Troubles with BCM 2007

[Cedric]

Hello,

We have a few problems with BCM2007 (environment: Office 2007, Exchange
2007, Vista & XP, all updates). We are about 15 working with BCM2007.

1. Project task in to-do list
Something is not working correctly. One sees project tasks from other
people. One does not see all own project tasks. Some project tasks appear
unattributed although they are. This is a huge problem and people complain
they can't use BCM2007 because of it. The only way is by way of reports,
which really isn't a solution.
Any ideas?

2. In an account, there is a list of linked contacts.
The list does not appear the same to all people, some have a list that
doesn't have a the fields. This looks like a memory leak to me as the best
way to get the right list is to shutdown and restart outlook.

3. Sometime the database connection is interrupted.

4. Default view for "Business Contacts in BCM"
Many people complain they can't find contacts. The problem is always the
same: they are using a filtered view. But it seems that BCM / Outlook is
always reverting to its choice view, and not the one chosen by the user. How
can I define the default view for good?

5. Enter key is taboo.
We have noticed that when searching for a contact, using the enter key after
filling a search field was a very good way to crash BCM. Instead, I tell
people to use the mouse to click on the magnifying glass. Is it possible to
make the Enter key work?

6. Too slow.
When people are using BCM too fast (opening forms, following links, ...) BCM
crashes. BCM only works with user using a slow tempo. Is it possible to
change this?

Thanks,
Cedric

 

[Toon]

Hi,

I have the same problems with outlook and BCM 2007. The performance is very
poor. Users are complaining on the performance.
I have XP and Vista but nog difference.

Also do I have some problems if i create a task on a Account. If I created a
task every thing is ok but when I modify this task the task wil disapear from
my task list.
The only way to get the task back is to delete the old one an create a new
one.

Has somebody have an idee to solve this?

TIA Toon

 

[William Stacey [C# MVP]]

Sounds like maybe you have some users using the Local DB/Sync option and
some using Direct to DB. There is a lag between updates to sync the local
db and server side.
Change everyone Direct. Can't remember where that option is. Probably
under database tools.
--wjs

 

[Toon]

Hi WIlliam,

I check your suggestion but I cannot find the option in BCM or outlook.
Only the "office settings option" I found where you can set the
synchronisation time from 1 till 30 minutes. But changing these settings have
no result. Also in the database tools of BCM there is no option to set the
Localdb/sync option.

Any other suggestion?

TIA
regards Toon

 

[joesmith]

When you originally connected to your database, it asked if you wanted to
keep a local copy (i.e. ost). If you close your BCM database then reconnect,
you can choose the direct mode. HOWEVER, I'm wondering the opposite might be
true. I'm having the slow performance (to the point of BCM being un-useable
in category view) and I'm wondering if having a locally cached copy would
help.

 

[William Stacey [C# MVP]]

I wondered the same thing. After installing on 4 in my office, I did not
notice much difference from the clock on the wall. But maybe it would help
a bit. I would just worry about yet another failure point and having to
deal with sync issues (or out-of-sync issues). Sure it may work fine for a
month, but what happens when there is an error? I know sql is pretty hard
good, but something to wonder about.

 

[joesmith]

William,
I did some testing last night. I appears that working in cached mode wasn't
any faster, but I couldn't tell if I was actually working off the cached
copy. I did have a breakthrough when I exported my database from the server
and then imported it into a blank BCM database locally. I had no preformance
issues at all. So, what does that tell us, and how can we get the real
problem fixed? I'm working on a gigabit connect to a server with cpu to
spare, so those are not the bottlenecks. We're going to test it on a server
running a full copy of sql rather than sql express and see if that helps.

 

[Luther]

William,
I did some testing last night.  I appears that working in cached mode wasn't
any faster, but I couldn't tell if I was actually working off the cached
copy.  I did have a breakthrough when I exported my database from the server
and then imported it into a blank BCM database locally.  I had no preformance
issues at all.  So, what does that tell us, and how can we get the real
problem fixed?  I'm working on a gigabit connect to a server with cpu to
spare, so those are not the bottlenecks.  We're going to test it on a server
running a full copy of sql rather than sql express and see if that helps.

:





- Show quoted text -

If this happens:

I did have a breakthrough when I exported my database from the
server and then imported it into a blank BCM database locally.
I had no preformance issues at all.

Then the issue may be deleted items. All the records in the deleted
items folder are still indexed, and otherwise treated like regular
database records, but they don't get exported, so the new database
would not have them.

I don't think Sql express vs regular sql will make much of a
difference unless you have many users attached to a single database.

 

[joesmith]

I too thought about deleted items. I had 6000 of them, but I deleted them
and defragged the database. Didn't help performance.

William,
I did some testing last night. I appears that working in cached mode wasn't
any faster, but I couldn't tell if I was actually working off the cached
copy. I did have a breakthrough when I exported my database from the server
and then imported it into a blank BCM database locally. I had no preformance
issues at all. So, what does that tell us, and how can we get the real
problem fixed? I'm working on a gigabit connect to a server with cpu to
spare, so those are not the bottlenecks. We're going to test it on a server
running a full copy of sql rather than sql express and see if that helps.

:

I wondered the same thing. After installing on 4 in my office, I did not
notice much difference from the clock on the wall. But maybe it would help
a bit. I would just worry about yet another failure point and having to
deal with sync issues (or out-of-sync issues). Sure it may work fine for a
month, but what happens when there is an error? I know sql is pretty hard
good, but something to wonder about.

When you originally connected to your database, it asked if you wanted to
keep a local copy (i.e. ost). If you close your BCM database then
reconnect,
you can choose the direct mode. HOWEVER, I'm wondering the opposite might
be
true. I'm having the slow performance (to the point of BCM being
un-useable
in category view) and I'm wondering if having a locally cached copy would
help.

"Toon" wrote:

Hi WIlliam,

I check your suggestion but I cannot find the option in BCM or outlook.
Only the "office settings option" I found where you can set the
synchronisation time from 1 till 30 minutes. But changing these settings
have
no result. Also in the database tools of BCM there is no option to set
the
Localdb/sync option.

Any other suggestion?

TIA
regards Toon

"William Stacey [C# MVP]" wrote:

Sounds like maybe you have some users using the Local DB/Sync option
and
some using Direct to DB. There is a lag between updates to sync the
local
db and server side.
Change everyone Direct. Can't remember where that option is. Probably
under database tools.
--wjs

Hello,

We have a few problems with BCM2007 (environment: Office 2007,
Exchange
2007, Vista & XP, all updates). We are about 15 working with BCM2007.

1. Project task in to-do list
Something is not working correctly. One sees project tasks from other
people. One does not see all own project tasks. Some project tasks
appear
unattributed although they are. This is a huge problem and people
complain
they can't use BCM2007 because of it. The only way is by way of
reports,
which really isn't a solution.
Any ideas?

2. In an account, there is a list of linked contacts.
The list does not appear the same to all people, some have a list
that
doesn't have a the fields. This looks like a memory leak to me as the
best
way to get the right list is to shutdown and restart outlook.

3. Sometime the database connection is interrupted.

4. Default view for "Business Contacts in BCM"
Many people complain they can't find contacts. The problem is always
the
same: they are using a filtered view. But it seems that BCM / Outlook
is
always reverting to its choice view, and not the one chosen by the
user.
How
can I define the default view for good?

5. Enter key is taboo.
We have noticed that when searching for a contact, using the enter
key
after
filling a search field was a very good way to crash BCM. Instead, I
tell
people to use the mouse to click on the magnifying glass. Is it
possible
to
make the Enter key work?

6. Too slow.
When people are using BCM too fast (opening forms, following links,
...)
BCM
crashes. BCM only works with user using a slow tempo. Is it possible
to
change this?

Thanks,
Cedric- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

If this happens:

I did have a breakthrough when I exported my database from the
server and then imported it into a blank BCM database locally.
I had no preformance issues at all.

Then the issue may be deleted items. All the records in the deleted
items folder are still indexed, and otherwise treated like regular
database records, but they don't get exported, so the new database
would not have them.

I don't think Sql express vs regular sql will make much of a
difference unless you have many users attached to a single database.

 

[William Stacey [C# MVP]]

That tells me it is network overhead in general. Using a local copy, your
using a memory comm channel. Remotely, you have a lot more layers to go up
and down.
If it should account for that much time, not sure. Would need more detailed
picture of the time at each layer to know for sure. That would require a lot
of diag and perf testing (or special sw tools that cost $$). Not sure why
cached mode would be slow too, unless they are still doing some network
checks on each transaction for some reason (maybe they have stale code that
needs to be removed or something). One thing we know for sure. You always
pay some tax for going over the network, regardless of network speed.
Actually, the speed of the network is normally *not the speed issue in terms
of percentages - it is the round-trip time on both sides and server side
processing time.

 

[Toon]

Hi WIlliam,

I check the option once again but I cannot find a "direct of local" option.
But I already found out that the performance will speed up once you put the
server name in de hosts file of the client. But outlook 2007 will stay slow
once and while. Is there already a new service pack for office 2007? Because
I have clients without BCM2007 and they have also a bad performance with
outlook.

Regards Toon

 

[joesmith]

I found something that WORKED! I had upgraded from Office 2003 to Office
2007. A co-worker had a clean install of Office 2007. He didn't have
performance issues with BCM. So...I uninstalled ALL Office, BCM and related
software and reinstalled Office 2007 and BCM. It works MUCH better.

 

[sdurman]

I have some new computers that started out with a clean install of office
2007, not an upgrade from 2003, and they still have the same problem of
outlook/word editor freezing up whenever someone updates a contact in the BCM
database on our server.

 

[Chris]

Please see the suggestion in this thread for improving performance.
Increasing the polling interval seems to have a large beneficial
effect for most users.

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.outlook.bcm/browse_thread/thread/4f67240caf19f069

HTH,
Chris [msft]