Linking email

[JoeM]

I'm a little confused at how to best link email to an account/contact. Some
strange things seem to be occurring. I'm starting from scratch - I have a
lot of business contacts built up from over the years and I'm trying to
migrate them over to BCM. I've dragged and dropped them from my contacts to
BCM. That was easy enough. I've created accounts (business names) and am
going through a process to attach the appropriate contacts to the account.
Seems to be a few steps but pretty painless.

Now, once a contact is assigned to a contact, I was hopeful that emails to
the contact would show up in the history. sadly, it is not the case.
Also, when I click the auto link email button under the account - sometimes
it shows emails for my contacts with checkboxes on those contacts, most
other times it doesn't. what am I doing wrong?

also, is there a way to have bcm go back and assign all messages to/from
contacts to their histories?

If not, it doesn't seem that I can select multiple messages and assign them
in batch. The auto-link button greys out.

Is there a good please to read up on this? I'm only finding vague
information and help files on MS's site.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Leonid S. Knyshov]

I'm a little confused at how to best link email to an account/contact.
Some strange things seem to be occurring. I'm starting from scratch - I
have a lot of business contacts built up from over the years and I'm
trying to migrate them over to BCM. I've dragged and dropped them from my
contacts to BCM. That was easy enough. I've created accounts (business
names) and am going through a process to attach the appropriate contacts
to the account. Seems to be a few steps but pretty painless.

Now, once a contact is assigned to a contact, I was hopeful that emails to
the contact would show up in the history. sadly, it is not the case.
Also, when I click the auto link email button under the account -
sometimes it shows emails for my contacts with checkboxes on those
contacts, most other times it doesn't. what am I doing wrong?

also, is there a way to have bcm go back and assign all messages to/from
contacts to their histories?

If not, it doesn't seem that I can select multiple messages and assign
them in batch. The auto-link button greys out.

Is there a good please to read up on this? I'm only finding vague
information and help files on MS's site.

Thanks in advance!

Business Tools -> Manage e-mail autolinking.

If you do not see this, your BCM is not up to date and you are missing a lot
of features. I link to all relevant updates on my website.
--
Leonid S. Knyshov, CEO
Crashproof Solutions, LLC - http://www.crashproofsolutions.com
MCP Exchange 2003/Small Business Server 2003
Microsoft Small Business Specialist Partner
See the tips and tricks section on my website for video tutorials on BCM
Send a smile to Microsoft (Office 2007 Beta feedback tool)!
http://tinyurl.com/m4omy

 

[JoeM]

Also, when I click the auto link email button under the account -
In addtion to this question (yet unanswered), when I click the auto-link
email button within the account, or the contact, even if there is a
checkbox - when I click OK it still doesn't show the emails that are linked
to this client.

I end up having to go to Business Tools | Manage Email AutoLink, select ALL
names listed and then wait for it to go through each and every email I have
(taking up to an hour each run). Only after this will linked email show the
messages for that one account. Is this really the only way? What can I do
to make the Email Auto-Link work w/in the business contact? and why does it
only work on some, not others?

 

[Leonid S. Knyshov]

In addtion to this question (yet unanswered), when I click the auto-link
email button within the account, or the contact, even if there is a
checkbox - when I click OK it still doesn't show the emails that are
linked to this client.

I end up having to go to Business Tools | Manage Email AutoLink, select
ALL names listed and then wait for it to go through each and every email I
have (taking up to an hour each run). Only after this will linked email
show the messages for that one account. Is this really the only way?
What can I do to make the Email Auto-Link work w/in the business contact?
and why does it only work on some, not others?

You shouldn't have to do that if your auto-linking is enabled.

Let's verify that Autolinking is in fact enabled as it gets disabled if you
share the database. You may also wish to enable autolinking for additional
folders as that may be part of the symptoms.

More information from the help file:
Multiple Users
Because e-mail messages can be shared accidentally and result in
confidential information distributed unintentionally, when the database is
shared, all e-mail addresses that have been enabled to link automatically to
an Account or Business Contact record are deleted from the database, and new
e-mail addresses are excluded from auto-linking. To link e-mail messages
automatically after switching from single to multiple user, you need to add
any e-mail addresses that you want to link to existing and newly created
Account and Business Contact and records.

The product should automatically assign new messages sent and received to
appropriate history.

Please make sure your BCM is at version BCM V2 Update SP3. I linked to these
files on my site.

This works pretty good for me in both 2003 and 2007 releases of BCM.
--
Leonid S. Knyshov, CEO
Crashproof Solutions, LLC - http://www.crashproofsolutions.com
MCP Exchange 2003/Small Business Server 2003
Microsoft Small Business Specialist Partner
See the tips and tricks section on my website for video tutorials on BCM
Send a smile to Microsoft (Office 2007 Beta feedback tool)!
http://tinyurl.com/m4omy

 

[JoeM]

I see that I'm only on SP2, must have recently released SP3??

How do I tell if auto link is enabled or disabled?

ooooh, somebody gave their site an overhaul!! Nice.

 

[JoeM]

Was wrong, I am SP3 -- Its SP2 for Outlook 2003.

I believe I turned off Shared Database, if it was even on, via Business
Tools | Shared Database wizard. Still, newly created contacts don't link to
previously created emails. ?

 

[Leonid S. Knyshov]

Was wrong, I am SP3 -- Its SP2 for Outlook 2003.

I believe I turned off Shared Database, if it was even on, via Business
Tools | Shared Database wizard. Still, newly created contacts don't link
to previously created emails. ?

I think I see your story.

You expect Outlook BCM to automatically relink older messages to the new
contact and that's not happening unless you run the linker manually. That
behavior is by design.

The question we need to address is whether it correctly links new inbound
e-mail to these contacts?

We can try an experiment:

1. Create two accounts (e-mail address removed) and
(e-mail address removed) (please remove USENET) While you are at
it, you can also create a test3 account and link them to it.
2. Send me an e-mail my address listed on my site when this is done
3. I'll send you a few messages with a fake From: set to test1 and tes2
respectively.
4. Let me know whether or not they get linked correctly.

You should only have to run relinker manually once for old e-mail. Be sure
to select all folders that may contain your e-mail items.
Susequently, you may have to run it just for that newly added account, or
simply rerun the whole thing. BCM is smart enough to recognize message IDs
it already linked and will ignore them.

P.S. I forgot to hit send on this message yesterday, so it may be a
duplicate suggestion, and thanks for web site compliments.
--
Leonid S. Knyshov, CEO
Crashproof Solutions, LLC - http://www.crashproofsolutions.com
MCP Exchange 2003/Small Business Server 2003
Microsoft Small Business Specialist Partner
See the tips and tricks section on my website for video tutorials on BCM
Send a smile to Microsoft (Office 2007 Beta feedback tool)!
http://tinyurl.com/m4omy

 

[JoeM]

Thanks again Leonid, You are correct, I'm expecting (hoping?) that previous
email links would display. Typically, a customer gets added to my contacts
after they first write with an email - that first email is usualy very
important to us as it contains a lot of detailed information of their wants,
as well as add'l contact info. So, when I get that email, I add them to BCM
(that rather conveluted method of adding is quite painful - are thay going
to fix that? Add to contacts, drag from contact to BCM contacts, add
contact to account, repeat). I digress..

So, to do this right then, each time I get an email from a potential
customer and add them to BCM -- I'll need to run the Manage Auto Email Link
from Business Tools?

Though I did just find that I could open each email and choose Link to
Record. Not bad, but still cumbersome.

Thanks for the offer to test - I think its working as its supposed to.
messages to/from do get linked after the account is created.

Question: is there a quick-add; a means to quickly add a bcm contact from a
mail message? The way I've found to do this is a several step process
(contact -> BCM Contact -> BCM Account). Seems slow enough to discourage my
using it - and thats not the goal.

Thanks again!