Microsoft CRM 4.0 Outlook E-mail Tracking

In case you missed it, The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog had a great post about What's New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Integration. The most significant change is that the tracking token is no longer required to track email responses.

"Smart matching enables the e-mail router to process incoming e-mail to determine CRM relevance by comparing subject lines and party lists (user e-mail addresses in the to:, from:, cc: and bcc: lists) with e-mails already existing in CRM. The tracking token can be configured or enabled/disabled by a CRM system administrator via the System Settings dialog."

On the whole, I see this as positive, because sometimes recipients will delete the tracking token, so the email doesn't get tracked, and it is rather ugly. This does also raise some questions, mainly how smart is the smart matching? And what happens if you use the same title in different emails, and is one approach more accurate to the other?

Comments

[CRM Product Development]

Nice post on e-mail tracking... thanks for sharing the post...

[JustJoe]

OK....just by naming the feature "Smart Matching"....Microsoft is just begging to be slammed.

We are running CRM 4.0 with Rollup 2. We have a network copy machine/scanner we use to scan & email images. The subject line on these emails does not change.

Once someone clicks the "Track in CRM" button for that email (generated from the copier) & sets the "Regarding" field, EVERY FUTURE INCOMING EMAIL FROM THE COPIER IS AUTOMATICALLY TRACKED IN CRM & REGARDING POPULATED WITH THE SAME ENTITY AS THE FIRST TRACKED EMAIL.

We are using the tracking token. We are only tracking emails in response to CRM email.

This is a huge cluster!!!! I have not found a way to turn off the "Smart Matching". There is now a ton of cleanup & no way to prevent this in the future.

Can anyone please help???

I have tried posting this at the following:
http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/01/29/what-s-new-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0-e-mail-integration.aspx

But for some reason it never shows up in the blog? Hummmm.....could posts like this be filtered??? Why would they do such a thing?

[Joel Lindstrom]

Joe,

That is a very interesting question—I will see what I can find out about this.

Just curious, what would happen if you set up a dummy contact record associated with your company record with the email address that the copier uses? I don’t know the “smart matching” secret recipe, but I know that there are several pieces used to match/track emails, such as token, email address, and smart matching.

Also, just curious, can you edit the subject line of the copier emails? If you had them include a tracking token number associated with the dummy contact, it would prevent them from tracking against the other record.

[Michael Ahearn]

I would love this feature if it actually worked. Our issue is:

1) Emails are not automatically being tracked
2) When clicking "Track in CRM", the email gets into CRM but the Regarding is not set ...

Tracking is active. Tracking token is being used.

The fact is that in our environment (CRM 4.0 with Exchange 2007) NOTHING is being tracked correctly. It's driving me nuts ... I'll have to open another case with MS in order to get this one fixed. This is in addition to the very long case I had to open to get the upgrade from CRM 3.0 to actually work.

I agree with the post on August 12, 2008 at 07:28 AM ... this is a HUGE cluster.

[Joel Lindstrom]

Michael,

When you click the track in crm button, are you clicking the "set regarding" button? When you track an email and set the regarding to an entity, is it not tracked?

You don't HAVE to click the "set regarding" button if:
1. The email address is associated with a record
2. The email address is ONLY associated with one record

So if you hit the set regarding button when you track an email and choose a record, are you saying that it doesn't track the email against the selected record?