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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived) / Appointments get delet...
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Appointments get deleted when Outlook CRM clients sync with CRM

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Posted on by David Sydney 75

Hi community,

I have been investigating an issue in our CRM environment for quite a while now and I am not sure how to proceed further to find the root cause of the bug.

We use Outlook 365 and Dynamics 2013 SP1 RU4 (on premise, 6.0.4.145). Around 50 people create and share appointments in CRM that get synced with Outlook CRM clients installed on everyone’s machine. Some users first create the appointment in Outlook and sync it to CRM.

Every now and then, a bunch of appointments (often 100+) get deleted in CRM at the same time and remain untracked in Outlook after synchronising with CRM. I have tried to find a pattern but couldn’t identify any. This problem seems to have started since we moved Exchange from on premise to the cloud.

I enabled tracing on all client machines and it looks like clients trigger the deletion on the CRM side, but the log content is quite vague. We have now started to uninstall and install the CRM client and have them all on the same version (SP1 RU4, 6.1.4.145). Some users have Outlook 2010 installed, but most users have Outlook 2016. OS is mostly Windows 10, but some use Windows 7 as well.

Some users log on to different computers and sometimes switch the primary sync computer (which is not recommended, and I asked them not to do that anymore). However, also users who only work on one machine experienced this issue.

I wondered if users installed any software, made configuration changes, or performed any actions that might have triggered the deletions in CRM. Unfortunately, there was no trace of any kind that was helpful. Once, appointments got deleted in CRM when a user was on leave and not using the computer at all (however, their machine was online and Outlook was opened).

None of the users have offline capability installed.

The calendars are shared between different users, mostly with edit rights. We now have six pilot users where we removed edit sharing permissions as we thought that this might be causing issues.

Some users use Outlook web access, smart phone apps (iPhone native mail client or Outlook app on iPhone or Androids), but some don’t use any other mail clients and experience the same issues as well.

We also made sure that there are no duplicate email addresses (field InternalEMailAddress) in SystemUserBase.

If you have an idea what’s going on or how I could continue to troubleshoot this issue, I would be very grateful to read your thoughts.

Many thanks,

David

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I have the same question (0)
  • sanp Profile Picture
    sanp 320 on at

    you can open diagnostics tool for outlook addin and select trace error and errors will be logged under %appdata%/local/Microsoft/Mscrmclient/Trace folder. Also can you please reiterate one scenario where appointment got deleted?

  • David Sydney Profile Picture
    David Sydney 75 on at

    Hi sanket,

    thank you for your reply. I have enabled tracing on all client machines and checked the trace log. Unfortunately, I couldn't find valuable information in it.

    I know when the synchronisation happened, but not why appointments get untracked.

    I am still trying to figure out what's happening.

    Thanks,

    David

  • sanp Profile Picture
    sanp 320 on at

    One question, are you using sss or outlook sync and is it possible to upgrade to latest v9 version?

  • Rob Landolt Profile Picture
    Rob Landolt 495 on at

    You checked for duplicate emails in system user, but did you also check the contact/account tables? There was an issue back in the day where matching emails on any type of record could throw off the Outlook sync and make appointments disappear:

    Have a look at this: https://www.powerobjects.com/2010/03/25/outlook-appointments-disappearing/

  • David Sydney Profile Picture
    David Sydney 75 on at

    We are using Outlook Sync. An upgrade to the latest version is currently not an option as it is highly customised.

  • David Sydney Profile Picture
    David Sydney 75 on at

    Hi Rob, thanks for your answer.

    Yes, I came across this article before and checked contact and account tables as well. I did find duplicates and removed them, but the issue still persists.

  • emjaysan Profile Picture
    emjaysan 5 on at

    We have the same issue logged with Microsoft. So far they have pointed towards a few articles but none are particularly conclusive.

    1. https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2459536/an-appointment-is-deleted-unexpectedly-in-the-outlook-calendar-for-the

    This is for CRM 4.0, but the registry entry it interesting and I wonder if it would still work as a "workaround"

    2. https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4345686/an-appointment-is-deleted-unexpectedly-when-using-server-side-synchron

    This apparently relates to SSS only. I'm unsure if it would affect Email Router also.

    3. https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/890436/how-to-troubleshoot-missing-and-duplicate-appointments-in-outlook

    A massively lengthy and general troubleshooting guide I haven't been through yet

    4. https://community.dynamics.com/crm/f/117/t/154354

    This related to duplicate email addresses, you have already checked

    They also stated "Fixed already in (8.2.2.2353) BUG 1238680: Outlook: Appointment and Recurring appointment are disappeared from outlook calendar after clicking 'Sync with CRM'

     

  • David Sydney Profile Picture
    David Sydney 75 on at

    Hi emalbon,

    thanks a lot for your reply.

    I went through the articles that Microsoft sent you, but they don't really cover the scenarios we are having.

    1. https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2459536/an-appointment-is-deleted-unexpectedly-in-the-outlook-calendar-for-the

    The scenario is that "the organizer untracks the appointment to cancel the appointment", but this is not what's happening on our side. The un-tracking happens without user interaction.

    2. https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4345686/an-appointment-is-deleted-unexpectedly-when-using-server-side-synchron

    The cause is that "the organizer of the appointment changes". However, this is not the case here. The organiser didn't change.

    3. https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/890436/how-to-troubleshoot-missing-and-duplicate-appointments-in-outlook

    In our case, appointments are not missing in Outlook, and they are not duplicate as well. They remain in Outlook, but the appointments get un-tracked, and as a result, appointments get deleted in CRM.

    We have also raised a ticket with Microsoft and got a reply that might be of interest to you as well!

    Apparently, there is a bug in Outlook client that might be responsible for un-tracking appointments. This bug is fixed in the following release:

    support.microsoft.com/.../june-7-2016-update-for-outlook-2016-kb3115147

    Microsoft asked us to update our Outlook clients to the latest versions:

    Outlook 2016 : support.microsoft.com/.../description-of-the-security-update-for-outlook-2016-november-13-2018

    Outlook 2013 : support.microsoft.com/.../description-of-the-security-update-for-outlook-2013-november-13-2018

    Outlook 2010 : support.microsoft.com/.../description-of-the-security-update-for-outlook-2010-november-13-2018

    We haven't had an issue after we installed this update, but it is too early to say that the bug is fixed. We'll continue monitoring the system.

    According to Microsoft, if you update the latest important/recommended Outlook updates, the bug should be fixed.

    In my organisation, Outlook clients were not all patched to the latest versions.

    It would be great to hear if this Outlook client update seems to fix the issue on your end.

    Cheers,

    David

  • emjaysan Profile Picture
    emjaysan 5 on at

    Hi David,

    Thanks so much for taking the time to share your information from Microsoft. We will definitely give this update a try. Our current plan of action is to trial the updated Outlook addin version 8.2.2.2353 which is not officially released but can be obtained from Microsoft. If you find you are still having issues, let me know and I will let you know how we go on with the updated addin.

    Emily

  • David Sydney Profile Picture
    David Sydney 75 on at

    Hi Emily,

    We rolled out the Outlook update (KB 4461506, KB 4461529) to around 100 computers two weeks ago. So far it looks good as we didn't have any untracked appointments anymore.

    So you are having exactly the same issue? Are you also running CRM 2013? I am curious how you go with the Outlook client 8.2...

    Cheers,

    David

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