BCM Update
Don't let our absence from this blog fool you, Microsoft has been busy working to evolve the features in Business Contact Manager (BCM) you've been using to track key business contacts and orchestrate campaigns. In fact Microsoft will be providing support for BCM for Outlook 2013. There will be a migration path, provided by Microsoft, for customers of prior versions of BCM using a compatibility pack. We invite you to check back in the new year when we will have more details to share.
Kim Boeh, Director Program Management
Comments
Anonymous
October 08, 2012
Excellent news, Congratulations on your wisdom Microsoft !!!Anonymous
October 08, 2012
We spoke and you listened. This is great news as I have a new customer with BCM and customers with BCM 2007 that are in need of upgrading. I have been following this blog and been troubled with the silence, now I am in waiting state for some potential good news. Keep us MSFT partners with BCM customers posted.Anonymous
October 08, 2012
Is there a chance to give you advice of what features we users really need? I'd have a nice list... ;-)Anonymous
October 08, 2012
Anyway... I give you my "improvement list":
- Sync of contacts: It would be nice to sync also companies, not only business contacts with my personal contacts-folder
- sync of contacts: Filtering the contacts which get synced, e.g. "filter all contacts but the inactive ones"
- E-Mail-Linking: We use Microsoft Exchange Server with public folders - the mail linking only works for personal folders; too bad :-(
- Tabbed views: BCM doesn't save some view preferences when using the new tabbed views, e.g. auto preview
- The masks you can edit as admin are a little bit unflexible, e.g. standard fields cannot be renamed That's it for now. If I find more potentials for improvement I let you know. Andreas
Anonymous
October 09, 2012
It will be good to hear from Microsoft on BCM. With so many of Microsofts software being available in the cloud, it would be great to be able to connect the BCM add-in to Outlook with Office 365 for Small Businesses!Anonymous
October 09, 2012
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 10, 2012
And, it would be really useful to be able to sync actively (live) with our Quickbooks database so financial data doesn't have to be manually entered.Anonymous
October 14, 2012
I'm just moving my network from SBS 2003 to Essentials 2012. In the process I have installed SQL Server 2012 Express but Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2010 Database Tool can't seem to list any database instances. Is this a known incompatibility or am I missing something?Anonymous
October 15, 2012
This is great news! I was thinking it was going the way of Office Accounting 2009, but happy to hear that it will be available with Outlook 2013.Anonymous
October 17, 2012
BCM for Outlook 2013 and Office 365???Anonymous
October 17, 2012
Solved my problem from Sunday by using the fully qualified computer name. Strange, as the short computer name was fine for the SBS2003 server? Still, problem solved, so I'm happily using BCM once more, with Office 2010 for now but looking forward to trying the new 2013 offering.Anonymous
October 17, 2012
I have recently upgraded my system to Windows 8 and when reinstalling Office found that BCM 2010 doesn't work - can you post some interim steps regarding that or if it isn't going to work so I don't try to troubleshoot it? Thanks! -steveAnonymous
October 18, 2012
Microsoft's BCM is a wondefull program. There are still two problems. We have a database of 2500 contactpersons. To connect an e-mail to a contactrecord takes 20 seconds at least AND, it is not possible to select more e-mails at te same time and connect them tot contactrecord. You have to do this one by one. we have a lot of e-mail that cannot be connected automaticly because they com from thirth parties (so they do not include the e-mailadress of our contactperson) but concern our contactperson. So this kind of e-mail is to be connencted to a certain record which takes a lot of time. I understood that this problem is already solved in Dynamics. Now i'm waiting for a solution in BCM.Anonymous
October 19, 2012
Good to hear the good new on Outlook 2013.Anonymous
October 19, 2012
Sure hope to hear more blogs on this subject.Anonymous
October 22, 2012
I'd like to find out if BCM still requires a duplicate set of contacts. This added complexity is not very useful in an environment with multiple platforms. Because of this and a few other reasons, I moved away from BCM but would like to take a look at the new version.Anonymous
October 23, 2012
Great news! Now if you only had a web app and it worked on Windows Phone, that would be reason enough to ditch my Android phone!Anonymous
October 28, 2012
downloaded bcm to outlook 2010 but it does not show up using win 7 O/S & outlook 2010 - tried 4 times saying each time it was done successful. Can't wait around either I am missing somehing or it just don't work. Must move on to find another program for sales managementAnonymous
October 29, 2012
Excellentes nouvelles. Quelques améliorations seraient formidables
- Synchronisation des contacts: Ce serait bien de synchroniser aussi les comptes, et non pas seulement les contacts
- Vues à onglets: BCM ne pas memorise pas certaines préférences d'affichage lors de l'utilisation des nouvelles vues à onglets.
- Permettre l'ajout de champs ( field ) dans les taches. Merci.
Anonymous
October 30, 2012
What about the Small Business community that has purchased O365 Enterprise Edition? Will BCMbe integrating with us? Will there be a plan to allow O365 users the ability to come back to Microsoft for our Busness Contact Management needs? Love the product and wish I could use it in the cloud!Anonymous
November 08, 2012
Set up Office Pro 2013 can't launch contact manager now.Anonymous
November 10, 2012
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November 13, 2012
It would be great if Microsoft provide a BCM 2013 as well. This software is very well suited for really small companies like mine. Hope MS get this app to the market soon.Anonymous
November 13, 2012
Dear all I'm trying to configure the following scenario:
- synchronize BCM with a shared Outlook folder (not locally;) which can be accessed by other users
- users should be able to update the contact information locally in BCM (for example when working offline) and push the updated info in the share folder using BCM thus making the info available for other users
- basically I need to a bidirectional synchronization to push and pull contact information from an Outlook shared folder The problem is that each time when I try to synchronize BCM with the shared folder I get an error: BCM could not complete the last action; please repeat the action. Has anyone else managed to configure something like this and get it working? Is this scenario possible? Any response/advice is highly appreciated. Cheers
Anonymous
November 27, 2012
Quiet for 2 years, and then only a "we're thinking about it". What nonsense. If you had to make it as a stand-alone package in the market this product would be DOA. Get your act together and 1. give us a real road map of features and timetable, and 2. get some of the glaring holes plugged, like yesterday.Anonymous
November 29, 2012
Marian, Would like to confirm that BCM to Outlook to Outlook OWA (Online) to iPhones sync works well. Our Sales staff can access thousand of contacts and associated customer contact notes in the field on their iPhones , or with Outlook OWA on a laptop We are using MS Exchange as our email server , and are extremely happy with BCM , Haven't had your problem sorry - Maybe the Microsoft BCM 2013 version will fix?Anonymous
November 29, 2012
@Michael Soloman Michael thank you for the answer. The mobile device is not an issue like you mentioned. The issue is when trying to perform a sync BCM -> Outlook (update/change/modify info in Outlook via BCM). To retrieve the info (sync Outlook -> BCM ) is working fine so far. Any ideas?Anonymous
December 02, 2012
Excellent News on Office 2013 support for BCM. This SW is critical to the success of my small company. Thanks!!Anonymous
December 04, 2012
Thanks for continuing to support BCM. Please provide periodic updates here - or allow sign-ups to receive more information. I look forward to being able to establish a timeline and am sure that people here would be willing to assist in related testing.Anonymous
December 04, 2012
Really hoping it's going to be available to subscription users under Office365 as MSCRM is too much and BCM is just what we need...Anonymous
December 05, 2012
Good to hear about BCM 2013. We use BCM 2010 with a shared SQL Server 2008 R2 DB. A great tool for us.Anonymous
December 11, 2012
Are we to expect a new version or just add-on software that will make the old BCM work with the new Outlook?Anonymous
December 13, 2012
I have been on phone with MS tech support for hours...to no avail. Through my previous employer, I purchased a copy of MS Office Professional Plus 2010 which does NOT have BCM 2010. When entering the Product Key to download BCM, I would not allow the download. Is NOT BCM 2010 available for MS Office Professional Plus users???Anonymous
December 18, 2012
As far as I know BCM 2010 is still available.Anonymous
December 26, 2012
Does anyone know if adding fields in form layout should show all existing fields available to be added? is there issue with my install or is this by design. i have BCM loaded on domain server but have no access to existing fields to add to my custom form. Appreciate any feedback. thanks in advance.Anonymous
January 01, 2013
BCM for Outlook 2013 Okay, it's the New Year January 2nd, 2013, is BCM for Outlook 2013 ready?Anonymous
January 09, 2013
Does anybody know is this will be supported by the Microsoft Hosted Exchange Server service as part of the package ? If so will the pricing be different ?Anonymous
January 11, 2013
For those tiny businesses that have moved away from BCM, what's the program you are now using? Pros and cons?Anonymous
January 14, 2013
Small businesses should avoid the Cloud based CRM as to costly in the long run no matter what any Salesperson tries to tell you. Many have used Act! over the years and like it very much.Anonymous
January 18, 2013
Answer -> CTarch " ... no access to existing fields to add to my custom form." Use -> Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Management Studio ( On your server ) Choose -> <YOURSERVER>MSSMLBIZ Choose -> SmallBusinessMS Chosse -> Securiy Choose -> User -> Your Name -> double click And choose -> bd_owner ( for your profil ) FinishAnonymous
January 20, 2013
@eosmag - I have to think that you're in the wrong thread.Anonymous
January 20, 2013
Great news! Please fix the BCM 2010 bugs of not working with multiple mailboxes per account. and incompatibility with Office 365. It uses Archive Mailbox that clashes with BCM 2010 Manage linking feature as a hard stop error.Anonymous
January 20, 2013
Any day now??? blogs.msdn.com/.../announcing-business-contact-manager-for-outlook-compatibility-update.aspxAnonymous
February 05, 2013
@eosmag - thanks for the info. However all that is currently set but still nothing is working. Not sure what other option there is. Thanks for your helo.Anonymous
February 08, 2013
Not sure if this was best place to ask but I work for a non-profit organization and we want to use BCM simply for contact/e-mail management. Can it be done? Would you set up an Account for each groups of e-mails?Anonymous
May 01, 2013
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 02, 2013
Okay, got it. I opened SQL Installation Center and manually created a instance named MSSMLBIZ with the server account "NT AUTHORITYNETWORK SERVICE" and added for sys admin accounts myself (currently logged it) and "Administrators". It installed, I tried re-installing BCM - A N D I T W O R K E D ! ! ! Now I just need to read up on how to use / customize it. I'll be using it to organize client contact, workflow management, etc. for my solo law firm. Anyone have any good links on customization for law firms?Anonymous
May 13, 2013
I am having the exact same problem with BCM 2013. Can you tell me how you manually created a instance named MSSMLBIZ with the server account "NT AUTHORITYNETWORK SERVICE" and added for sys admin accounts (currently logged it) and "Administrators"? I've installed BCM 2013 at least a dozen times with nothing installed except SQL 2008 Server installed. I would appreciate this very much. Thank You. DavidAnonymous
May 19, 2013
will BCM work with both outlook 2010 and 2013 simultaneously? if so how?Anonymous
July 07, 2013
Yes BCM will work with Outlook 2010 and 2013. Just make sure that you download the correct one for your version of Outlook. As far as Outlook 2010 & 2013, I'm not to sure about that. Are they on two different computers? I can't see how you can run Outlook 2010 and 2013 at the same time. IMHO, that would really be a mess. If I were you, I would go with Outlook 2013.Anonymous
October 02, 2013
First, I have migrated the 2010 database to 2013 and have run the compatibility pack for Outlook 2013. Now when I pull up a contact the Phone number top field says Home... and not Business... that is checked. When I try to change it, back to Business it still says Home... Help please this teh only thing that has gone wrong in this migration. Anyone else experienced this!Anonymous
October 17, 2013
I confirm the behavior reported by Ronald Covington! Is a big issue for my customer! Although the business card to the right displays the right fields and values (Work phone + work phone number), the form itself shows Home, then the business phone number. I cannot change it to Display the string "Work", followed by the right phone number. This is very confusing the users on a shared database with approx 2000 contacts! Please urgently help JeroenAnonymous
January 11, 2015
Hi All, Iam using the below link to download BCM for my office pro 2013 and was not successful. every time i download this 369MB file and it gives error. Pls help. www.microsoft.com/.../confirmation.aspxAnonymous
March 07, 2015
I am having the exact same problem with BCM 2013. Can you tell me how you manually created a instance named MSSMLBIZ with the server account "NT AUTHORITYNETWORK SERVICE" and added for sys admin accounts (currently logged it) and "Administrators"? I've installed BCM 2013 at least a dozen times with nothing installed except SQL 2008 Server installed. I did not see what the steps are to resolve this?