Business Contact Manager Team Blog

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I am trying to post to this site with questions on BCM as I am reviewing the software for my department.

Can you tell me:

I am trying to set up a telemarketing campaign but I am unable to import my list so there would be no reporting on the results of the campaign....? Workaround?

Also, how can I import Global address book into the project management portion of the software so that I can delegate tasks etc....

Sorry forgot my email.....regarding the previous post on bcm relating to telemarketing campaign

hobsont@superiorpropane.com

After working on importing our 18000+ contacts for the last few weeks, there is one important question that I think is missing from this list.

If you have your accounts and contacts in separate Excel files (they were provided to us from an outside source), how do we link the contacts to the accounts on import?

I have been trying to figure out how to do this on import, through Access and even through SQL (my Access and SQL knowledge is not that strong) but with no luck.

Is there any insight you can offer?  We want to go live with this in the next couple of weeks but if I can't find a way to do the linking, it will take longer than that for me to do it manually.

I have not found much on the newsgroups, either through searches or postings.

HELP!!!! Please.

Hi Vinit,

I do not have any duplicate account names although some of the contacts have the same Full Name and Company Name.

I have an Excel spreadsheet with a column for the parent account, I can import this into a custom field on the contact if that will make it easier.

Thanks again,

Nancy

Hi - I'm training a company on BCM and they had a few questions for me that I don't know the answers to. They are sharing their BCM databases.

If a contact or account is deleted - where does the deleted record go in case it needs to be retrieved?

Is there any tracking on who modified/deleted a record?

Do you need to set some permissions to ensure that important information is not deleted? If so, how?

Can you turn an opportunity into a project?

Does BCM work at all with Microsoft Project?

Any help you can give me would be appreciated. Thank you...

Julie

Thank you for the speedy response Vinit.

I have 07 bus manager on XP Pro.  I have a new problem... The Business Contact Manager Home Screen (the page that has the 4 tabs.) is now blank.  I can click on the 4 tabs, but there is nothing on any of them...  Please help.

I would like to be able to amend the fields that are visable when I open a business contact.  I do not need the business card visable, for exmple.  Is it possible to amend/remove fields in this view?

That is unfortunate but many thanks for your prompt reply!

Is there functionality in BCM to run reports on communication history across multiple contacts (with sorting/filtering) vs just one contact?

I still need help with my issue.  

I am on BCM 2007.

I am trying to customize, but need more than 40 user-defined fields. So I am trying to customize using the developer tab. When I go to publish my new form, I get the following message, "Cannot publish the form because of a MAPI error. Could not complete the operation because the service provider does not support it."

I only added one text field, so I'm not doing anything fancy. I even backed out then restarted all, and opened up a form, then hit publish without changing anything, and I still get the error message. So it's not what I'm adding, it's something native before I even start customizing.

Hi Vinit,

Have you had a chance to look at that SQL code?

I'm not sure if this will help or not but I needed to walk some of our users through BCM so as a temporary way to have the account viewable, I imported the account name into a custom field on the Details screen.

I appreciate you taking the time to look at this.

Nancy

I am on BCM 2007.

I am able to create a task linked to a contact, and can view the task via communications history.

My challenge is that even though I have the start date, status and priority fields showing on the view, they are blank, even though there is info in these fields when I open the task.

Also, for some reason, all the tasks show up as created today at 12:00 am, no matter what time I create them. This is the "created/due" field.

1. In the reporting function - users have the ability to enter their company name in the header - is there a way to default to their company name so they don't have to type it in each time?

2. In the reporting function - Can the page number location or format be changed?

3. In the filter function - I'm confused as to how the grouping () works on the Advanced filter screen.  Is that only necessary if you use the And Or?

4.  Why would you save a filter, wouldn't you just save the report?

5. In the simple filter screen, is there a way to remove the checks for all options, for example Source of Lead, or do you have to check them individually?

Unspecified doesn't seem to do anything.

Sorry for all the questions - thank you in advance for your help.

I am wondering if it is possible to build in a confirmation before allowing a user to delete contacts.  On two occasions, one of my users has hit delete when he (unwittingly) had many contacts selected.  There was no confirmation message and all of a sudden, 100+ contacts vanished!

A notification saying 'Are you sure you want to delete 1,000,000 contacts?' or similar, would save me a huge amount of time trying to restore the shared database.

I have run into kind of the same problem as nrickard mentioned some posts ago although I have the Account and Contacts in the same spreadsheet but on different tabs.

You would think that if you specify an Account name for Accounts and assign the same data to the Parent Account Name for Business Contacts the relationship between Accounts and Business Contacts would be imported - but nope!

I have tried to map names as strings to the Account name and Parent Account Name as well as unique ID numbers but nothing seems to work. What am I doing wrong?

There is some info on this site http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP011135001033.aspx  (second last question) but it is not the same issue. Both Accounts and BCs get imported but the relationship between them does not even if they are all located in one xlsx file.

Help please

I would like to move by database from my laptop to a separate computer so that multiple users can share the database if I'm not in the office.

What is the best way to move the database?

How do I switch my BCM from the original database on my laptop to using the shared version on the other computer?

There is a whitepaper mentioned a couple places that may have some of these answers, but the links do not seem to work.

Thanks for the help

I have been using BCM for about 6 months and works very well.

However, if I am in an Account, and want to add a Contact, with I click on the ADD button, I only get one entry to choose from.  There is also only one Folder to choose, "Business Contacts".  I know there are at least 50 Contacts in my database.  Why aren't they showing up???

I've compared the file for the one Contact that consistantly shows up, with the others, and I see nothing different.

I'm at a loss.

Hi scoolex,

I haven't had any luck doing this through SQL although I've tried many many times.  I know Vinit was going to see what he could come up with but I'm not sure he's had the chance to yet.

What I have done is imported the account name into a custom field then setup a custom view to sort all of the contacts by this field.

I've also put on a filter to hide any where they have a linked account or where my custom account field is empty.

This is ugly as I still have to manually link each one but it's the fastest way I could come up with ... I was getting tired of beating my head on a wall.

I hope this helps and if anyone does sort out how to work around this in SQL, I would be bery interested in knowing how in case this ever comes up again.

I have exported a BCM database file from one computer and imported it to another computer.  The computer I imported it to will serve as my "server" which my team members will access the database.  Two questions:

a.  Is it possible to preserve the "created on" date?  All reports I run have the "created on" date as the date in which I imported the database.

b.  Is it possible for me to access the shared database if I were at my house and not the office...I'm outside of the network.  How do I go about accessing the database instead of "working offline"

I am using BCM/MS Accounting in my home office, but travel alot with my Smartphone (6.0).  I'm thinking the best way leverage the available applications is to synchronize my BCM contacts BACK to my Outlook contact folder regularly, then use the Outlook/Office tools for the Smartphone.

One problem this overcomes is the callerID issue if I only use the BCM plugin for the smartphone, inbound calls are not recognized.

Thoughts?

Some additional questions:

1.  Do BCM and Outlook use the same calendar?  (If I take this approach will calendar be up to date?)

2.  Will I have to worry about creating dupes back in my Outlook Contacts if I take this approach?

3.  Is there a better way to meet the needs of having email/contacts/calendar available through my Motorola Q?

Thanks!

I have just upgraded my Mobile phone which is a HTC TouchPro.  It has a high res display.  BCM for mobile does not display properly.  Is there a way of changing the display settings?

Hi

Is there a way that i call pull a report purely based on phone logs

My sales team have a set of KPI's which include a certain amount of phone calls per day.

I would like the ability to go through this with them through BCM if possible.

Thanks

Thanks Vinit, I didn't think of that.

Works a charm.

I have another question.

I really like BCM as it is very intuitive and simple to use.

However I would like to put some restrictions on my sales staff in regards to what they can and can't do to the database.

Other CRM programs have this feature using different 'access rights" etc.

Is there a way of doing this in BCM and if not will there be?

I ask as I was looking at the Microsoft Dynamics CRM which seems more powerful but with power comes complexity that I would like to avoid!.

But as a growing company this is the reality that I will have to upgrade.

It also seems that Dynamics is virtually impossible to import ALL data from BCM in one go.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

Vinit,

Can you expand on upgrade please.

I.E do you mean if you have BCM now then there will be a charge to get a software upgrade to Dynamics.

Or will there be better support for migration to Dynamics from BCM .

Thanks

Hi Team,

I am trying to generate custom reports for my business  contacts and I can't seem to find a way to create a report that includes information that is stored in the "comments" field on the details page. If there is a way to do this, I would greatly appreciate the help.

Thanks,

Arthur

Some of my customers are reporting this error dialog:

Title: Business Contact Manager failed to load

Message: An outgoing call cannot be made since the application is dispatching an input-synchronous call. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8001010D

(RPC_E_CANTCALLOUT_ININPUTSYNCCALL))

I believe this is related to Vista/Outlook2007/BCM. Why is this error occurring, and how can it be corrected?

f spafford at chapura dot com

Desktop. I have seen customer screenshots where Outlook is open in the background or Windows Mobile Device Center is open in the background.

Need to set up recurring automatic system of renewals for subscription service, and I don't know whether to code BCM or Accounting 2008 to do it. Thanks, Susan

Vinit,

Can you expand on upgrade please.

I.E do you mean if you have BCM now then there will be a charge to get a software upgrade to Dynamics.

Or will there be better support for migration to Dynamics from BCM .

Thanks

HI Vinit

Yeah I knew that it does but there are many deficiencies with the way it handles this.

I was after any information regarding your update comment.

I will try CRM blog as well

Cheers

Hi - I'm using Outlook 2003 with BCM.

I'm trying to customize a view with a filter showing any appointments made for the coming week.  But looking at the drop down list of fields under Appointments, it lists every field on the Appointment screen except StartTime and EndTime.  I've tried adding this as a custom field, but no luck and can't find any references to this problem on this site.  Anyone have any suggestions?  

We have five users using Outlook 2007 with BCM, all connected to the DB and working fine. Everything is updated to the latest version. The problem is that we cannot successfully export reports to Excel. None of us.

We see a progress bar and then the popup "There was an error generating the XML document."

Not a particularly helpful message.

I am not a developer and have no idea where to look for error logs or whatever.

I have searched high and low and cannot find anyone with a similar problem or solution.

Thoughts?

Thanks

We are big fans of Business Contact Manager and use it for managing all our projects.  Our projects involve about 30 individual tasks. Can you tell me if there is a way that we can set up a template to enter all of these tasks at once?  Thanks

A group of around 5 to 6 people in my office have been using BCM with Outlook 2007 for around a year now.  Randomly every 3 to 6 weeks all the contacts/companies will show up as reminders when a user opens up their Outlook client.  It doesn't affect everyone as a whole at the same time, just individual instances that appear to be random.

I have done numerous things to try to fix the problem:  moved the BCM data into a separate SQL Server 2005 Express database outside of my Outlook profile, dismissed all of the reminders when they've come up, gone through and marked every BCM contact/company's followup flag as complete, ran "outlook.exe /cleanreminders", disabled every unneeded add-in in COM Add-Ins and Exchange Client Extensions, and also uninstalled and then reinstalled Office and also BCM on every person's computer.

The problem continually comes back and I have no clue what is causing it or how to fix it.  I have found numerous similar posts on forums where people have had the identical problem.  Can the BCMTeam provide any insight into how to fix this problem plaguing are installations?

My company is currently in the process of migrating from Maximizer 9 to Outlook 2007 BCM. So far we like what we've seen with BCM there is only 1 issue i need to figure out though. In maximizer, we have thousands of notes attached to contacts and opportunities. Is there any way to import those notes into BCM either through the BCM interface or through the database back-end. We don't want to lose these notes!

Thanks

Hi Yi [MSFT]

We currently set up 30 individual tasks as soon as we get a new project.  We number them so that we can get them to appear in order in the Project screen.  We then work through these, allocating them to the appropriate person as each step/task becomes due.  It works really well... just very time consuming setting each project up (and we can be setting up up to 10 per week).  I hope this is the info that you need.  I have looked for other project management software, but nothing else is as good as BCM, except for this one aspect.

Let me know if there is anything else that you need.

Thanks

Chez

I am a "lite" user ie single user.

Using hotmail accounts with "outlook connector"

Outgoing mails are saved to the sent folder, but not linked to the contact, only incomming are linked.

Any ideas?

Hi Yi

Please tell Alex that he is an absolute marvel!!  I have just tried setting up a template.  It worked! and it will save us heaps of time.  Thanks so much!!

Now another question for you.  Is there a way that we can archive completed projects, so that they no longer appear in our Projects list, but so that we can still access them in the future if we need to refer back to them?  We currently have about 400 projects in the Projects list.

Thanks very much

Chez

Is there anyone out there that can help me with scripting some VBA to work with my BCM database? I have been making little progress on this as i try to figure it out for myself.

Ever since i loaded the bcm - outlook 2007 and added contacts - i get 115 reminders going off every day -

how do i stop this?  part of them are from the names that got loaded with the program - the others are the contacts i put in myself - i don't remember setting a follow up reminder for any of them.

how do i turn the reminder OFF?

thanks,

BRion

fyi: i have tried dismissing them & snoozing them - they just come back..

Brion

I have the same problem as seagull1, except i'm using IMAP accounts.

The received email is shown on the contact history, but sent emails doesn't show up.

I'm using a shared DB from another PC, and all records have email link selected.

Is there a list somewhere of all the userproperties associated with BCM objects? I need to know how to reference certain properties such as the "Initiated By" field and others. Thanks.

When working in VBA i can display the EntryID of a contact just fine (eg. 00000000557E48D98E440B42AC8FD4FE67DF75380200000013579B70288E1C8B4E86F2A2D1E99AC2D4)

When going through SQL Server, if i find that same Contact in the "ContactFullView" i don't find an EntryID but rather an EntryGUID (eg. 28709B57-1C8E-4E8B-86F2-A2D1E99AC2D4).

I am trying to loop through a table of contact names and link them to specific accounts on the "referredby" field, but this field relies on the ReferredEntryID value which is the EntryGUID.

So how do i go from the EntryID to the EntryGUID? and why is the db and Outlook MAPI using two different unique values for what appears to be the same person?

Hi,

i currently use the bcm-tool on my smartphone with windows mobile 6 and it's working fine. Now I will order a windows mobile 6.1 phone and will need my bcm-contcts on this one too. Is 6.1 supported by the actual version?

Thanks

I have two questions for the group:

1. For a user to have admin rights on the BCM database (eg. customize forms and user fields), can i just add the domain user account to the local admin group on the server that hosts the BCM database?

2. My BCM add-on freezes constantly when i try to do anything in the software. When i change views, open an account/contact, scroll down in a view. What causes this and how do i fix it? I have installed all updates. I have uninstalled/reinstalled BCM. I used to have SQL Server 2005 installed on my machine, i removed that and reinstalled BCM so that i only have Express installed. That didn't help. My other users don't experience the amount of hang-ups i have, though they experience some. Any ideas?

Thanks

Hi, I'm late to upgrading from BCM 2003 to BCM 2007, and the conversion has not gone well.  After restarting Outlook:

a) Get "finalizing configuration" clock

b) Receive error: "BCM cannot save this item because it does not recognize some of properties"

c) Outlook opens, and BCM folder is shown

d) Clicking BCM folder adds BCM to menu items and opens BCM home page

e) Switching to view Accounts, lists all the accounts by name with address, etc.

f) Clicking on an Account brings up error: "Could not load some objects because they are not available on this machine"

g) Once account opens...no data is shown.

Can anyone provide ideas on how to rescue this upgrade so that all of my data is brought together in the 2007 version?  Thanks!

Thanks Vinit, Ok, I created a dummy profile in Outlook without e-mail (since I have an exchange server account), and the installation of BCM worked.  Now, what do you suggest that I do to correct the issue in my regular Outlook profile to bring the BCM data and Outlook data together?  thanks for any feedback.  Cheers, Myles

Vinit, thanks for the response. Adding my user to the local admin group worked. Thanks.

As for all the hang ups. I closed the BCM db and readded it. And made sure all e-mail linking and folder linking is disabled but it's still hanging whenever i go to a new view.

One other thing, after doing some searching on the internet about this problem I see lots and lots of posts on different sites about this exact problem with no fixes or any comment by Microsoft. Is MS aware of this problem or just ignoring it?

Trying to use Opportunities to track all our new business...it's good, but I've run into one snag right now.

Why can't I just go to "New History Item" and select mail message like I can if I'm in a contact...that would write the message, send it and link it to the opportunity?

It seems so basic...I have an opportunity and that New History Item should have everything I could do with that Opportunity (email being a biggie). I really wish I could create user defined things for New History Item (though email is the only one that comes to mind right now).

Thanks!

One problem with the current view of Business Contacts at the bottom of the Account General form is inactive Business Contacts.  Even if a Business Contact has the tick removed from the Status / Active field on the Business Contact's General page, as that field is not visible on the General page for the Accounts, you do not know if any of the Business Contacts are inactive without drilling down into the Business Contacts.  

Could the Status / Active field for each Business Contact be displayed at the bottom of the Accounts General form? (I know, it is getting crowded already).  

Alternatives would be to not display inactive Business Contacts in the Accounts General form or to unlink the Business Contact from the Account - both much less preferable options.

Thanks

Andy

Hi,

I hope this question isn't a duplicate - I've tried searching for the exact answer but couldn't find it.

I just set up my PC to send the Business Contacts to my Palm Tungsten T3 via Bluetooth as vcards.  But I am concerned about what will happen when I synch, since the Tungsten will then will copy those contacts into my personal contacts.

Does it create any problems to have some contacts appear both in the personal and business folders?  Does it affect the history, etc.?  And if so, is there a workaround to this?

Thanks in advance!

CM

One more question...

I have two shortcuts to Outlook on my desktop all of the sudden (today is when I did all the bluetooth-type stuff on my PC, handheld, and cell phone).

One shortcut points to C:\Users\Public\Desktop, the other to C:\Users\(my username)\Desktop.  Aside from that difference, the Public\desktop has a user called Interactive with Read & Execute permissions.

Does this seem like a glitch or is it related to bluetooth/synching?  Do I need both shortcuts on the desktop?

Thanks,

CM

Folks,

Do you think there is a way to write SQL security script to have users only display certain types of Accounts or Contacts and not all?

Thank you,

Michael.

Just checking for a update on the sent email linking.

The problem is that sent emails doesent appear in contact history using IMAP accounts.

The received email is shown on the contact history, but sent emails doesn't show up.

I'm using a shared DB from another PC, and all records have email link selected.

Question,

I run a dumby outlook session on my server with BCM and share database to all users. Can I setup another BCM database on Sharepoint 2007 and use the pipeline template to pull records from a BCM database from another outlook sessions database that is syncing with the dumby database that I use as the share? I want to be able to manage the database from a sharepoint template to provide a web based CRM so to speak that is integrated with outlook users who connect to the shared database? please send email if someone has done this.

Alex,

The IMAP account is set to use a IMAP folder like "Sent" no to the Outlook "Sent Items" because if i select the Outlook "Sent Items" the messages sent cant be retrived from another computer.

The problem is that in the BCM Autolinking settings page the IMAP "Sent" is missing, the other folders like Inbox are shown.

I've tryed to change the IMAP out folder to a newly created folder like "OUT", but as i check the new OUT folder in the IMAP account the BCM Autolinking hides it, and start showing the IMAP original Sent folder.

So, the only way to link the emails would be to use the default Outlook Sent Items?

Thanks

I asked a question above on 28 October 2008 re the display of Active / Inactive Business Contacts on the Accounts General form.  If I mention this question again, will the BCM Team respond? <warm smile>

Ta

How can remote salespeople replicate a subset of the business contact database on their systems? They don't need to see each other contacts, but we don't want to set up separate databases for each others' territories.

I know in SQL Server replication, the subscription can be filtered.

How does one setup BCM to do it?

I asked this in a larger forum back in August but the answer wasn't on topic.

I have been using BCM for a year and love it.  However, let's say I either enter a new Account or already have one set up, and go to enter a new business contact.  After I click on ADD button in the Accounts window, and the 'Select the Business Contacts to link to this Account' dialog box appears, a limited set of contacts appears.  It is neither the entire list of all the contacts in the database, nor is it any contacts already linked to the Account I am about to link to.  Is it only Contacts that have not been linked previously???

If I add a new Contact, that contact likewise is not available for future selection.

My question:  What is the rationale for which Contacts appear in the selection dialogue box with attaching to an Account?

I am trying to understand how it works and the process it is using so that I can save some time and typing.

Hiya all

i have user "A" who has setup an account and has assigned it to user "B" however user "A" is still getting the reminders.  Is there anything else that needs to be done for an account to assigned to someone else?

much appreciated

Create a Rule? How Didn't i think of that?

That will solve the problem. I was manually copying the sent messages...

Thanks!

I'm using BCM 2007 with the database shared on a SQL2005 server.  2 questions:

1. like most companies I have sales empoyees and a sales manager.  I want to limit the viewing of opportunities to the assigned user, and the sales manager.  This is so other users can't open or change opportunities not assigned to them.  Can this be done, and if so how?

2. I want to change the canned views for Opportunities (and in the future probably Accounts and Contacts too).  For example I need to add and remove fields displayed on the Opportunities default view.  

I tried "Customize the Current View" and "Define View" but the changes do not stick once I switch to a different screen.  I created a new view which is now on the list, but cannot figure out how to make it the default view.  Can this be done and if so how?

Thanks!

While trying to import ACT data I get the following error message during conversion:

Type,Message,RowKey

Contact, System.OutOfMemoryException: Exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' was thrown.

We have set up BCM on our exchange server.  Everything is working great.  I use a secondary software to sync my Blackberry with BCM Contacts.  The software name is Companion Link.  It work fantastic until we grouped all of our contact together on the server.  The problem is that when I proform a sync all the business contacts are pulled over.  Is there some way to separate the contacts so that I only sync my contacts?

I've got a question about the reminders.

Where are the reminders stored?

I have created reminders for contacts in the laptop, using a shared DB.

On the server PC no reminders are shown.

How can i show the reminders in both PC and laptop?

Another issue is that reminders created when the DB is online are not shown when the DB is offline.

Thanks

Feature Request 1

- Allow printing of Contacts and BCM Contacts to Mailing Labels and Envelopes without the MAIL MERGE function and MS WORD. Dosent make any sense to add the extra step od word.

Feature Request 2

- Compose a Fax Cover Sheet from BCM Contacts info. Maybe an Action under the Actions menu.

Thanks,

TJ Havens

Are you using Active Directory? If you created the tasks with a USER that exists in AD then I believe no matter what instance of BCM you are logged into, you will see that users Task, etc.

bcmteam is right, since 2 machines belong to workgroup, there are 2 different USERS, one on each machine, you just got the same credentials.

Hope this explains a little.......

TJ Havens

I have applied sp1 and tried to use the new feature:

Custom field support in Mail Merge marketing campaign. (Requested here on this blog by you)

How is this used? I can not find my custom fields when creating a mail merge from the marketing campain screen.

Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager.....

A few clients have asked me if Business Contacts can be the default that is shown when they click on the Contacts button (bottom left in Outlook)

By default the users own contacts are displayed and they have to then click on Busines Contacts every time.

Can this be done easily????

@AlwaysPC

You can setup your view by doing this in outlook

1) Click on the Tools pull down and chose Options

2) Click on the Other Tab

3) Click on Advanced Options

4) Click the Browse Button and choose your default startup view for outlook

Hope this helps

~S

Sorry I miss read your post...  :(

From what I can tell there is not an easy way to change the default Contacts View that displays when first selecting the contact in the Navigation Pane.

After you switch and change though it will default to that contact list until you close Outlook...

I of course am not the experts though and would like to hear if there is a way to do this

Can an Opportunity reminder be made to show on the calendar when it is updated?  Maybe from the reminder field

Or

How would I write a script that from a button or running in background that would take the reminder and make it a calendar event or appointment automatically filling in the information?

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

S

Vinit, thanks for responding to my post.  I don't know how to add a folder to the utility we added to our server.  How do I add the folder?

How do I drag and change a task to an appointment and add the contact information as an attachement? I am looking for a right click drag and drop option for "address new meeting"

I noticed that when I auto-link an email to a project, it actually auto-links all the emails with the same subject to that project (no matter who sent the email) ! Obviously I am using very often the same subject for different clients on many different projects, like "follow up" and "updates". Is there a way to control / disable this ? The history of my projects is such a mess now...

Thank you for your help

Hi,

*** Fix for Email Autolinking ***

I've posted a recent project of mine which fixes the email autolinking issues with Business Contact Manager, specifically with automatic autolinking being disabled in a shared database environment.

The link above provides access to the software download (free version), which must be installed on the Business Contact Management server, and runs as a service.  The software adds autolinking for each user (added in config file), so that users no longer need to run the Email Autolinking tool everyday.

This was developed primarily for our own purposes, however whilst trying to come up with a fix we noticed many other businesses who had the same problem.

regards,

Mark H

Hi,

*** Fix for Email Autolinking ***

I've posted a recent project of mine which fixes the email autolinking issues with Business Contact Manager, specifically with automatic autolinking being disabled in a shared database environment.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/businesscontact/

The link above provides access to the software download (free version), which must be installed on the Business Contact Management server, and runs as a service.  The software adds autolinking for each user (added in config file), so that users no longer need to run the Email Autolinking tool everyday.

This was developed primarily for our own purposes, however whilst trying to come up with a fix we noticed many other businesses who had the same problem.

regards,

Mark H

Hello

You have helped me out before, and I'm hoping that you can again.  We are still loving BCM and managing many projects using it. We have a problem at the moment which is proving to be quite time consuming.

We generally work in Project Tasks in Bus Cont Manager. Current view: Project Task List, grouped by "Assigned to User".

We use the fields: Status, Due Date, % Completed, and Subject.  We also used to have "Business Project", however this is no longer available.

I have been right through all the fields in Customize Current View, and it seems to have disappeared.  I have tried adding it as a New Field, but this doesn't pick up the Project detail.  I have also checked our deleted items folder.

We have nearly 40 replicated tasks for each project, so this means that the project name has to be entered into each individual task "Subject" line, so that each user can scan through their task list and see which project they need to work on.

I hope this makes sense, and that you are able to help.

Thanks very much

Chez

Hi Alex,

thank you for your suggestions.

Unfortunately, I need to auto-link many projects at the same time (about 50) and they all contain emails with similar subjects as explained before ("follow up", "updates"). I probably receive at least 40 emails per day related to projects, so Link to Record is not a solution as I would spend most of my time doing just that...

Please let me know if there is something else possible or if a fix is on its way...soon hopefully ! :)

Thank you for your help.

Yannick

Alex... you are a marvel!  This has worked perfectly!

Thank you so much

Chez

Hi,

I've been playing around with BCM 2007 and have a couple of questions..

1. Is there any facility or 3rd party app around that I can use to sync my BCM contacts with my normal contacts?  I keep some of the same contacts in both and don't want to have to keep on updating both.

2. When viewing contact history I can see any way of customising the view to show me whether the linked messages are from me or the contact - Ideally I would only want to display an icon to show the type of contact, the subject, the sender and a received time/date stamp.  I have tried customising the view, but the fields don't get populated.

ANy help with these would be appreciated.

I am importing a database of Accounts and Contacts into Business Contact Manager.

Both Accounts and Contacts are listed in seperate Excel spreadsheets and no custom fields are required.

I noticed that the contacts are not automatically linked to the accounts during the import process.

I also noticed a post dated July 2008 where a user Vinit [MSFT] mentions a SQL query with instructions to achieve this.

I would really appreciate if someone would please send to me the details in order to auto link contacts to accounts during the import process.

I need to import 3000 Contacts.

Thanks very much

I am in the process of converting an old database to Outlook BCM with sql server. I have seen some very helpful hints here for cleaning up the import process. Specifically you have provided some sql code to connect the contacts list to their primary account in the accounts list. This worked really well for me. However, in that post, you mentioned that the same thing could be done to automatically assign the primary contact. I have been unable to figure this out. Could someone please provide a sql script instruction to assign the primarycontacts to each account? Thanks very much.

I use BCM 2003.  Is it possible to customize the list of options under "sources of lead" on the Opportunity form.  I would like to use my own list.

How do I print a list of Business Contacts who do NOT have Phone Logs dated

within the past 3 months? I'd like that so that I know who I need to touch

base with!

Thanks,

Carolyn

Because almost all my contacts have older phone logs too, I think it might be better to use "greater than" and *wait* to call the ones on that report. I can't be the only one who would find such phone log report helpful, though, so maybe in the next version? What are the criteria that make up the "Neglected Business Contacts" report?

Is it possible to send a "Marketing Campaign" email to very few people? I just want to check off a few to send one to--the benefit being that they each get an individual email with their name in the "To:" field. When I try to do this, BC tells me that I am excluding hundreds of contacts and to try using the Simple or Advanced Filter. Why? Thanks again!--Carolyn

BCM wont recognize my HTC Pro smart phone.

Phone = MS Mobile 6.1

PC = Vista 64 bit w Outlook 2007

The windows mobile screen shows business contacts but it can't be checked (the same goes for files)

My Verizon phone installed correctly w the desktop and outlook 2007 works fine. When I run the BCM install program is says the phone is not a recognized device.  The one weird thing is BCM install says outlook is running, and will have to be restarted for this to take effect. Outlook isn't running, and I've run the task manager to verify this.

What should I do?

dryhumor1@hotmail.com

Hello,

This question may have been asked before and I apologize if it was. I couldn't find it in the archives.

Why doesn't the BCM either take over the Contact's folder or at least provide autosynch between the Business Contacts and the Contacts?

Currently I have to keep my contacts in 3 places:

1. Contacts (so I can sync with my BB)

2. BCM

3. Office Accounting

Since BCM is using SQLServer rather than .pst file, it would be great if it provided better integration with Outlook. After all , it is possible to drag and drop contacts between BCM and Outlook Contacts, so why not sync them in the background?

Other, 3rd party products such as Prophet5 already does it and I wonder what is the limitation in BCM to do the same.

Thanks,

Eyal

I too am trying to import linked information from access.  I have a table of companies which is linked to a table of individuals.  There is a company account number that is unique for each company.  The individuals are linked to this company account number - multiple individuals to each company.  Anyway, I have tried importing the companies as accounts, but cannot import the individuals as linked business contacts.  I want the individuals business contacts to pull their business address from the address on the account to which I want them to be linked.

also, i am the owner of this database - how do i change which columns are shown in default views of the accounts and business contacts?  how do i change default sort order?

I have tried to install SP2 for BCM 2k7 but it cannot access the mapisvc.inf file, I also cannot change any permissions on this file....please help (I am running Vista Ultimate SP1)

I have 4000+ record excel spreadsheets.

However the accounts and contacts are in separate Excel files (they were provided to us from an outside source), how do we link the contacts to the accounts on import?

I have been trying to figure out how to do this.  It sounds like there may be a work around using SQL Server.

From earlier posts I see that possibly someone here can assist us in this update.  Please advise.

Many Thanks,

Neal

Hi:

I cannot seem to find a way to use the BCM 2007 reports feature to output a simple list sorted by Company Name.  I can point and shoot a selection to output by rating, by birthday, and a dozen other ways, but not by company name!  Is it simply not an option?

Please Respond, Steve Hurley hurley@networknomads.org

Thank you VERY much!  The script worked like a charm except for the name O'neil.  The apostrophy!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Hi,

Can you tell me please if BCM 2007 SP2 and SQL Express 2005 SP3 work smoothly together - any known issues..?

Thanks.

I have installed the BCM SP2 (3.00.8619.01) on my computer.  I'm also connected to a SQL 2005 shared database which works great.  

What would like to know is there any way to speed up the screen repaints when switching from HOME, SALES, MARKETING & PROJECT TABS?  I've reduced the number of contents on each and removed graphs.

Hi, this post addresses a problem that occurs with indexing BCM after WDS 4.0 is installed (reverting to v3.01 does not fix the issue). If you find after installing v4 that the "Business Contact Manager" folder is missing under the Microsoft Office Outlook provider from the Index Locations page (after clicking the Modify button) then you need to make a registry modification and restart the WDS service to rectify the problem. The key to add is:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search\Preferences]

"{EE06454B-B1F0-47A1-AA05-57297D0A084A}"=dword:00000001

Past resolutions to this issue have suggested reinstalling BCM after WDS, this is not necessary.

Cheers.

Hi, how to deny access to specific database on the remote SQL server? I can not use Admin Tool becouse I have a Polish language software. For each user I have a different database on the SBS SQL Server 2005. I created those databases according to "Deploying Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager in a Remote Database Configuration". I can not list them in Outlook BCM until I give the user sysadmin role. Each user must see only its own database. Please help.

Hi,

Can someone please tell me the purpose of the BCM 2007 cache files (*.cache) held under the user profile in the %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager\Cache\<DBname> folder?

I have users with up to 3,500 of these types of files in that folder which seems excessive. Some of the file extensions also contain "*.searchroot.cache" and "*.associated.cache" in addition to the "*.cache" files. I'm wondering if I should clear these files out and also if they should be clearing themselves out? Please explain, thanks.

Thanks for the reply. I only have a single BCM 2007 database on the machine. So what could possibly be causing the huge number of cache files in that case? The environment is Windows 2003 Server R2 SP2 with Outlook/BCM 2007 SP2 and SQL 2005 Express SP2.

For example I closed Outlook, deleted all the cache files, reopened Outlook and simply went to the BCM Home page and that alone created 19 new cache files in that directory..? See the file list below...

061ee10b-1427-4de5-a89f-70528d4bdd9e.associated.cache

061ee10b-1427-4de5-a89f-70528d4bdd9e.cache

06bdbcbe-332d-46c8-8ba7-b84acc447fbb.cache

20937c8a-787b-466f-aa09-0fd0e7987c03.cache

20937c8a-787b-466f-aa09-0fd0e7987c03.searchroot.cache

380b0d06-732a-4b51-bbe4-0760e21afe5b.cache

46bb98fd-6fba-4719-a1e5-0f292e163ac6.cache

56fa205e-3f55-4e90-ac00-6d6bcce3714b.associated.cache

56fa205e-3f55-4e90-ac00-6d6bcce3714b.cache

9a0a56ac-cde7-4957-aa1b-d59e8f9e04f6.cache

a6e8f15b-1164-426e-818b-a0d7f538eacd.associated.cache

a6e8f15b-1164-426e-818b-a0d7f538eacd.cache

ba45b381-e12c-438b-b045-a6c8e79e6285.cache

bc4a1c95-bbcf-4f06-8920-97b00a8685f7.cache

c59bce1c-9ba0-4874-8ee4-d87599554983.cache

ce6c0dcb-aac7-4231-98ce-ec2981f2075d.cache

d7345bb7-d138-4e7c-98bd-4e74e49f8933.cache

db741667-4776-489e-9de5-d70a97556373.cache

dd0a7b09-d9d4-4858-b552-e48ee0d51c93.cache

File sizes are small 1-10 KB and the "associated.cache" ones have larger file sizes up to about 100 KB.

Is this strange behaviour?

Thanks.

I have BCM 2007. I am importing over 4000 Accounts and over 20,000 associated Contacts from an excell spreadsheet. How can I easily link Contacts to associated Accounts in BCM 2007 without doing it manually one by one?

I have BCM 2007. I am uploading from an excell spreadsheet over 4,000 Accounts with associated contacts of over 23,000. Is there a way to link the related Accounts and Contacts automatically so to avoid doing them one-by-one manually for the list of 23,000 contacts???

my email is dgennrich@cox.net. Please send solutions to my question above if you have one.

Thx!

Hi,

Can someone please tell me if the BCM 2007 cache files (*.cache) held under the user profile in the %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager\Cache\<DBname> folder can be pointed to a different location or the caching turned off somehow? I'm asking because I'm trying to minimize the number of unnecessary write operations to my SSD hard drive and Outlook seems to be pretty intensive on HDD writes unfortunately...

Thanks.

Hi,

I have a basic question: in the history section of BCM 2007, it lists all emails sent or received for a given contact.  It there any way to identify which is a message I sent versus one I received.  The only way I've come up with is by opening each one.  There must be an easier way...right?

Here's another question,

In the notes section of a normal contact, I'm able to insert a picture.  However, I can't do this in the Comments section of the BCM contacts.  Is there any way to add a field that will accept a picture?  I can add normal text, currency, yes/no, etc. fields, but none for images.  Any way to do this?