Microsoft issues alert on CRM suite

Microsoft has issued an alert about incompatibility issues in its customer relationship management suite caused by installing the Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Microsoft has issued an alert about incompatibility issues in its customer relationship management suite caused by installing the Windows XP Service Pack 2.

In a Knowledge Base article, Microsoft states that its Business Solutions CRM application Version 1.0 running on the XP platform won’t work if Service Pack 2 is installed. Microsoft urged those customers affected to upgrade to CRM and CRM Sales for Outlook 1.2 before installing XP Service Pack 2 on any clients.

Once running CRM Version 1.2, updates are required to the Microsoft CRM Server and Microsoft Sales for Outlook client, along with several manual work-arounds.

The methods of installing the updates and doing the work-arounds are described in detail in the note. The updates for the Microsoft CRM Server and CRM Sales for Outlook Version 1.2 are posted at the Microsoft Download Center.

At the Convergence 2004 application user conference in March, Microsoft users said that while the application had some minor bugs, they found it reasonably stable. At that show, Doug Burgum, the president of Microsoft’s Business Solutions Unit, pointed out that Version 1 was a new application, and that Version 1.2 “was not a small update but had a year’s worth of development efforts.” He also noted that Version 1.2 offered additional “stability and performance” enhancements.

“Enhanced security features in XP SP2 meant some of the default behaviors of Internet Explorer and desktop security zones have changed,” a Microsoft spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail. “Microsoft has been advising customers throughout the SP2 development process that some applications, including Microsoft’s own, would need updates to work as intended with SP2.”