Outlook Integration Expert Needed

oleschjoeth

Hi,

I really need some help regarding our Outlook Integration. It behaves weird!
We have approx. 5000 contacts, quite a lot but still....when synchronizing between Navision 3.70 SQL and Outlook it takes up till 13 minutes if it doesn't crash before that.

We have Navison on Windows Server 2003 and we use Outlook 2003. The user setup is to use 1 common public contact folder for Navision purposes and another privat contact since our employees have actual private contacts we don't want mixed up with the public company contacts.

I would really appreciate your advice

Ole

Dmitry_Chadaev

Hi Ole,

Can you tell me more precisely if it's the whole Synchronize with Outlook batch takes 13 minutes or only it's substage - Synchronizing Contacts?
Does it always take that long or it is only first time when you run it?
When you say "if it doesn't crash before that" - what kind of crash is that?
Is it 5000 contacts for one salesperson or for entire company?

Regards,
Dmitry

oleschjoeth

Hi Dmitry,

It is the entire batch job that takes 13 minutes. But the import and export ages take most of the 13 minutes. The 5000 contacts are for the entire company.
The crash I am talking about is kind of total. I have experienced that it actually kill the Navision process running. Other funny stuff is when it tells me something about an automation variable that has to be 'intentiated' what ever that means. I assume it should be 'initiated' but stil :? And the last funny thing, so far, is a message when trying to change the contact folder for an employee, it tells me that the Navision USERID can not be resolved with the Outlook profile :?: It has worked before :? What I wonder is if it matters, that everybody is set up to use one common public contact folder instead of a individually private contact folder? Do you know if there are any hotfixes that apply to the Outlook Integration?

Thanks,
Ole

Dmitry_Chadaev

Hi Ole,

I am afraid that the Outlook Integration was not meant to be used in this way - "The user setup is to use 1 common public contact folder for Navision purposes". At least this is what I see from the code of the Synchronize with Outlook batch...

If several salespeople use the same folder to synchronize their contacts there will be a mess during the synchronization.

Everything is tightly connected to the code of currently logged-in salesperson (this code is also assigned to the contacts in Outlook in User-Defined fields), so if you have contacts in "your" Outlook folder wich were synchronized by other salespeople, then in some places they will not be synchronized at all, in others - they will be reassigned to you in Navision or duplicates will appear.

So first of all I would recoomend using separate (it can still be public) folder for every salesperson in Oultook.
Secondly, if you say that overall batch job takes 13 min to run, then I can assume that synchronization of contacts takes approx. 10 min, so 5000 Contacts / 600 sec = 8 Contacts per second... It sounds like a reasonable figure for synchronization... I could try to save you up to 1 min - but I doubt it will save you

oleschjoeth

Hi Dmitry and thank you

I am a little bit confused. You first write that the appropiate setup is to use 1 common folder and later on that it should be one folder per salesperson. I assume that you definitly mean one folder per person???
I will try it as soon as I get to the office, right now it's 7AM

As usual a big problem with Navision is the quality, or lack, of documentation. Do you know where to find more details on Outlook Integration than just the pdf's on the cd's?

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it

Dmitry_Chadaev

Hello Ole,

You are welcome

I meant that every salesperson must have his/her own folder for synchronization (it should belong only to 1 salesperson meaning that nowbody else shold use it for his/her synchronization).

Using 1 folder for everybody will bring the problems I described.

I havent heard about other documentation yet ... only the CRM Training Material.

oleschjoeth

OK - thanks a lot Dmitry. I will check it out today and let you know how it went.

Best regards,
Ole