My first thoughts were Server Side Sync of course, but there was no reason for these appointments to be in Dynamics. Well, seconds later my reaction was. This should be easy enough using the Excel and Outlook connectors. I started testing a few scenarios and within about 30 minutes, we had a solution that was ready to test. What better solution then creating a Power Automate Flow.

I created a manual flow first just to test this logic, but after that modified this to a scheduled flow.

The first step was to create an Excel spreadsheet with the data elements that we needed. I created a spreadsheet and a table within the spreadsheet and called it EventsTable.

This table can naturally grow or shrink based on the data that is needed.

Next was to create the first action in the flow (after the Manual Trigger, which we later replaced with schedule). We used the List rows present in a table action using the Excel Online (Business) connector.

Specified the Location, Document Library, Filename and the name of the table.

The next thing is looping through all the rows of the table, and creating Events from these. I added an Apply to each control and added an Outlook 365 Create event (V4) action to create the event record inside of Outlook 365.

That is basically it. I ran the flow to test it out, and within seconds I could see the three events (calendar appointments within my Outlook Web App).

The only thing left to do is change the manual trigger. I just went ahead and deleted the manual trigger and added the Recurrence (Schedule) trigger, and set this to run on a daily basis.

We can add additional conditions to check if the event is already there or update the Excel spreadsheet to make that an event has been created, but will leave that for future requirements.

Thank you Cristian for asking how to get this done…

The post Creating Outlook Events from a OneDrive Excel spreadsheet appeared first on Aric Levin's Digital Transformation Blog.

The main reason for deprecating the Outlook client is that it does not have the capabilities that are expected from it with the latest releases of CRM. The Outlook Client is a COM addin, which are only supported in some versions of Microsoft Outlook (such as the desktop version). In the last few years, the Microsoft Office product group releases the Office add-ins feature, which does not rely on code that is installed on the user machine, so that results more reliable and easier to maintain.

The new add-ins can run on the Outlook Web App, Mobile Outlook and Outlook for Mac. With the new enhancements to Microsoft Dynamics 365, the July update and future releases, additional enhancements and improvements will be added to the Outlook addin, which is now called the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook.

In the upcoming release of Dynamics CRM (July 2017 update, or v9) additional enhancement were introduced tto the addin, which include more information that is available to the user in addition to tracking and viewing of additional information related to email recipients or regarding records. Users will also be able to search for records or navigate to records all from within the app.

The post Deprecation of Microsoft Outlook Client for Dynamics CRM appeared first on Aric Levin's Digital Transformation Blog.

Finally we decided to implement this using Plugins.
The solution was to allow Outlook to make the changes, but as soon as they are made, revert them back to their original values.

We recently got a request from a client that wanted to prevent modifications of Contacts from the Outlook Client back to CRM.
We went back and forth trying to implement this with security roles and other options, but none of the solutions were perfect.

Finally we decided to implement this using Plugins.
The solution was to allow Outlook to make the changes, but as soon as they are made, revert them back to their original values.

There were four parts to the solution:

Step 1 – Creation of a temporary entity to hold the values that are modified by the Outlook Contact record.

The first step is to create a holding tank or staging entity that will store the changes that were performed to the Outlook Entity.
This is a simple entity that will have the name of the field, the original value and the changed value. Those values will be updated in the entity by the Contact Update Pre-Operation Plugin.

The screenshot below shows the Sync record portion of with the modifications that were made in an Outlook record.

Step 2 – Creation of a revision or timestamp field in the CRM Contact record.

The next step is to create a field in the CRM Contact entity that will always be modified.
You can create a revision field or a timestamp/date time field that you will update in JavaScript when the form is being loaded or saved.

If you use a revision field, make sure to increment the value of the field before the form is saved.
This will tell the plugin there were changes in the form that were called from the CRM form and not from Outlook.

If you use other methods to make updates to your CRM Contact form besides the CRM Form and Outlook, then make sure to update the code in those CRM Update method calls to also increment the revision or modify the timestamp.

Step 3 – Creation of a Contact Update Pre-Operation Plugin Message to store the changes done by Outlook

The next step is the creation of the first Plugin Message. This message will be called before the changes are saved to the Outlook Contact record.
In this step we will first check if the Plugin was called from CRM or Outlook.
If it was called from CRM, we will not do any processing, however if it was called from Outlook we will start processing the changes.

The GetInputParams method will retrieve the existing field values of the contact record in CRM.
It will then loop through all of the fields that were modified, and for each field that was modified create a SyncField in CRM with the name of the field, the existing value and the requested value.

Our application also sends an email out to an administrator that these changes were required.

Step 4 – Creation of a Contact Update Post-Operation Plugin Message to revert the values back

The last step retrieves the records that were temporarily stored in the SyncFields entity and modifies the Contact entity with the values that existed before the changes that were initiated from Outlook.

Step 5 – Optional approval process

Step 5 is an optional state that will call a Plugin on the Outlook Sync entity that will accept the changes that originated from Outlook.

If you would like a demo of the One-Way Sync process (or solution), contact us here.

The post One-Way Sync between Outlook and CRM appeared first on Aric Levin's Digital Transformation Blog.

This is a known issues and happens usually when new products get released.
The Anti-Virus email scanner add-in for the new release of the e-mail program is not supported and thus prevents e-mails from going out and crashes the new application.

The solution: disable the Anti-Virus add-in in Microsoft Outlook 2013.

The post Outlook 2013 Crashes when sending e-mail appeared first on Aric Levin's Digital Transformation Blog.

When trying to install the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook client on a Terminal Services computer, the following error is received:

“Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 for Outlook cannot be installed on a computer where Microsoft Exchange Server versions prior to Exchange Server 2007 are installed.”

This error can be remedied by modified a registry key under the Exchange hive. To modify the key following the steps below:

• Open the Registry Editor (run regedit from command prompt)
• Backup (export) everything under the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftExchange
• Delete the Key
• Install the Microsoft Dynamics CRM  4 for Outlook Client
• Configure the Microsoft Dynamics CRM  4 for Outlook Client
• Re-install the key*

  * Note: Re-installing the key will prevent new users from configuring their Microsoft Dynamics for Outlook client with CRM the first time they log in. Re-installing the key should be done after all required users have configured their Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook Client.

The post Installing CRM for Outlook Client in Terminal Services environment appeared first on Aric Levin's Digital Transformation Blog.