Native Server Level Exchange Sync

Any plans to integrate native backend connections to Exchange? Having to update calendars by having the application open is a giant PIA. Like really annoying. Seriously. Now with the new web interface we will have people that won't have the application open most of the time!

Thank you for asking. At this time we do not have near future plans for this. We've received several other requests for this over the years and we weight it from time to time in comparison with other things.

With Exchange, you can already configure RangerMSP so a single user will sync all calendars for all users! You can even run it on the server. Each user should configure their Outlook sync settings to allow others to sync their calendars, and the users that syncs for all needs to be able to access all other users calendars, on Exchange, from their Outook.

Hope this helps.

Yeah. I agree. It is really time for this feature. Literally every other CRM PSA does this directly. Its cleaner when things happen on the backend.

Syncing other users calendars doesn't work if you have uac turned on. Having this process run client side really has never been dependable for us. It's the biggest reason we don't use the CommitCRM calendar.

The alert server already knows the second that a new appointment is created - that should fire off a calendar sync as well!

Syncing other users calendars requires you to have every password
Syncing other users calendars causes an issue with UAC.
Syncing by having to have outlook open and running is unreliable

Mmm, knowing the password of others is NOT required.

The ONLY requirement is that the user that syncs for other users will be allowed to access the other users calendar (and Exchange level permission).

Hope this helps!

UAC turned off is a requirement as well, right? ...or am I dreaming that?

Quick question - With UAC turned ON and leaving RangerMSP aside - Can your domain user is able to access other users Calendars using their Outlook?

So we need to create a fake email account, that has full calendar permissions for everyoneelses's account.

Then we need to run a desktop session with outlook and CommitCRM running all the time. With the fake account signed in for this to work properly?

Why fake? Can't your user, as the manager, access all of your employee users and use that? But in any way - yes, a user with access to other users Exchange calendars is required in order for that user to sync other users calendars.

Hope this helps.

The service manager could, but that relies on them at be in that day or that week. People take PTO, vacations, etc.

It is bad practice to have an important system like calendar sync dependent on 1 user's outlook.

What if the machine did an update in the middle of the night? What if the machine crashed? A host of other possibilities.

People would be missing appointments all because 1 person was out or had an issue with outlook / their computer

Automated things tend to run better when end users don't have to be there to make them happen.

+1 for adding Native Exchange integration in future release. Also for us we don't use Pop3 or IMAP so these modules are pretty much useless for us right now.

+1 - This is another issue where everyone (except CommitCRM Support) understands and agrees that this is a long overdue (and very much needed) product improvement. CommitCRM is a very good product at a very good price, but it seems a bit myopic (arrogant?) to refuse to move up the priority list a feature that virtually all of your competitors have had in place for quite some time now, and that, to someone looking for a CRM product, could easily disqualify CommitCRM as a choice if they were aware of this shortcoming.

@Andy882 - Got that. FWIW, enabling POP3 and SMTP for Exchange is a breeze so we suspect that this definitely should not be a reason not to use a business level functionality that you may require. Thank you for your feedback.

It is another port that would need to be opened, and we have no devices/clients connect via POP3 or IMAP. The technologies that we do use and have enabled are MAPI/Exchange ActiveSync/OWA/OutlookAnyWhere. I think this should also be moved up in the priority list like others have mentioned as well.

These kinds of issues would go away with ActiveSync integration.

I think its time for Commit to implement a solution for this. This feature has obliviously been brought up in the past.

Thanks ​@Andy882 for your feedback!

Any progress on having true exchange sync... not outlook sync... this is by far the most troublesome feature of CommitCRM, current way is not good at all.

Thank you for your feedback. At this time syncing with Exchange, including 365, is possible through Outlook and you can sync all users calendars from a single PC that has access to the Exchange/365 calendar folders of the other users. We understand that this isn't ideal and consider different options here. At this time there aren't any other news on this. Thanks for asking.

+1 for ActiveSync integration

+1 Again :)

+1

+1

We've been asking for this for 5+ years now. It hasn't made it in the past 3-4 releases.

They never release their official tally for things with the most votes, so they don't have to be accountable for not delivering on what people want the most.

+1 for ActiveSync integration asap please.

+1 from me, still. Literally every other product on the market offers direct exchange activesync integration. We are all way past using outlook to sync to exchange

+1

Lol, maybe I should make this little add-on tool for you?

What you need is a server-side-service that sync CommitCRM users calendar with their Exchange calendar.

+1 ^ server-side service addon :)

+1

+2

Agree +++ for me to please. Native Exchange Support!

This seems to be a very popular request still... any word?

Thanks for asking and we truly appreciate the feedback here! It seems like many would benefit from a server side sync and we will look into that.

Progress:

- Able to read users calendar data in CommitCRM (SQL)
- Able to connect direct to Exchange 2010+
- Able to Create an appointment

So the basic is running now.

Now going for the next part.

Hosted Exchange??
e.g. O365 or 3rd party hosted

Screw Exchange how about icloud, google etc.. Most people anymore have iphones why not utilize the FREE icloud service for sync.

Most people do not have iphones. Android has a commanding 80% share of the market, and has for the past few years.

Well I should have said Iphones/Androids Sync with icloud/google.. Exchange is old school

Exchange old school? I don't know of any businesses ripping exchange to go to a consumer grade service.

@itognet

It's going to be hilarious if you put together in a few weeks what Commit has been ignoring for several years.

+1 Thanks

+1 here too. Exchange is pretty epic and blows iphone/google syncing out of the water as it's a true Enterprise/Organizational platform. I'm already thinking of moving my ticketing system outside of CRM so I can better utilize emails, and then use CommitCRM for the Notes, Docs, Charges, QuickBooks integration.

I never heard anyone call exchange old school. I must be finally getting old!

It is true that many apple centric businesses use icloud, but it is still such a small piece of the market.

Only the uninformed keep talking about Exchange like its some dinosaur that no one uses any longer. Its the glue that ties most organizations together. 90% of our clients use it either on prem or our hosted Exchange platform.

The micro SMB runs around with a Mac book, doesn't appreciate a secure integrated environment and uses Gmail. I get it but that isn't our client.

Commit is never going to implement native Exchange integration. If they were they would not be so dismissive of it. Commit is a good platform and I wouldn't want to use anything else but they do need to get some new chops and integrate Exchange and perform a GUI update on the PC and web.

Shhh... don't rock the boat...

I've had my share of posts removed from this forum ;)

You know, if there was one thing that would raise my opinion of CommitCRM, despite all of the flaws in the software development life-cycle, it would be their willingness to allow open, transparent dialogue (free speech anyone) on the forums. I can't found how many times I have taken time to write a somewhat intelligent post, completely professional and thought out to find that it disappears shortly thereafter never to be seen again.

Commit: if you are considering deleting this post, please do not. And take my word for it that draconian measures on a public forum like this one won't win you any friends in a world of openness and freedom that all technical people enjoy and expect from the internet- and we expect our business partners to live up to these same standards.

That's an interesting observation. I've always valued the open feedback available here. As a frequent visitor and contributor, I've never seen my posts deleted!

If Commit wasn't interested in hearing transparent dialogue, I highly doubt they would make a public forum like this available!

To be fair, *sometimes* I get a direct or private message explaining their reasoning (they provide a lot of 'one-off' support solutions that they don't post publicly for some reason). I don't mind so much in those situations, although it would be nice to get access to all the cool stuff they solve for other people, but I have had incidents where the post just vanishes with no explanation.

Maybe just an over-zealous customer service employee who was new was to blame....

Thank you all for your posting the recent comments.

True, our support forums are both open and transparent.
Any visitor to our Web site, regardless of them being customers or not, can view all posts and all threads in the forum.
Nothing is kept behind walled gardens or anything like that.

Like most/all forums on the Internet some level moderation is required, and it is absolutely minimal in our case. This thread is a good example of our openness too. It includes great feedback, some criticism and we appreciate it all, and it is available for everyone to see.

Having said that, these forums do have a purpose.
For example, licensing issues or security related issues are not to be discussed publicly here. The forums are also not the place to promote other products or to provide entirely inaccurate and misleading information. We might also review and moderate posts that use inappropriate language.

Fortunately for us, with our community of users moderation is minimal, and in many cases when moderation is required it is the result of not being entirely aware of the forum purpose or rules.

In the, very few, cases when moderation is required, we also contact the person directly by email letting them know about their post being moderated and why.

@exbabylon following your 'new employee' latest post, we quickly reviewed whether any of your posts have been moderated and since May 2011, when you joined the forum, it seems like there were two cases where something you posted got moderated. In one case was related to licensing and the other to security. In both cases we communicated this with you over email and discussed with you there. We couldn't find anything else, and you've posted a lot, including starting this thread :-)

We truly appreciate the feedback we receive on these forums, even in cases where it isn't 'music-to-our-ears'.

Lets keep these forums rolling and mutually benefit from the discussion.

Thanks!

Ive seen a few things "disappear" Not sure if any were ones we did, but I can remember seeing something, and not being able to find it later.

Commit is very tolerant in most cases :)

Hi everybody :)

I am DONE, created a server-side iCloud Calendar sync for CommitCRM.
I will soon put in on my website, so please stay tuned.

With this add-on you can sync multiple users calendars to their iPhone directly from the CommitCRM Server->iCloud service.

The add-on will be expanded later on to handle Google Calendar and hopefully Exchange by EWS (having big trouble on this one ;) )

The link the product is: http://itognet.dk/product-detail/icl...mitcrm-5-users

nice that you got it working with iCloud... the only issue seems that in your screen shots it requires you to know everyone's passwords. I need something like this for Office365 and it should use an admin account that can just post to other users calendars. The issue with CommitCRM trying to use a client side app like outlook is that a side from the security it puts a lot of hopes that the app is always up and working. I installed Outlook on my server and setup a different user account that has access to all users just to do the calendar sync... in the end I could never get it to run for more than a few days at a time. It would hang on the server and require Outlook to be closed and reopened. I had to write a script that would close outlook and CommitCRM on the server every day and reopen it... This is such a bad way to do it. Not to mention their idea of having a "manager" do it. So they would have access to all of that persons emails and say the employees have large PSTs this causes Outlook to run very slow as it is trying to update all of these users. Hopefully one day commit will listen to all of the people on here and setup an activesync for Office365.

HavenZone, well my point with the iCloud calendar sync is two things. First, it isn't that hard to create a server sync software from CommitCRM to iCal, GCal or Exchange Calendar. Second, I will when I get the time finish the software with support for Google Calendar and Exchange.
About the need for knowing everybodys passwords is correct for iCal and GCal. If you can advise another way to do it, please tell :) - Naturally the passwords will be encrypted with SHA512 or better.
About the Exchange access, it will sync with only one account that have access to the other users calendars.
The only thing I need is time.
If you have any suggestions for the software please tell.

+1 for native exchange sync. CommitCRM is rapidily falling behind other products and adding new features but allowing core functionality and requests that have been asked for years top be ignored.

It is EXTREMELY clunky and slow and cludgy the entire syncing feature. I nearly changed products when my last renewal was due and if core features aren't sorted I will go elsewhere next cycle.