Frequently Asked Questions-Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007

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How to get and install Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007?

 Business Contact Manager is part of following retail Office SKU as "Office CD2"

  • Microsoft Office 2007 Professional
  • Microsoft Office 2007 Small Business
  • Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate

It's available for trial download in Professional and Small Business SKU as "Download2". You can download and install it from Microsoft Office Online Web site.

Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007 can be installed only after supported version of Office SKU is installed. Since Business Contact Manager is extension to Outlook, Outlook 2007 needs to be present on the machine. For more information, please click here.

How do I upgrade 2003 version to 2007 version?

Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2003 is not supported with Outlook 2007 version. If you have been using BCM for Outlook 2003 and upgrade Office to 2007 version, BCM will be disabled. However, your BCM data are not impacted. Once you upgrade BCM to 2007 version, you will be able to migrate your data to new version.

If you have copy of 2007 version of BCM, you can upgrade older version. Here are some helpful tips.

  1. Setup program for new BCM first uninstalls 2003 version, cleans outlook profile and then installs 2007 version. Before you install, please ensure that Outlook is not running. Sometime Outlook.exe might be running in background. If Outlook is running while older version of BCM is uninstalled it might leave some traces like registry keys, resulting in setup failure for newer version.
  2. If you see any failure during setup (except SQL setup failure), possibly older version left some traces. Please verify in Add/Remove that Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2003 is uninstalled. If you see the entry, please remove it through Add/Remove program and retry 2007 setup. 
  3.  If it don't see entry for Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2003 in add/remove program, please check if registry key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Business Solutions eCRM] exists. If yes, export this registry key with all sub-keys to backup and delete this key with all sub-key. Retry 2007 Setup.
  4. If your BCM 2007 setup was successful and you don't see BCM first use wizard when starting Outlook, most likely the profile didn't get cleaned properly. You will need to remove Business Contact Manager store from the profile and configure BCM. To do that follow these steps:
    • Right click Outlook entry on Windows start menu and select "Properties". This will bring Outlook profile configuration dialog.
    • Click "Show Profiles". Select your Outlook profile and click "Properties"
    • Click "Data Files". In the next dialog, select the entry that says "Business Contact Manager" and click "Remove". Not that this is only removing BCM entry from Outlook profiles. Your data remains intact. Dismiss all the dialogs.
    • Restart Outlook. You are probably not going to see BCM wizard. Click Help->Configure Business Contact Manager to launch the configuration wizard.
    • Follow through the wizard to complete the configuration. This will provide option to select old database and migrate to newer version.

 What are the key new features of Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007?

Customization - Tailor Business Contact Manager for Outlook to fit your business needs by customizing forms, lists, and reports.

Marketing Campaigns - Manage and measure the effectiveness of the marketing content that you create. Promote your brand, quickly see which Marketing Campaigns help you generate more business, and improve customer satisfaction. If you have created Marketing Campaigns before, Business Contact Manager for Outlook helps you distribute the Marketing Campaigns more effectively. If you're new to marketing your business, Business Contact Manager for Outlook guides you through the process.

Business Projects and Project Tasks - Manage your time and business better by using the Business Project feature. Business Projects give you a single place to store all related project information, tasks, and assignments so that you can quickly see who's doing what project task, and its due date. Easily share project information across your company. For example, you can assign project tasks to colleagues, which they can see in their To-Do Bar. 

Offline - Take your data with you on your portable computer so that you can see how your business is doing at any time. View reports, follow up with customers, create new Business Projects, or just update Account and Business Contact information. When you return to your office, it is easy to synchronize the information.

Business Contact Manager for Outlook E-Mail Marketing Service - By combining the power of the E-mail Marketing Service* with Business Contact Manager for Outlook, you can send specifically targeted e-mailings to your customers, and keep track of the responses to your e-mailings. The E-mail Marketing Service is free to try and provides a cost-effective and powerful way to reach your customers in a personal way. To use the E-mail Marketing Service, create a Marketing Campaign, and then select the Campaign Type as E-mail and the Delivery Method as E-mail Marketing Service.

Home Page - Get a complete view of critical information through the centralized home page. This customizable home page helps you summarize your important business metrics and prioritize business tasks.

Leads or prospects - Differentiate leads or prospects from existing Business Contacts, and create customized reports.

Search Folders - Use Search Folders to gather Accounts, Business Contacts, Opportunities, Business Projects, or communication history items into a folder based on your criteria, such as all Business Contacts with an Excellent rating.

Improved Features!  

Reports - Use one of the more than 50 reports to see the state of Accounts, Business Contacts, leads, Opportunities, activities, Business Projects, and Marketing Campaigns. Use the new report filtering capabilities to easily sort and filter data, and then export it to Microsoft Office Excel 2007 for further analysis.

Integration with accounting applications - When you combine Business Contact Manager for Outlook with supported accounting applications, your Business Contact information and financial history are seamlessly integrated. Sales opportunities can be easily converted into quotes, sales orders, and invoices in your accounting application. Go to the Microsoft Office Accounting Web site to see a list of supported accounting applications.

Sharing of customer data and communication history across your business - Sharing Accounts, Business Contacts, leads or prospects, and Opportunities gives you and your colleagues a rich view of all communications that your company has had with each customer. This feature gives everyone the shared customer history data that they need to respond faster and serve customers better.

Opportunities - Quickly organize, manage, and track all of your Opportunities, including details such as sales stage, potential value, and estimated close date, so you can assess potential sales and make better-informed business decisions.

Communication History - Enjoy immediate access to the history of your customer interactions. Items stored in the Communication History folder include business notes, phone logs, Opportunities, Business Projects, tasks, e-mail messages, appointments, and files. It's easy to share this communication history with your colleagues.

Import and Export - Easily import and export data from or to various applications and formats, including ACT!, QuickBooks, Access, Excel and many others. The enhanced mapping capabilities make it simple to transfer information from other applications that may have different fields than Business Contact Manager for Outlook.

Can I sync Business Contacts data to mobile device?

You can sync your Business Contacts Manager data on Pocket PC device running Windows Mobile 5.0.  You must first install Business Contacts for Pocket PC. To download and install Business Contacts for Pocket PC, Click Here, which also includes information and tips about synchronizing your Business Contacts with your mobile device.

Mobile version of Business Contact Manager is not available for any other platform such as Smartphone running WM5.0, Blackberry or Palm.

Can I share Business Contact Manager data with other users in my company? Can I host database on SQL Server 2005/Small Business Server?

Yes, Business Contact Manager data can be shared by multiple clients connected on LAN in a workgroup or domain mode. The simplest way is to setup Office and Business Contact Manager on one machine, configure Business Contact Manager and enable database sharing through Business Contact Manager->Database Tools->Share Database menu. A wizard will walk through the process. Only database creator or machine administrator can enable shared mode of the database. At the end of sharing wizard, an HTML page is generated with instructions other users can follow to connect to shared database.  With 2007 version, you can also take database offline.

Number of users that can simultaneously connect to shared-database will depend on server configuration, size of database and LAN speed. This product is designed for small businesses so you might not get desired functionality/performance  if you need to support large number of users (usually > 25). There is no notion of roles. All users have access to all data. There are certain operations that are limited to database owner such as backup, restore, adding custom field, and hard-deleting records.

Yes, database can be hosted on SQL Server 2005 running on Small Business Server or Windows Server. For more information, refer to whitepaper. Click here.

How to resolve "Database Creation Unsuccesful" issue when configuring Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007 first-time?

In rare situation, database creation might fail during BCM first-use wizard. This could primarily be caused by permission issue on the folder where BCM database is stored. If you hit database creation failed issue, close Outlook, follow these steps and try BCM configuration again.

On Windows XP

  1. Show hidden folders by doing the following:
    • Open Windows Explorer and select "Tools | Folder Options..." from the menu
    • Click the "View" tab and make sure that "Show hidden files and folders" is selected
    • Click "OK"
  2. Click on the "My Computer" link in the left-hand navigation pane of  Windows Explorer
  3. Navigate to the following folder, where <user> is your XP user name: C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft
  4. Right-click on the "Business Contact Manager" folder and select "Properties"
    • Select the "Security" tab
    • If "NETWORK SERVICE" is not listed in the "Group or user names:" list, click "Add..."
    • Type "Network Service" and click "Check Names" to ensure the name resolves correctly.  If it resolves correctly, you'll see the text change to all uppercase and underlined.
    • Click "OK"
    • Select "NETWORK SERVICE" from the list of users and check the following permissions: Read, Write

On Vista, similar to above except the folder path is C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Microsoft