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Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

How to avoid duplicate appointments in Outlook when migrating appointment data

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Posted on by Microsoft Employee

Hi,

We are implementing a CRM 2011 (OnPrem) -> CRM 2016 (OnPrem) upgrade for our customer. This project is implemented so that we will not use CRM 2011 -> 2013 -> 2015 -> 2016 upgrade path. Instead we have clean 2016 server installed into which we implement the necessary customizations as new solution and then migrate the needed data from 2011 to 2016. We are planning now the activity data migration which involves appointments, tasks and also contacts which are synced between CRM Outlook client and CRM server. There have been plenty of end users in 2011 environment, who have used CRM Outlook client to sync these entity types between the Outlook and CRM server.

Now when we migrate for example appointment data from 2011 to 2016 on the server side, I would think that there is a potential for duplicate appointments being created to these end users' Outlook calendars, who have had CRM 2011 Outlook client installed and used it for syncing appointments. So once the CRM 2011 Outlook client is uninstalled from their workstations, the appointments still remain naturally in their Outlook calendars. But while doing the uninstall of the 2011 client, the sdf-tables are also removed from their workstations hard disk. Furthermore, as the CRM 2016 server install is done as new install, there are no SyncEntry tables left anymore on the CRM DB on the 2016 environment. So once the appointment data is migrated into CRM 2016, then I would think those appointments might get synchronized to end user Outlook calendar via CRM 2016 Outlook client synchronization as duplicate.

Is there any best practice to avoid this scenario? Also is there the same potential issue for other entity types such as tasks and contacts which are also synced using CRM Outlook client?


Thanks!

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  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    RE: How to avoid duplicate appointments in Outlook when migrating appointment data

    Hi Jose

    I am in the process of doing exactly this at the moment, migrating from CRM 2011 to a new CRM 2016, both on premise. I am currently looking at the Appointments and the potential pitfalls associated with it. I can find very little help or advice when searching on the internet but your question has popped up.

    Did you implement the method suggested by Torsten or did you find an alternative method?

    For our purposes, the suggested method would be a tremendous pain as we have over 1.3 million emails, 200k tasks, and 50k appointments all created by users in many different countries. Re-syncing all of these from users Outlook plugins will take an age and will be a very unpopular thing to have to do.

    Any advice would be very happily received!

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    RE: How to avoid duplicate appointments in Outlook when migrating appointment data

    Dear Jose,

    basically you need to unistall the Outlook Client. Then you have to delete all Tasks, Appointments, Emails and Contacts in Outlook which were synchronized with Crm. To identify the data you can search for the property crmLinkState = 2 in the crm specific Attributes. After that you install the new Crm Outlook Client and start synchronize.

    Best regards,

    Torsten

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