a PC, the current version still installs an add-in to manage your contacts, for example. So, just because the UI controls are being unified now, this doesn’t necessarily mean we’d be forced to use an “oversized phone app” on our big monitors.

    No More Updates – But Don’t Forget To Update!

    Even though the Outlook Client is now deprecated and there will not be any feature enhancements made to it, that doesn’t mean it would be completely left to rot. In fact, it is very important that once your Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement instances moves up to V9 also your Outlook Clients are using the latest version. This version is now the 8.2.2.137 Update for Dynamics 365 for Microsoft Outlook, available for download here. Yes, it’s V8 and not V9, but don’t let that mismatch distract you.

    You see, with V9 the XRM platform has moved up to using TLS 1.2 protocol for securing the connections between the clients and the server. The earlier Outlook Client versions do not support TLS 1.2 and the V9 server will not accept anything but 1.2 as the cryptographic protocol, which means you’re going to need the latest bits. If you have developed your own clients or code that relies on an earlier TLS version, then be sure to read this in-depth description provided by Matt Barbour of the possible errors you’ll encounter with V9 and the ways how you can avoid those by recompiling your code.

    Update on 2018-01-29: Deprecation of Deprecation

    Against all odds, Microsoft actually decided that they would reverse their previous decision to deprecate the Outlook Client. Read the following blog post and draw your own conclusions:

    Continued support for Outlook add-in (Dynamics 365 for Outlook)

  • Storified: Microsoft Dynamics CRM R8 and beyond

  • Power of Choice or the Legacy of Outlook?

    The first selling point advertised for Dynamics CRM in almost any context is the user interface familiarity of Office users and the seamless integration to Outlook. Compared to other CRM applications, the feature set available in the Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook is unsurpassed, no doubt about that. However, sometimes you do run into issues that break the illusion that CRM and Outlook would be the one and the same application. Here are a few features that you should be aware of when planning on how you’ll train your users to use the two different client versions available: web and Outlook.

    Issue 1: Dashboard ribbons are not context sensitive in Outlook

    If you build a dashboard out of grids that present the user with relevant data from various entities, this can significantly cut down their need for jumping between different menus and screens. Say, a customer service representative can easily view all the new items in the email support queue, active cases assigned to him/her and also other open activities. With the help of the context sensitive ribbon the user can then process these records in the same screen, by changing record status from open to closed, accepting items from the queue, creating new tasks etc.

    Except, in Outlook that won’t work. The user will only be able to create a new dashboard, but not any of the common tasks, like creating new records for the selected grid. This is because in Outlook the ribbon is not context sensitive within the dashboard. Why is this? It works elsewhere in Outlook, so why not here? I imagine the explanation is that while the normal grids are composed of native MAPI objects inside Outlook, the dashboards are merely web pages as far as the Outlook client can recognize them, so it can’t understand which ribbon should be shown in which part of the page. Bummer.

    As a result, if you want to create actionable dashboards that allow users to work on the items presented there, it’s better to instruct them to open CRM through the web client instead of the Outlook client.

    Issue 2: Different logic in Quick Find

    People who have worked with Dynamics CRM throughout several versions will surely have learned how the Quick Find operates and when you need to use wild cars. With the CRM 2011 Outlook client, this logic no longer holds true. Outlook has its own way of handling search terms, so now we can punch in a search word right from the middle of a field, such as the account name, without entering the asterisk wild card in front of the term.

    Great, easier for the user to perform searches, right? Well, it is if you only ever work inside the Outlook client. If you step into the web client views, you’ll discover that things work differently there. Not only do you need to remember to use the wildcard in Quick Find criteria, but there also is a specific Quick Find View. Whereas in the web client the search will cover every active record in the database, no matter from which view you start, in Outlook the search is conducted on the records in the selected view. So, if you’re in the My Contacts view in Outlook client and search for a contact that belongs to another user, the Quick Find results will not deliver any data. In the web client it will.

    Also the columns presented in the web client will always be the ones specified in the Quick Find View customizations, but in Outlook the columns will not change as you’re searching from within the current view. However, it appears that the search columns that the Outlook client performs the query on are still affected by the ones defined in the entity Quick Find View, even though this view is never actually presented to the Outlook user. Still following me? If the different search logic is hard for a consultant to remember, just imagine how confusing it can be to the CRM user.

    Issue 3: Writing emails from Outlook without Outlook

    One of the three core modules in Dynamics CRM is Service. The most typical scenario for utilizing CRM for customer service processes is directing the incoming emails for an address like support@company.com to a queue in CRM. This way the emails are automatically tracked under a contact record if the sender email exists in CRM. Also the queue allows you to see which items are already being worked on by customer service reps.

    If you’re working with the Outlook client for Dynamics CRM, then you can write all your emails with the normal Outlook email editor and make use of the rich tools for message formatting, signatures, attaching multiple files with at once etc. Right? Not in this case. If the email you are replying to does not exist inside your Outlook mailbox but rather as an email record inside a CRM view, you can’t send “Outlook” emails as a reply. When you click the reply button, the Outlook client will open the web client email editor form for you.

    There’s surely a reason why the email editor in the web client hasn’t been improved since CRM 3.0. Outlook is Microsoft’s premium experience editor that should be used wherever possible, whereas the web editor is a secondary feature. But if you’re using Outlook already, then it would be nice to be able to always remain within that rich client, even when replying to queue emails, wouldn’t it?

    Issue 4: Recently used and pinned records behind the File button

    Many users will normally be working with a selected few accounts, contacts and opportunities at a time, rather than the whole CRM customer database. This is why the Recently used records menu in CRM 2011 is a great usability enhancement, which is also familiar from many other CRM applications. Right from the CRM main window, from the top left corner where you first look, you’ll be able to open a rich pane that presents all the latest records as well as the views you’ve recently visited.

    So, when I’m in the Outlook client then, surely I’m able to access the same list? Well, you are, but you’ll have to open the Office Backstage menu by clicking on the Outlook File menu, then glazing past all the file manipulation options and settings menus, to finally reach the recently viewed CRM records. And even if you reach it, you won’t be able to launch any views from this menu, since again the way how Outlook treats grids is different from the web client. Anyway, you probably won’t be accessing this menu any more often than you tweak your CRM settings, simply because it’s so well hidden away.

    Desktop Outlook: how crucial is it still?

    Ok, so there are a few quirks to be aware of when jumping between the web client and Outlook client. But how essential is it really to use the Outlook client in the first place? (more…)

  • Upgrade gotchas: Outlook client for Dynamics CRM 2011

    Last weekend I finally did my first installation of the RTM versio of CRM 2011 Outlook client onto a machine with Outlook 2010. I had previously only worked with the Outlook 2007 client version, which is lacking a few nice features in the UI, as described in my earlier post.

    I came across a few issues that might cause problems in the installation process, so I decided to link the relevant KB articles and other related content into this blog post to help you save some time when upgrading to the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM on your client machine. I’m using CRM Online here, so some things may differ from the on-premises client version, which no longer has a separate client version, but of course the authentication methods do differ.

    Before you begin: go with 32-bit

    Yeah, I’m sure most of the new business laptops nowadays come with a 64-bit (a.k.a. x64) version of Windows 7. Nevertheless, you should treat 64-bit applications with caution. Why? Well, it’s a bit like with IPv4 vs. IPv6. Everyone knows the old world as we know it is coming to an end, but there simply isn’t a concrete enough reason for developers or companies to go “all in” with the 64-bit apps.

    With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 the situation was quite nasty, as there was not and there will not be support for the 64-bit versio of Microsoft Office. You simply had to tell the users to “downgrade” their Office, which is not the most optimal starting point for getting someone to adopt a new application such as Dynamics CRM. Now with the arrival of Dynamics CRM 2011 we do in fact have an x64 client for Outlook, so everything should be in order, right? In theory, it is, but if you’re planning to install any fancy RIA apps from the Dynamics Marketplace into your CRM 2011, you should read this blog post from Customer Effective. That’s right, Microsoft hasn’t releases a 64-bit version of the Silverlight add-on for Internet Explorer, which leads us into the following situation:

    KB2500373: Microsoft Silverlight web resources cannot be viewed in the 64-bit version of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Microsoft Office Outlook

    It’s a fact of life: the world is not 64-bit just yet. With the Office applications there’s not likely to be a significant performance boost from using the x64 version, so take the easy way out and just install the 32-bit Office 2010. Let’s revisit the topic when we all have Windows 8 and Office 2013, shall we?

    Favorite folders no more

    KB2494600: There is no option to add Microsoft Dynamics CRM entities to favorites in Microsoft Office Outlook 2010

    The Solutions Module is a new feature that has become available in Outlook 2010, as described here in the MSDN library article. It allows developers to integrate their applications directly into the Outlook navigation pane, which is what Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client is doing to achieve the seamless integration into the native Outlook navigation items.

    What’s the downside? Unfortunately the add-on solution folders cannot be added to the Outlook favorite folders group. Bummer. This was one of the first things I always instructed people to do when training them on how to use Dynamics CRM. There’s no better way to drive CRM adoption that getting the list of the company’s accounts and contacts to be available right below the Outlook inbox folder, where most people start their day at the (MS) office. Even though the CRM folders are now more visual and available under the CRM navigation pane tab, there’s still likely to be tens of entities visible for most CRM users, out of which they typically access just 3-4 most popular ones. I, for one, hate navigating through hierarchical folders that require you to expand them to see the what’s hidden on the next level, so always visible one-click navigation is how I prefer to arrange my working environment, be it SharePoint workspaces or CRM menus in Outlook.

    Following the instructions in the KB article, you can achieve the old favorite folders functionality also in Outlook 2010, but this will require you to disable the Solutions Module. Which, if I’ve understood correctly, will again turn the flashy CRM folder icons into the generic folders that we see in Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003. Guess we’ll just have to figure out which is a bigger loss for the end user experience and make a choice, until there is a feature enhancement available for the Outlook 2010 Solutions Module (I hope there’s no technical limitation on why this couldn’t be implemented in a future service pack).

    Clashes with Windows Live Essentials

    KB2498892: Unable to Configure the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Outlook against Dynamics CRM Online

    Seems like the Windows Live ID authentication in CRM Online has some issues with the “consumer products” for Windows Live. This might not be a big issue in big corporate environments with locked-down client machine configurations that don’t allow using consumer targeted services such as Hotmail or Skydrive. However, as Dynamics CRM Online is clearly making the former enterprise level applications like Customer Relationship Management suites available to even the smallest organizations with its low monthly cost per user and ease of deployment, there’s likely to be more and more users who’ll be transitioning from Microsoft’s consumer product lines to the new cloud-based business product lines, such as CRM Online and Office 365.

    Basically you’ll need to run a repari install on the Windows Live ID Sign-in assistant or Windows Live Essentials 2011 to make it compatible with the Outlook client for CRM Online, which is also using Windows Live ID to connect you to the CRM server. That should do the trick.

    But wait, isn’t Dynamics CRM Online a business product? Why is it using the WLID authentication method meant for the consumer products? For comparison, here’s an aswer from Allen_MSFT on the Office 365 FAQ to a question regarding weather using Office 365 will require WLID.

    “Re Windows Live ID, you don’t need a Windows Live ID to use Office 365 or to use your Windows Phone 7 with Office 365.  Windows Live services are for consumers, so they are not linked within the Office 365 portal.”

    Indeed. I’m waiting for the day when also Dynamics CRM Online will be migrated over to the new Microsoft Online Services Delivery Platform, which will hopefully give us better tools for managing CRM user accounts and authentication.

    Missing Outlook ribbon after CRM client installation

    KB2494581: The Outlook and CRM ribbons disappear from Microsoft Outlook when you use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Microsoft Office Outlook

    I had this one happen to myself, since I had been using a previous beta version of the CRM 2011 client on my machine. I had uninstalled both Office and CRM, but there still remained a few lines in the registry that needed to be removed to get the Outlook ribbon to reappear.

    I have to tell you, Outlook 2010 really looks naked when the ribbon is gone (not just hidden). I’m not sure if there even was a way to do any basic Outlook operations like sending emails with the ribbon completely blank, so I started googling around immediately and came up with the instrcutions that pointed to the following steps required to restore the ribbon:

    • Run Regedit.exe
    • Locate the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{2DF8D04C-5BFA-101B-BDE5-00AA0044DE52} key
    • Delete the 2.4 key that’s found under it. It’s not needed anymore, there should only be 2.5
    Update Nov 9th 2011: Since this appears to be quite a popular post on my blog, I decided to append this information here. Today I was creating a new Windows user profile on a PC that already had the CRM 2011 Outlook client installed on a different user profile. When launching Outlook for the first time as this user, the ribbon was missing from the CRM menus (not the whole Outlook as in the aforementioned case), even though everything was working fine for the previously configured user account. In this particular occasion the client was linked to a CRM Online organization which had received the R7 update (a.k.a. Q4 2011 Service Update), but the Outlook client was still on Update Rollup 3 level. After I deployed Update Rollup 5 on the machine and rebooted, the ribbon was restored for this new user profile. So, be sure to check that the client and server hotfix levels match if you encounter a ribbon display problem.

    Reading pane always shows the contact layout

    Dynamics CRM Deployment Forum: CRM 2011 reading pane error in Outlook 2010

    Unfortunately this one doesn’t have a knowledge base article or a fix yet. I encountered this issue briefly when installing the Beta version of CRM 2011 Outlook client. Back then, all it needed was a reboot and the reading panes and icons were restored. With the RTM version of CRM 2011 client, the issue is more persistent. Each and every CRM entity appears as if it was a contact, presented in a business card layout that only contains the entity primary field (name) and not any other data. Click the image below to see an example of the account record shown as a business card with the contact icon.

    Update Nov 10th 2011: Thanks to Wimco’s post on Dynamics CRM Forums, I was finally able to fix the reading pane layout problem on my PC. I simply uninstalled the Office 2007 Primary Interop Assemblies, after which I also applied the latest Update Rollup package and voilá: the reading pane now shows the fields specific to each entity.

    Further update, March 23th 2012: The EMEA Dynamics CRM Support has published an article, where they suggest another fix for the Outlook client preview pane problem. Apparently an existing DisableFormRegions registry key can cause the contact form to be shown instead of the correct entity form.

  • Greetings from Microsoft Convergence 2010 EMEA

    Continuing with the format introduced in 2009, this year’s Microsoft Convergence for the EMEA region was split into three locations: London, Prague and The Hague. Out of all the options, Prague fit our schedules the best, so that became our destination of choice to hear the latest news and buzz around Microsoft Dynamics products.

    With the fairly recent release of Dynamics CRM 2011 public beta, there was certainly a lot for Microsoft to present on the CRM front. Having been working with the product since CTP3 already, I wasn’t expecting too many surprises for myself in the CRM 2011 session contents. It’s still interesting to observe what is being said about the new release and how the customers and partners react to it. There is such a wealth of new, important features included in CRM 2011 (see my walkthrough slides for starters) that you can’t really construct the one right pitch for the product. You could say that there’s something for everyone.

    We saw the first glimpse of CRM 2011 during Kirill’s keynote, when Reuben Krippner showed a bit of Process Dialogs in the Dynamic Business demonstration. From there on, Reuben was a busy man, since he was giving demos in the next four consecutive CRM sessions on the agenda. Great job pulling it off, Reuben! Let’s hope Liverpool picks up their pace in the Premier League, so we can see some more of them in future CRM demos 😉

    Barry Givens held the last CRM session of the day, focusing on data visualization in CRM 2011. Not like we hadn’t seen the charts a few times already during the day, but hey, I always enjoy hearing Barry talk about his favorite topic i.e. analytics in CRM. While the out-of-the-box charts in CRM 2011 certainly do deliver value, you should really look at the broader picture of what the visualization features introduced in the new version truly mean in terms of customization and application design. The charts are actually one alternative method of navigation, due to their tight integration with grids and the drill-down capability. They can be embedded not only on grids but also forms (through sub-grids), bringing visualizations to every part of the CRM UI. Oh, and don’t forget to check out my post about editing the .NET Chart Controls for CRM 2011. Dashboards, on the other hand, are not just an item in the main menu but rather a new form type. By allowing flexible arrangement of embedded components like grids, charts and web resources, the dashboard forms might actually one day become the next generation UI for navigating in Dynamics CRM. You know, something for the future ahead of us when every modern web app must be built in RIA fashion, with Silverlight controls and what have you.

    (more…)

  • Outlook 2007 with Dynamics CRM 2011: will it blend?

    Perhaps the most visible improvement in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for the end user is the completely revamped Outlook client. Instead of merely wrapping the CRM web client UI inside the Outlook frame with stripped navigation and giving you the all important tracking buttons, the new Outlook client promises additional usability features over the web client. In the demos we’ve seen, things certainly do look pretty with Outlook 2010, but one question remains: will it blend with the previous versions of Outlook?

    Here’s a reminder of what Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client delivers with Outlook 2010:

    Many organizations have only recently gone through the trouble of upgrading to the “ribbonized” Office 2007 and training their staff to locate the familiar commands from the new ribbon icons and sections (or alternatively just shown how you can re-enable the old style menus in 2007). After all this effort, they may not feel like moving on to Office 2010 would really be the next priority item on the software upgrade list. Therefore it will be quite a probable path for companies to first upgrade to CRM 2011 before thinking about their Outlook clients. After all, CRM 2011 has backward compatibility all the way up till Outlook 2003, so why bother? Well, that’s exactly what I was curious to find out after receiving an invitation to CRM 2011 Online beta. I couldn’t risk my primary Outlook at work, so I decided to try this with my home laptop running 32-bit Office 2007 Enterprise on top of Windows 7 x64.

    (Personal confession time: yesterday I was faced with a PC that had Office 2003 installed. Upon trying to start making a few PowerPoint slides to create some very basic graphics, I was completely lost and decide to give up altogether after staring at the screen for half a minute feeling helpless, as I couldn’t figure out which menus to click. So there, that’s how quickly we can all unlearn the skills we used to once possess.)

    Getting started

    Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online will prompt the new users accessing the server through Internet Explorer with a friendly reminder that there is also an Outlook client available. I clicked on the link and received a nice little 5.5 MB installer, so off we go.

    Firing up Outlook after the installer gives a prompt to enter the CRM Online URL. Windows Live ID is verified and after that you’re connected to your CRM organization. Or should I say one of them, as the new Outlook client now supports having multiple organizations accessible through the same client UI. A very nice addition for all the XRM scenarios, but of course it comes with one major caveat: activities can only be synchronized with a single organization. So, you can only truly leverage the traditional Outlook capabilities with a single CRM organization. Maybe one day we’ll have the choice of a global “regarding” field from any server. (more…)