Minimal requirements for configuring Outlook Client (Online version)

Some customers don't allow end users to install software on their own desktop. This can even go up to completely locked down systems on which the end users doesn't have any rights. Installing the CRM outlook client on such a machine is a quite a hard task to do. Usually this can be scripted and by doing so it will be installed by a user with enough rights. After installing the Outlook client, it still needs to be configured. By playing trial and error I found that the user does require at least read and write rights required for configuring the CRM Outlook client:

- HKCU\Software\Microsoft\
- c:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\
- c:\Windows\system32\MAPISVC.INF
- C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033\MAPISVC.INF - "Program Files (x86)" for 64bit machines

These have been the items that we needed to unlock in my project. If you find any other resources to which you need to provide access to, please let me know and I'll add that to this list.

CRM 5 and Windows Azure

Girish Raja has created a nice video in which he shows a real life example of how Windows Azure can be used in combination with Dynamics CRM. Not only is he using Dynamics CRM, he is using CRM 5. Make sure you watch this video to learn some neat things about:
- Dynamics CRM 5.0 (including nested grids, visualizations and dashboards)
- Windows Azure (including AppFabric Service Bus)

Girish Raja's blog