The Holy Grail: Automating the Migration from CRM 1.2 to 3.0

A customer asks, "Hi all, I am looking for a best practice in how to migrate in the most efficient way 100 offline outlook laptop clients from 1.2 to 3.0. It is unthinkable to ask all 100 users to come into the office at the same time to migrate the clients. Any ideas?"

My friend Tirumal sez, "Publishing through Group policy would be a good option in this scenario."

► Publishing Microsoft CRM Client for Outlook Source Image

1. On a computer that has access to your domain controller, on the Start menu, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and click Active Directory Users and Computers.

2. Right-click on the domain or Organizational Unit that contains your Microsoft CRM Implementation, and click Properties.

Note This process of publishing the installation images allows users to install from the published shared location. If you create the group policy at the domain level, then all users in that domain will have access to the installation images. If you create the group policy at the Organizational Unit level, then only those users in that Organizational Unit will have access to the installation images.

3. Click the Group Policy tab, and then click New to create a new group policy.

4. Select the New Group Policy Object and click Edit. The Group Policy Object Editor appears.

5. Expand User Configuration, expand Software Settings, expand Software Installation, and then right-click New.

6. Navigate to where your shared installation images are located (the installation images were created in the previous procedure), and click Open.

7. Select Publish, and then click OK.

8. Close the Group Policy Object Editor and Active Directory Users and Computers.

► Other resources

Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding the Group Policy Feature Set

How to assign software to a specific group by using a Group Policy

Group Policy Software Deployment Background

Assigning and Publishing Software

HTH, Tirumal