Email Tracking, Outlook Synchronizing, and the Address Book Provider with CRM 4.0 (Update Rollup 7 and Beyond)

With Update Rollup 7 or higher installed, the Microsoft CRM 4.0 Outlook client now uses Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition (CE) to track the following:

• Email Tracking
  • EmailCache.sdf
  • Located at ...\Microsoft\MSCRM\Client
• Outlook Synchronizing
  • OutlookSyncCache.sdf
  • Located at ...\Microsoft\MSCRM\Client
• CRM Address Book Provider
  • Account.sdf
  • Contact.sdf
  • Equipment.sdf
  • Lead.sdf
  • Queue.sdf
  • SystemUser.sdf
  • Located at ...\Microsoft\MSCRM\ABP

Note:  All of the above .sdf files are recreated during the reconfiguration process.

The EmailCache.sdfcontains information about all emails recently received by the user's mailbox.  It also maintains the Outlook id, CRM id, and the internet message id for email items in the user’s mailbox which are tracked in CRM.  The main purpose is to improve the performance and accuracy of the email tagging and email background receive mechanisms.

The OutlookSyncCache.sdfcontains information about all items (except emails) synced between CRM and Outlook for the user on the CRM Outlook client.  The OutlookSyncCache.sdf:

• contains the id of the item in Outlook and CRM, it’s type, the date the item was last verified, and information about whether the item has been deleted, and the status of the link. 
• contains the information about changes made to the item from either source that still need to be processed.
• processes change notifications from Outlook (via the MAPI notification process), the CRM sync process, as well as user clicks on the toolbar and ribbon buttons. 
• maintains consistency by detecting changes made in Outlook in which the notification is missed. 

 The main purpose is to maintain the list of synchronization changes needed to by the sync process, including retrying failed sync attempts.

The CRM Address Book Provider (ABP) now uses SQL Server CE instead of xml for data storage.  All data that is meant to be stored in the CRM ABP is now stored within the .sdf files (account.sdf, contact.sdf, equipment.sdf, lead.sdf, queue.sdf, systemuser.sdf).  When accessing the CRM ABP from Outlook, the information is pulled from the .sdf files.  An example of what the CRM ABP would look like is shown below:

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. 

- Jon