Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager

  • Article

I missed noticing that the BCM team has created a new blog, but it's never too late to rectify a missing link.  In this case I'm only a few weeks behind.  The team behind Business Contact Manager, a very useful feature of Outlook provided in some versions of Office, has created their own MSDN blog.

So far there aren't a lot of posts, but I expect that to change as they grow the blog.  They already have some frequently asked questions about BCM, and some links to how Outlook developers can extend Business Contact Manager and integrate a solution into the functionality provided by BCM.

If you're interested in CRM-style functionality in Outlook, you should definitely take a look at Outlook with Business Contact Manager.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 19, 2007
    The Office 2007 Ultimate is supposed to include Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, but is, in fact, not included in the MSDN DVD.  I thought perhaps it is not installing properly because I was upgrading from Outlook 2003 with BCM, but I installed the software on a new computer which never had Office software on it, but there is still no BCM included with Outlook 2007 in the Ultimate edition.

  • Anonymous
    February 19, 2007
    RK: The BCM software comes on a separate CD in the Ultimate retail SKU, and is available as a separate download from MSDN.  Look under Applications, Business Contact Manager, Business Contact Manager 2007, and you can download the companion CD that is included in the retail SKU.

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2007
    We have tried Maximizer and it failed dismally. I am interested in using Outlook with contact Management (we have 2003, we can upgrade to 2005 or 2007 as necessary). Questions :)

  1. Does Outlook have a programmable API? (we are thinking of having an intranet that provides a GUI to SQL Server 2005).
  2. How well does Outlook w C.M. work with SBS 2003 (Exchange Server, Active Directory)?
  3. Can Outlook w C.M. use one public database (SQL Server 2005)? Any help is greatly appreciated! Also, is it possible to get some advise from Microsoft about this? Martin

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2007
    Thank you, rgregg.  It worked.

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2007
    Martin, I'd suggest you post that question over on the BCM blog, http://blogs.msdn.com/bcm.  They're better equiped to answer your questions about the BCM product.

  • Anonymous
    February 23, 2007
    A key oversight - I want to write a single letter to an individual in my BCM database - there is no qick and easy way to do this. A right click option should be there. This also applies to printing an envelope. Most other CRM software has this function.

  • Anonymous
    March 03, 2007
    Hi, I have Office 2007 Pro+ (which doesn't come with BCM). Is there any way I can get BCM and make it work with Pro+. I hope someone can help as I would like to try this program for myself. Thanks in advance. Mark

  • Anonymous
    March 05, 2007
    I am not sure whether this blog covers BCM application programming support issues since I don't see a direct hit on the Tags, but I will ask anyway. I have my business contacts linked to accounts, and I am traversing my business contacts, and would like to be able to retrieve the corresponding accounts based on the "Parent Entity EntryID" field, which was used to link the business contact to its parent account in the first place.  I don't know how to retrieve an account based on the "Parent Entity EntryID" field.  When I try to "Find" an account based on "EntryID", I am getting a "Condition is not valid" error message. So, if strParentEntity is the business contact "Parent Entity EntryID" field, the following fails: strFind = "[EntryID] = '" & strParentEntity & "'" Set objAcct = objAccounts.Items.Find(strFind) Does anyone know how to obtain a reference to an account object using the business contact's "Parent Entity EntryID" field? Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    March 06, 2007
    Rgregg - have hunted for BCM 2007 download on MSDN. Don't suppose you have the link?? :-)

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2007
    Does anyone know if Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager is compatible with Exchange server 2003 in any way? Thanks

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2007
    Where do I go to find steps for shairing between 2 users a BCM in Outlook 2003...but I do NOT have and Exchange Server.

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2007
    According to a Microsoft Office 2007 brochure [P/N 098-105985] I picked up in OfficeMax a month ago Office 2007 Small Business, Professional and Ultimate versions come with Outlook including Business Contact Manager. Office Standard 2007 includes only Outook and Office Home and Student replaces Outlook with OneNote.

  • Anonymous
    April 05, 2007
    Still waiting to see if there is a link to find BCM.

  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2007
    I installed Office 2007 Pro with BCM and I get the error message "Database creation was unsuccessful".  The sql server lite is running.  I went to follow the steps: Click Start, and then click My Computer. Open the Business Contact Manager folder by double-clicking each folder in the following path: C:Documents and Settings[username]Local SettingsApplication DataMicrosoft where [username] is the name of the folder of user who cannot create a database. Note   The path is the default location of the Business Contact Manager folder. Some of the folders in the path are hidden by default. For information about how to display hidden folders, see Help and Support. Right-click the Business Contact Manager folder, and then click Sharing and Security. Click the Security tab, and then click Add. But, I do not have a security tab to click on. What do I do now? Roberts