I'm not sure what version you're on, there definitely seem to be some issues with Exchange Sync in 7.2. You can possibly fix this pretty quickly (at least stop the comments from being shared with the attendee) by changing Include CRM Info in Body. (Administration ->Email and Documents -> Exchange Server Integration -> Synchronization Management. You'll have to disable the sync before this setting can be modified.

@Axiom

It's always been like that - all appointment attendees get the updates. It's a very very big warning i give to any customer that has it and warn them of the pit / prat falls of the functionality.

@jmilford

We're using 7.1 at the moment but the "CRM Info in Body" setting has no effect. The detail box (where the sales people usually enter notes about the meeting) is still put in the body of the email.

@Darren

What has been your work around / solution? Have you just blocked the emails from going out on the Exchange server?

@Axiom

You can block the exchange as then you'd send no emails to that contact or domain.

We haven't proposed a solution just a very big education point, besides having a new activity type 'Post Meeting' that all the notes go on that and that is internal only which you can police.

It appears that this has been discussed on the Partner Forum in detail, beginning as far back as May, 2012. The users on the post in question share your desire for more control over what the external attendees receive, and how often they receive it.

According to the blog post, the only response from Sage has been that the functionality is working as intended; this may or may not be true, and additional discussions may have occurred offline. Users in that thread have been requesting an update as recently as May, 2013, but no response has been posted.

I am upgrading my company's SageCRM version from v6.2 to v7.2, and I will be testing the exchange integration functionality extensively before deploying. I will also be raising this issue proactively with our Business Partner. I have yet to see a post in the community stating that having an external attendee receive all CRM notes and multiple appointment updates is a desired feature.

At the very least, I would like to see a Sage representative discuss the thinking behind their design and acknowledge the community concerns regarding this feature.

As for a workaround, the post suggests looking into preventing the Updated Date field from

changing using a table level script, as this might prevent the Exchange server from sending updates.

- Matt -

I would recommend we all go vote up the following idea. (As soon as they implement a way to vote with the new layout).

community.sagecrm.com/.../appointments-on-ms-exchange-with-external-attendees.aspx

I am having the same issue. Ever time we complete an appointment, it sends out a new appointment request to the customer. I cannot tell you the number of time I have received a phone call or email asking me what this new request is for. It seems like it would be easy enough to prompt me whether I want to update the others on the appointment or not.

A quick follow-up: this was discussed in detail at Sage Summit 2013 in Washington D.C. The Sage representatives there did not indicate that they were aware of this as an issue, but that they would be looking into it further.

Hi guys,

There's some changes in this area going into v7.1j, due later today. The way the update emails work is that Exchange will send a new email whenever it receives an update to an appointment. From this patch onwards, we're only going to send an update to Exchange whenever a field that exists on Exchange is updated in CRM. These fields would include the likes of the subject, body, external attendees etc.

Updates to fields such as the appointment status (which does not exist on Exchange), or custom fields will no longer result in an update being sent to Exchange, and will no longer result in Exchange sending out update emails.

Further details will be available in the v7.1j release notes.

All the best,
Rob

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the Team's attention on this one. As for confidential details being added to Appointments, then sent out to those external attendees automatically, IMO a two-pronged approach would be to:

1. Make it clear in the documentation that this will happen - just like when you add confidential details to an Appointment in Outlook and hit 'Send Update'.

2. Provide a 'Send Update' button in the CRM appointment, as per Outlook, so that the end user is responsible for actively sending the update on to external attendees, or not ( Paul Ribeiro suggests this in community.sagecrm.com/.../appointments-on-ms-exchange-with-external-attendees.aspx.). Even better, IMO, provide a setting in the Administration area to allow end users to choose whether to enable the automatic updates to be sent, or require them to hit the 'Send Update' button (as per Outlook).

I'd add this to

Really appreciate your Team's participation on these boards, keep up the excellent communication, and improvements!

Hi Aslan,

Thanks for the feedback! Both are excellent suggestions - I'm sending them on to the Product Management team for review. Regarding adding confidential details to the appointment: I'd suggest going one further, and adding an additional multiline text field for internal notes. Edits to this field would not synch with Exchange. It just might make things a little clearer for users.

Just an additional note on the "Send Update" - I think the dev team might be a little hamstrung by how Exchange works in this instance. The cause of all of this was that Exchange will send out an update email any time that an appointment field is updated, regardless of which fields are updated. I guess it would be possible to add this feature, but you'd no longer be able to have the synch automatically update any of the synchronised fields on the Exchange side. Looking through the fields list, this would probably be ok, but I just wanted to stress the point that interacting with Exchange through EWS doesn't work exactly the same way as through Outlook.

All the best,

Rob

Rob,

Will the changes to the sync engine for patch v7.1j be included in patch v7.2b?

Thanks,

- Matt -

Hi Rob,

You said a month ago:

"There's some changes in this area going into v7.1j, due later today."

When will 7.1j and 7.2b be available for partners?

Thanks.

Jerome

Hi guys,

In response:

1: The changes to the Exchange integration introduced in v7.1j are included in v7.2b.

2: v7.1j was released for all languages on 30th August. v7.2b is due some time tomorrow. Depending on integrations and additional testing carried out by the regional offices, patches may not become available as soon as we release them. You should check with your local Sage office to confirm availability in your region.

Thanks,

Rob

I've just installed v7.1j and re-enabled our Exchange integration for 3 mailboxes to test this and I am still having the same issue?

The sync is set to CRM to Exchange only.

• I created a new appointment in CRM and invited the other two users.
• The sync ran and they got the invites
• Sync ran again
• I set the comm_status to Complete
• Sync ran again and they both received new invites.

The patch notes do say that the issue has been addressed but there is no info regarding which fields trigger the sync.

Am I missing something?

Hi Rob,

I have read the release notes of sagecrm 7.2b and I don't see any word about the meeting request problem (nor about office 2013). Will you update the support matrix?
As you said it is supposed to be resolved in this patch. Darren's experience sound's different.

Darren, your test was with a communication you created in CRM and you added external attendees.
Could you test it in the other way (mor common I think)?

1. create a meeting in outlook
2. send meeting request from outlook
3. Wait for the sync back to CRM
4. Change status in the CRM communication
5. What happens?

I hope sagecrm 7.2b resolves the problem because several installations are waiting for it.

Regards,

Jerome

Hi Jerome

I've just tested it again:

• Created a new meeting in Outlook and invited two colleagues
• Ran the sync - nothing appeared in CRM
• Ran the sync again - meeting appeared in CRM
• Ran the sync again to see if any additional invites were sent. None were.
• Changed Status to Complete
• Ran sync again and both people received new invites.

Hi,

That definitely shouldn't be happening. That exact issue should be addressed. The developer's note on this case is as follows:

Case reproduced on CRM 7.1 d and verified on CRM 7.1 j drop 9 and CRM 7.2 b drop 7. Now after changing status to Complete on CRM side, nothing is updated on Office 365, and no email is send to External Attendees.

I'll be out of the office later this afternoon, but I'll check it out in the morning, and get an answer for you tomorrow.

Thanks,
Rob

Hi,

There will be an updated support matrix going out today. Outlook 2013 is supported in v7.2b. The meeting request problem is referenced as case 0-148174-QA; you'll see it in the 7.1j release notes. I don't see it in the v7.2b release notes, but it looks like the list of rolled-up fixes was left out. The 7.2b patch includes all fixes that were released in the previous v7.1 patch (i.e. v7.1j). That would be an additional 21 customer cases.

Thanks,

Rob

Hi Darren,

I'm unable to reproduce this in v7.2b following your instructions, either for attendees that are in your organization or for external attendees, whether the appointments have been accepted by the attendees or not. I'd reckon that you might want to check if there's a table level script updating any other fields on your Communication entity.

Regarding which fields will cause an update on Exchange: I don't have a list, but I believe that it's only fields that exist on Exchange. A likely list would include the following:

comm_subject,

comm_createdby,

comm_organizer,

comm_note

comm_datetime

comm_todatetime

Recurrence settings

Attendees (comm_link)

Comm_status would not be included, nor would any custom fields.

Thanks,

Rob

Agreed. The same issue is in patch v7.2b. Setting an appointment to Complete still triggers a meeting update in Outlook. / Exchange.

I have got the same issue on 7.1j and 7.2b.

The best solution for me would be to block all sendings of meeting requests and updates from CRM.

Unfortunately I can't see any difference in email properties between an email from outlook and a meeting update from CRM. Otherwise I could block these emails.

Couldn't we avoid these meeting updates from the source?

Hi Guys,

I have tested SageCRM 7.2d with Exchange integration ( Office365).

The issue I got with automatic sending of updates to external attendees when amending the communication is partly corrected.

It works now has it has been developped:

• Meeting updates are sent when amending in CRM one the fields that are synched with Exchange/outlook ( subject, time, details,...)
• No meeting updates are sent when amending the linked person/company/opportunity, status or custom field
• The CRM user is still not aware of the automatic sending of updates ( it remains a problem ...)

Until a "send or not" option is added to the SageCRM Exchange integration is proposed ( I hope it will in the future), I try to find a way to warn the users today.

Here is my idea:

SageCRM should warn the users when they amend communications having external attendees.
We could add a script (create script or custom content) on the communication edit screen that shows a red banner when there is minimum one external attendee.

The message should not prevent users from saving the communication but they should be aware of the consequences if some fields are amended.

I installed the component "ExternalattendeeUI72" to add an external attendees field on the commwebpicker. I wanted to show the banner if the value of this field is not null.
But I didn't manage to create the script because the attendees are not in the field but in the caption.

Here is the create script in the field comm_customfield:

var intCommId = CRM.GetContextInfo("communication","comm_communicationid")
//check if on new screen
if (intCommId)
{
var commRecord = CRM.FindRecord("communication","comm_communicationid="+intCommId);
//check if appointment
if(commRecord.comm_type=='Appointment')
{
//Display external attendees
var linkRecord = CRM.FindRecord("comm_link","cmli_externalpersonid is not null and cmli_comm_communicationid = "+commRecord.comm_communicationid);
Caption = "";
Caption += CRM.GetTrans("Tabnames","External_Attendees")+":";
Caption +="
";
var personRecord;
var strToolTip;
while (!linkRecord.eof)
{
personRecord = CRM.FindRecord("person, vsummaryperson","pers_personid="+linkRecord.cmli_externalpersonid);
strToolTip = GetTrans("Colnames","comp_name")+": "+personRecord.comp_name +" ";
strToolTip += GetTrans("Colnames","pers_emailaddress")+": "+personRecord.pers_emailaddress+" ";
strToolTip += GetTrans("Colnames","comp_type")+": "+personRecord.comp_type;
Caption+= ""+personRecord.pers_firstname + " " + personRecord.pers_lastname + ", ";
linkRecord.NextRecord();
}
Caption +="";
}
else
{
Hidden = true;
}
}
else
{
Hidden = true;
}

I know how to add the banner but not how to add the condition

Who can help me for this? Or does anyone has a better solution?

I think this script could be very usefull for a lot of CRM users/admin working with Exchange integration.

Thanks in advance

Jerome

I mmalm

I'm on 7.1l and still have the problem, do you know if this has been fixed?

Bea

I still have it on 7.2c. I have not yet upgraded to v7.2d. When I do, I'll post my experiences.