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A customer of my wants to track E-mails directly from a Shared (Group) Outlook mailbox. A simple question, but until now I could only solve this by using Queues. Queues could not be used for some reasons.

The workaround I presented was to move or copy the E-mails from the Shared Mailbox to the Personal Mailbox and track the E-mails from there. It works, but with every workaround, it is a workaround.

I kept searching for a structural solution. And I have found it finally.

On the page “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 updates and hotfixes” (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949256) there is a section “Hotfixes that have limited distribution”. In this section hotfix number 953812 is mentioned with the title “A hotfix that enables you to track an appointment in a shared calendar in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook is available“.  The details of this hotfix describe it not only works for Shared Calendar, but also for Contacts and Tasks.

After some experimenting I found out it also works for Shared Mailboxes !!!

Problem solved.
The message “Only items in the default Microsoft Outlook store can be promoted to Microsoft dynamics CRM.” is History!

Only catch, the solution is supported, but the functionality I use it for isn’t, so it can be undone with a future rollup pack or something. I have succesfully tested it with Rollup 4. (With Rollup 2 it didn’t work.)

Fields in Ms Dynamics CRM cannot be set to read-only!!!
Ok, a little explanation and a demo script to show what I’m implying.

Yesterday a customer asked me to change the text in a read-only field. I’m system administrator on their system, so the easiest way should have been to change the Field Properties of the attribute, but this would allow all users to change this attributes on all records.
Another option would be to use the Enrich Functionality, described in this post.

I tried a third option, triggering javascript via the Address Bar of Internet Explorer. The usage may be well know, but I never thought of using it to modify read-only fields on records. Well, it is surprisingly easy. All you need to know it the id of the attribute you want to modify. (The id can be found with something like the IE Developer Toolbar.)
If you have the id the code is easy and you only have to copy it into the address bar of the record you want to modify:

javascript:crmForm.all.new_attribute.DataValue = "read-only doesn't work for me"; crmForm.all.new_attribute.ForceSubmit = true; crmForm.Save();

This means every user with modify rights on a record can change read-only field on that record.

MS CRM 4.0 CTP3 offered the possibility to enrich data via the Data Management menu. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 RTM this functionality was removed from the menu, but to my surprise it still works.
The probable reason Microsoft remove this functionality were the risk involved with the usage. (It is possible to screw up your data via enrichment). This risk is still present, and moreover everybody with the rights to import data is able to enrich data.
Although there are risks, I want to share how to enrich your data using Data Management.The easiest way to enrich your data is:

1. Make a nice view in advanced find with one or more columns to identify the records and the columns you want to enrich.
In this example I use the First and the Last Name to identify my Contacts and I want to enrich the Home Phone.

2. Export this view to Microsoft Office Excel and add a column to the left with the name of the entity in the heading. Put the Guids corresponding to the records in this column. And enrich your data.

3. Save your Excel file as CSV (comma delimited) and Create a new Data Import. Select your saved CSV, select Data Delimiter ‘none’ and Field Delimiter ‘Comma (,)’. On the next screen select your entity (in this case Contact).
As you will see at the top of the screen the possibility to ‘Enrich data by updating records rather than creating new records.’ is given.
This was the big surprise:

And the full screen:

4. After clicking a couple of times on the next button and some patience you can open your Advanced Find view to evaluate your results.

5. Next to that, if you open the Import record, you can see that the Contact records are actually updated and not created.

A small addition to this post. I got a lot of questions on how to get the GUIDS. If you want to get the GUID you can make an export directly from the database. This is not really userfriendly, but it works.
Furthermore my article was more to show that the option within the standard application still exists, than to really give my opinion on the best way how to enrich data.

Another (better) option to enrich data is to use a free tool from codeplex: http://mscrmimport.codeplex.com/

Have fun with it, but use it with care.