Hi all, we are having some really infuriating issues with our Outlook clients. First, our system setup is:
- CRM 4.0
- Rollup 18 on servers & all clients
- One database server (Server 2008 R2, SQL 2008 R2, 64 bit)
- One application server (Server 2008 R2)
- Two platform servers (Server 2008 R2), linked under Microsoft Network Load Balancing
- One SQL Reporting server (also running the email router)
- Clients are a mixture of Vista & W7, Office 2007 & 2010
- One organisation (completely separate dev & test environments)
- Several offices nationwide, connected via an MPLS WAN
So, what's the problem? We are getting intermittent problems with our Outlook clients, which seem to lose connection every now and then to the rest of the system. This can be seen when the "sails" icon for CRM starts flashing in the system tray. While this
is happening, any attempt to track emails in Outlook will cause Outlook to hang. If you just leave everything alone for a few minutes, then Outlook will eventually come back to life. Our users of course normally aren't that patient, so finish up killing off
Outlook and starting again.
If people persist, then the individual emails will get tracked eventually, although it may take 3 or so attempts. To me, this rules out permissions, basic configuration, attachment sizes, etc.
I did catch one particular user's machine while this was happening, and the NLB platform server was pinging quite happily, and the IE client was working perfectly well too.
I have one day's event log saved from her machine, and it is absolutely full of errors, the most significant being:
"The Microsoft CRM Outlook add-in was not initialized because the user's time zone could not be updated. Restart Microsoft Outlook and try again. HR=0x80131509. Context=. Function=CEnableState::Activate. Line=159.
"
There are also dozens of "Information" entries from Windows Error Reporting, with details such as:
Fault bucket 2168823088, type 5
Event Name: CRMmanaged
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0
Problem signature:
P1: 4.0.7333.3531
P2: OUTLOOK
P3: Microsoft.Crm
P4: Client found response content type of '', but expected 'text/xml'.
We also have people who intermittently fail to track emails, eventually coming back with the error about lack of connection or security issues, but generally if they persist, the email item will get tracked (so it's nothing to do with permissions or attachment
sizes)
The bottom line to all this is I'm sure it's some form of network issue, but I just don't know how/where to pin it down. It has been suggested to monitor the network, but to be honest, I just wouldn't know what to look for (and I suspect that this is down
to a lack of activity, rather than something that is positively happening)
This problem really is causing intense amounts of frustration to some of our users, so any help or points with this would be gratefully received.
