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If you receive the following error "0x80004004" just out of the blue while syncing your CommitCRM appointments to outlook 2003, you will need to act fast to reduce the time required to fix it.
This mostly occurs because of a "recently" corrupted appointment or appointments entry in outlook and you will need to delete it to allow CommitCRM crm to successfully sync appointments again. Unfortunately as far as i'm aware CommitCRM do not offer advanced logging on this, although they may in their support log files option, but after sending them via email, when we asked, they could only tell us it was a problem with outlook, which it was! based on xp os: i recommend you perform a full PC/OS/Server/CommitCRM backup before you continue. First thing to try is close outlook and ensure it is closed via task mgr - processes. start - run - outlook /cleanreminders wait at least 60 seconds, outlook may then start, but if not, start it and re-try the CommitCRM sync. if it fails, close then re-open outlook to see if it does then make any difference to the error status. if that doesn’t cure the problem, then its time to start deleting from your outlook calender. clean start outlook (ie normally) empty your deleted items folder or move the contents to another folder, but ensure deleted items is empty one way or another. select calendar view goto view - arrange by - current view - and select active appointments this will allow you to view the most recent calendar entry’s that have come into outlook. do a screen shot of these, just as a failsafe backup. next, now some say you can tell which entry’s are corrupted, but in my cases, i haven’t been able to tell the difference. you will now need to use the field chooser and add "created" if its not already in the column view. delete for example the most recent entry’s i.e. the first 3 on the list. you could i suppose move these to another calendar to then copy back if they are not corrupted afterwards, but up to you. dont forget you emptied your deleted items, so you can easily restore them if necessary. After you have deleted you suspected most recent appointments from outlook, it is now very important you close outlook completely. then check again, via task mgr - processes that it is closed, if not just end process. if you fail to close outlook, it will not make any difference to the sync error. next restart outlook normally, and try a CommitCRM sync, it should now work, if not, continue working your way through the appointments until you have some success! if you really do not have time to do the above, you can just create a new outlook calendar and set CommitCRM to sync to that one instead, but you may loose entry’s that you have put into outlook directly or ones that have synced from your phone via for example "mail for exchange" for nokia's. you will need to work out how to change calendar defaults, but i am no outlook expert and don’t have the time to find out how. next: i suggest you do read this: If this problem has happened more than once, it is likely something is up on your network packet wise, such as faulty NICs or you have other 3rd party applications syncing you same mailbox at the same time. As this has happened twice to me now, and never for my colleagues, We suspect the following problems in our infrastructure are or could be causing it. 1: As i use my phone calendar "Nokia N95 8GB" for appointments too, I use "Mail for Exchange" to sync it to my outlook calendar via exchange 2003. As its low priority i only sync at 22:00hrs every night. As i'm obviously out of the office at this time, so if for example CommitCRM was doing its 4 hr regular sync AT THE SAME TIME, then this will cause a corruption. 2: Our SBS, despite having brand new super server spec h/w, does occasionally blue screen, perform a dump - which leads to a software problem, which is on the list to fix, and this obviously causes the outlook on my 24/7 active PC to loose connection to exchange, now depending on your work offline settings, this may or may not make a difference, but obviously if CommitCRM is syncing during that time, as per its LIMITED sync options, then this will also cause data loss and cause a corruption. 3: Although this is entirely unlikely in our case, it could be a networking problem. If the problem is only happening to one user, then it could be a NIC problem on that PC. If the error is happening to several users regularly, then it could be a switch problem or NIC problem on the server. If this is the case, you should buy a good managed switch with packet monitoring and ideally disable load balancing/teamed NICs to identify the problem. 4: resource heavy Backups/VSS copies running on the server could also prevent smooth efficient communications to the server at certain times, this again will lead to corruptions when syncs are performing. 5: Could be a problem with my Outlook 2003, it does get stuck with the reminder window now and again, tends to get stuck in the background, even though i have used SP3, still seams a little unstable, but only once a month if I’m lucky, but again, if CommitCRM is syncing at this time, could well cause a corruption. When i get round to it, i will apply Outlook 2010 anyway, so investigating the fix, is not really practical. If you have any other ideas, then please do post below! Nobody knows everything in IT, thats what a forum is for! Recommendations to CommitCRM CRM dev teams for later versions: 1: Introduce advanced appointment logging, to help resolve these corruptions faster, ie produce a report with most recently added appointments, so the user can easily identify the potential appointment being the cause. or better still, add a diag interface to actually display what is specifically happening during a sync, so as soon as it hits a specific appointment, if it fails, then you know which one! Obviously if the user is manually entering appointments into outlook, and they go corrupt, then its not commit's problem. 2: add a new feature to the sync times, add a fully manageable schedule instead of just every 1,2 or 4, because that’s just not practical for most users who also sync other devices. that way, the users can ensure CommitCRM only syncs at a specific time when they know its ok and nothing else will be syncing their outlook calendar, or any backups running etc. I believe this will probably resolve a lot of these problems that some users might experience regularly with outlook sync errors, and also enables their schedules to run at a convenient time. i must admit, when I’m using CommitCRM which is mostly all the time, during the day, i am constantly skipping syncs, as it locks commit, its just not practical when your trying to run a business. 3: and one very much important thing: ensure the schedule can be saved for the next time use. no one has time these days to reconfigure settings! which reminds me briefly, although you can save windows for startup which is great, it would be good if it could capture the charge lookup date. in our office, we always want previous billing for the previous 2-3 months and all future on view, and to save that setting would be great. Anyway, i hope CommitCRM tech support and other users find this useful, have a great day! Tim H |
