The CRM SE team has just released the Update Rollup 7 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, this is a cumulative update including all the previous released ones. However, the most important thing is that this Update Rollup included a ton of fixes for the Outlook client, it actually includes a re-engineered Outlook client that improves the performance of it in many ways. and it will be the baseline for the future Outlook Client downloads.
Among the most important improvements for the Outlook client are:
- Machine Performance
- The Microsoft CRM hoster process is no longer running when the client is not off-line. This process host the local web server required when you are off-line.
- The Outlook add-in now loads on the background therefore it doesn’t block the Outlook UI while loading allowing to load Outlook much faster.
- The email tagging now runs on the background avoiding hangs on outlook if you have many tagged emails on your inbox, and the process has also been improved to make it faster.
- The outlook sync is now in a background thread.
- The Address Book provider has also been improved.
- The client won’t need to be restarted if you loose connectivity or sleep/hibernate your machine. The CRM add-in will automatically transition to offline mode when remote CRM server cannot be contacted and automatically go back online when connection is restored. This is true to AD-IFD transitions as well
- Synchronisation Process
- The contacts/task/appointments sync has also been improved via a more optimised changes tracking to reduce the amount of time required.
- The reliability of the sync process has been improved. Now the Outlook client will handle row level failures to avoid the whole sync process to fail, and it will give information about the specific record failures.
- Client Setup
- Implemented BITS for components download
- Reduced environment environment check
- No need to stop Outlook for initial configuration
- SQL Install and client updates won’t require admin privileges.
- Setup client web link. A button on the Web client will offer the capability to install the Outlook client if it’s not installed (there are registry key to disable and control this feature).
As you see the list of performance improvements is amazing, and they definitely will make our life easier 🙂
More information at the CRM Team Blog and the KB Article for Update Rollup 7
PS: Just installed UR7 and the changes are really noticeable!!
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