Outlook appointments untracked by Outlook client


We discovered a strange behaviour where all previously tracked appointments are somehow untracked within few minutes after tracked. After hours of troubleshooting, we found that Outlook Client background synch automatically untracks those appointments if the following conditions are true:
a. User A shared Outlook calendar permission with Editor access level to User B.



b. Both User A and B have Outlook Client installed and are connected to different CRM instances or environments, eg. UAT vs PROD.

c. When User B starts Outlook and views User A’s Outlook calendar, the Outlook Client will untrack all tracked appointments of User A. I presume such behaviour occurs because User B could not find the related CRM Appointment record in the CRM instance which User B has access to.


You will then find the following conditions or behaviours:
1. CRM toolbar shows the appointment is untracked, and last modified by is the User B.


2. If you click on Track button in Outlook, this will create duplicate appointment in CRM.
3. Updating the appointment record in CRM will make the same appointment in Outlook tracked again with the updated value from CRM. This is so because CRM record keeps track of the Outlook appointment object Id. After few minutes later, it will become untracked again.


4. If you enable Developer tab via Customise Ribbon, you will find that the CRM custom field values are blank or cleared.




Open the appointment record, then click on Developer tab then ‘Design This Form’.


Then click on All Fields, you will see all CRM custom fields are blank.




Whilst the above configuration where users Outlook client connecting to different CRM instances is unlikely, such situation may occur during UAT or training where users are required to connect to non-production environment. Nonetheless, we found the following configuration are safe:
a. Users connected to different CRM instances but share their Outlook calendar with read access only.
b. If Write access is shared, then all users must be connected to the same environment.


The above are tested with CRM 2013 On Premise with UR3, and Outlook Client has SP1 as recommended by Microsoft.



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