Hi All,
We have recently setup new CRM 2011 IFD UR15 environment on Windows Server 2012 servers. Everything else is running smoothly but when we try to configure new CRM Outlook clients, they give an error. The error message in the configuration wizard is the legendary "There is a problem communicating with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server". The Outlook client configuration log file contains the following error:
18:15:36| Error| Exception : An error has occurred. Try this action again. If the problem continues, check the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community for solutions or contact your organization's Microsoft Dynamics CRM Administrator. Finally, you can contact Microsoft Support. at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Outlook.Config.OutlookConfigurator.InitializeMapiStoreForFirstTime()
at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Outlook.Config.OutlookConfigurator.Configure(IProgressEventHandler progressEventHandler)
at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Outlook.Config.ConfigEngine.Configure(Object stateInfo)
We have tried this with several different workstations (Win7, Win8, Win8.1), with several different CRM Outlook client UR-levels (UR11, UR15 and UR16) and they all give the same error. Some of these workstations have not had CRM Outlook client installed before so the issue is not from anything left over from previous CRM Outlook client installation,. Also we have tried this with several different organizations within the same server environment, and against two different server environments (test and prod), all give the same error. Before this new server environment, we had the old environment on Windows Server 2008 R2, CRM 2011 IFD UR11 and everything worked then properly.
I suspect that there is something now in UR15 which causes this issue to occur. Interesting thing is that for those users, who had the CRM Outlook client configured before our transition to the new server environment, the CRM Outlook client still works fine. So the issue is isolated to something which happens only when the CRM Outlook client is being configured for a new end user.
I took also the CRM server side trace while I reproduced the problem on the client side but I did not find any errors or CRM exceptions from the server side trace which would be related to this client configuration error. So it seems that the error is purely happening on the client side. I also tried to take Fiddler Network trace while reproducing the issue on the client side but using Fiddler causes the CRM Outlook client configuration wizard to error out immediately so I was not able to do the Network trace. It would have been interesting to see what is the last Network request that is being done on the client side before the error occurs.
The client configuration log file stack trace shows the function InitializeMapiStoreForFirstTime that is the last one to be called before the error occurs. I have done some searching around the web for this error but have not found an explanation that what is really being done on the client side when this method is called. It has probably something to do with the initialization of the local .sdf files to user profile directory. But when I look at those directories (\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSCRM\Client) on the client Workstation when the error occurs, there are already four.sdf files created so at least creating those client side files works properly.
Any tips to this issue are greatly appreciated.
Thanks.