When the CRM 3.0 was about to be released last year, we heard lots of feedback from the customers and partners about running the CRM Outlook Clients under the Terminal Server or Citrix servers (TS/Citrix). Since we didn’t have enough time to address the request before the product rolled out, we decided to address it post release. So after we released CRM 3.0, we published these two articles:
Microsoft CRM 3.0 Desktop Client for Outlook Deployment with Terminal Server
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=CBAD1AF7-8FDE-40F2-8DF5-935A363F87D9&displaylang=en
Microsoft CRM 3.0 on Citrix Presentation Server 4.0
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=664beb55-1652-474f-ae06-c38df171620e&displaylang=en
The “solution” above is a set of scripts that runs under a command prompt. The intention was that the user will update the script as needed to fit their business needs (many of them already have logon scripts for each user and this can be part of that process).
History
The basic issue was that CRM 3.0 client setup did BOTH installation and the configuring settings for the user. It worked great, unless you were running on Terminal Server or Citrix servers, where the admin user installs the bits once, and the end-users configures the settings and use the services.
The TS/Citrix end-user would need to run configuration part to configure the CRM client for their first time use (very similar to Outlook email profile creation wizard that need to be run for each user). However, we didn’t have a separate configuration tool. It was built into the setup.
The end-user would have to run the setup to get to the configuration portion. Obviously the regular end-user on a TS/Citrix will not be able to run any kind of setup.exe or msi files. Therefore we had to provide a solution where the configuration can be done outside of the setup.
Current Solution
So the provided script above does just that. It configures the CRM user settings by creating some user registry settings, copying some files and configuring the Outlook and PST files for each user.
The following configures the settings for the CRM client user
1. Add CRM related registry keys and values
a. Create a CRM hive under HKEY_CURRENT_USER for each CRM user – mscrmclasses.cmd file has the list of registry values that needs to be created for each user
b. Register CRM add-in – you will need to update a couple values in the “<HKCU>\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins”. Terminstall.cmd file has the list
c. Register CRM registry keys – you will need to update a few registry keys to “<HKCU>\Software\Microsoft\MSCRM Client”. Terminstall.cmd file has the list
2. Copying PST file to each CRM user – You will need to copy the provided MSCRM.pst file to Documents and Settings>\<user>\Application Data for each user
3. Copy mail merge files to each CRM user – Copying Word Merge files to the folder “<Documents and Settings>\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\Mail Merge”
4. Register CRM PST Service and CRM Address Book Provider with Outlook – This portion can only be done by calling the provided CrmForOutlookTSInstaller.exe directly. Terminstall.cmd file has the detailed parameter that you will need to pass in
All of the above steps happen automatically within the termininstall.cmd file, but if you need to automate the process with your own script or tools, you will need to make sure those four things above is done for each user.
Future
We understand that this was a “quick” solution for the current release. We will be addressing this issue directly within the product so you do not need a set of “script” to enable running CRM clients under TS/Citrix. As you can guess, the setup and configuration phase will be split into two and you can run them independently.