We have just installed MS CRM 2011 (on-site, not internet facing) for the first time as part of a new project. The web client is working with no issues, however we are having no luck with the Outlook client. The Outlook client installation worked with no errors, I can enter the server URL, test it, and pick the organisation.
Outlook opens with no errors, but all of the views of CRM (e.g. Contacts, Cases etc) are empty (we have loaded the Sample data so there should be something there - the same user can view the data via the web client so permissions should be ok). When I click any of the CRM toolbar buttons, either a blank window opens, or a progress bar with the title "Waiting for the web page to load from a CRM server". This eventually times out with an error such as "There was an error while executing action for this menu item/button". Watching the traffic with Fiddler reveals all sorts of connections and responses so it is doing things, just not enough to actually work.
I have enabled tracing on the client, and this has I think identified the problem (maybe). There are numerous errors along the lines of:
Process:OUTLOOK |Organization:1c16f018-bfa3-e011-82a9-005056b600fe |Thread: 1
|Category: Application.Outlook |User: 0000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
The Guid for the user is an empty Guid. I would have expected this to be the Guid for the user from the database. This to me suggests an authentication issue of some sort. I have read a document (http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=3621) about Claims based authentication and we have not done anything to set this up - is this required? As I said the web client works with no issues. Oddly, if I click "Go offline", and then say No to the prompt to install the offline components, the data then appears, but subsequent clicks then don't work again.
The problem occurs with both an out of the box install and with Rollup 2 installed. The client is a 32bit XP machine, tried with both Outlook 2007 and 2010. We have tried numerous PCs (unfortunately we only have XP to try it on). We have also tried IE7 and IE8, and the server is in the Trusted Sites zone.
I am at a loss as to what to try next, any thoughts?
