Dynamics 365 App for Outlook - Tracking status in Outlook hack / workaround

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Posted on by George Rizk

Hi Everyone,

We are slowly moving away from the Dynamics 365 Outlook client to the new Dynamics 365 App for Outlook.

One of the things we find that really irritates our users with the new app is that there is no immediate onscreen way of seeing what you have tracked and what you have not. This is especially so for the users that send and receive hundreds of emails are day.

It's very annoying to have to check each email and click the Dynamics 365 App button to see it's tracking status.

I have found a supported way which uses Conditional Formatting in Outlook to change the color of an email once it's been tracked in CRM to allow users to quickly see when it's been tracked in CRM without having to go through a whole circus of processes.

Remember this is a workaround (By work around I mean it's better than the nothing we are given at the moment)

In Outlook you can add a column named "crmLinkState" (without quotes). To do this, go to the View tab, click View Settings button, click Columns , then click New Column. Type crmLinkState as the name. The column Type should be Number. Please also note that "crmLinkState" is case sensitive. The values which now appear in your new column mean the following:

blank - never tracked
0 - means untracked, i.e. it was tracked at some point but not currently
1 - track pending
2 - currently tracked

Now you have the new column in Outlook you can use Conditional Formatting in your View to altar the way a tracked email looks. What I have done is for any email which contains a crmLinkState = 2 than change the font colour to "Teal". This way my regular untracked emails are black and my tracked emails are coloured Teal.

Hopefully this helps anyone else out there who is scratching their head as much as I am.

Moving forward ideally I would like to see all the functionality of the Dynamics 365 Outook Client rolled into the App like multi selecting items to Track and also having it so the app automatically tracks my outgoing replies if they where tracked to begin with. For us automatically tracking the outbound reply is equally as important as tracking the inbound reply as sometimes its the sender who has the last words!

For more details on the "crmLinkState" field in Outlook see the following great read:
https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/dynamicscrmsupportblog/archive/2013/01/22/crm-for-outlook-client-synchronization-blog-series-part-2-what-happens-when-you-track-an-item-in-outlook

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MezMarianne 1,267 on at

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I turned this into a video. https://vimeo.com/267765191

[View:https://vimeo.com/267765191:320:180]

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Jkruse on at

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You might want to check out what the D365 team just announced yesterday as another alternative to what you're trying to accomplish by using "categories" in Outlook: blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/.../introducing-outlook-category-based-tracking-in-server-side-synchronization

Might be a little easier/streamlined to implement.

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MezMarianne 1,267 on at

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Yep. My video will be relevant just until the categories approach is ready for version 9.0 - and then maybe for people in organisations where this category feature is not turned on.

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George Rizk 7 on at

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Thanks Marianne,

Great video. :)

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Community Member on at

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Thanks, Marianne! That worked!

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Community Member on at

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Thank you, George! That worked!

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popujol 655 on at

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This is nice and working in the main inbox. Thank you for sharing !

Would you know if it is possible in the sent message (track a previously sent email and apply a color?)

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George Rizk 7 on at

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Certainly. You can apply the same view to the "Sent Items" folder using the same technique. :)

One issue you will find is for emails you file away. Example. You track an email in the Inbox. It's colour than changes. Than when you move that email to a folder, that email will lose it's colour as the folder itself doesn't have the modified view to enhance tracked emails. I guess you can probably change the default view for all folders in the mailbox and this should be a workaround. Outlook allows you to apply the current view to all folders.

We didn't need to file our emails away in sub folders so inbox & sent items was enough for us.

Hope this helps.

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MezMarianne 1,267 on at

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So - my video was valid until October. I just got the category tracking last week.

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Hi Marianne,

Thanks for your video I was able to get color coding working well. I also received notification that category mapping for online Dynamics 365 is now available for ver. 9. However, following the article thread https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/dynamicscrm-2016/administering-dynamics-365/mt846659(v=crm.8) to enable the OrgDBOrgSetting in your Dynamics 365 organization it says to refer to this article for downloading the appropriate tool: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2691237/orgdborgsettings-tool-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm. The download options are for Dynamics CRM 2011 to 2016. Since we use online Dynamics 365 then is the Dynamics CRM 2016 the applicable tool? I really don't want to go through these procedures unless I feel confident in using correct tool. You implied in your last post that you are now using the category function for email tracking. Is this correct? Can you share the basic steps you followed? Thanks so much, Rex

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