CRM Workflow not sending emails

I recently had a customer call up saying their workflows in CRM 4 were not sending emails.  This involved me doing a bit of research about emails in CRM.

The fundamental piece of information is CRM doesn’t have any email capability!  Yes it needs something else to send the emails for it.

There are two popular ways to send email in CRM

1.        Outlook client CRM add on

2.       Using the CRM router

Another piece of important information to realise is the emails settings above are configured for each user individually.  So if you go to a users settings you will find a setting called

E-mail access Configuration

You have an ingoing and outgoing setting.

The user either has to have the CRM outlook addon installed into outlook or they need to specify the CRM Router (which you will have had to set up). One caveat of the CRM Router is it isn’t really linked to CRM so if you specify a user email settings to use the CRM router you will then have to go to the CRM Router and refresh the user

The other thing to consider if the user is using outlook is it will only send the emails if outlook is open (I think this is correct) so if the user shuts down their machine then no emails are going to be sent.

This problem turned out to be the person who created the workflow didn’t have their outlook setup to send emails on their behalf.  I have seen this problem before and what some people do is use one account to create the workflows and for that user to have the correct email settings.

I had a problem today with a similar solution, so my advice is when there is a problem sending emails go into the Administration/user/ and check the outlook settings or you can go to these if you go into the CRM options in outlook.  You should check to see if the checkbox for sending emails on behalf of the user is ticked.

 

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Dynamic NAV/CRM Connector frustrations

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I have been working with the connector for the last couple of weeks, I am flabbergasted by the total lack of information about it.

Microsoft haven’t even created a sample CRM link.  The only example you have is a GP sample.

What’s more frustrating is the complete lack of documentation and examples.  They cover the out of the box sample ok but then anything after that is left to the user to stumble around blindly.

Then you start to Google for help and soon find that hardly anyone has seemingly used the software before apart from 2 people.  You will also find the official NAV connector blog which basically has marketing material on it.

It seems like a shame because if Microsoft put some effort it and created some better documentation and samples then people could get it working and that would increase the chance of partners selling NAV and CRM.

Most developers I have asked about it have said don’t touch it with a barge pole or use Scribe.  I find this disappointing because to resolve these problems Microsoft just need to divert a small amount of resources to help people get started with the connector.  I have also found I am dealing with bewildered customers who can’t believe there isn’t a way for two Microsoft products to integrate easily.

Perhaps this will improve in the future but I don’t think it will be any time soon