CRM Contacts address book blank?

For those of you using Microsoft's Dynamics CRM 4.0 with integration with Outlook you may have noticed you have a CRM address book for use in sending emails.  The default settings result in this being empty and if you are wondering why you need this there are some great reasons.

When you synchronize your CRM database with Outlook while running Exchange this will move the entire database to all your devices including your phone.  If you use a Blackberry then your Blackberry Enterprise Server pushes and pulls the entire data base to and from your device.  This can be irritating if you don’t need the entire database on your phone and you are used to quickly dialing from the phones search functions.

One solution is to not synchronize the entire data base to Outlook.  This sounds reasonable until you need to send an email to someone in CRM and want to do it from Outlook because if you are like me the spell check is a very nice feature.  To help us out the savvy group over at Customer Effective Blog has posted some help.  Please take a minute to read their post and you should really subscribe to their feed.

If your CRM address book is blank like below:

Then from Outlook select the CRM menu and then Options.  In options select Address Book and make the changes you desire.  For instance you can select to match the contact records only or if you would like you may match all records owned by you or just all records.

 Please note.  This example show an address book update every 1 hours.  This is likely excessive and is different discussion. 

Don't forget to select OK for the changes to be saved and then you will need to syncronize with CRM before you will see  the address book change.

Have fun!