I wonder if the community out there can help with this.
We are using Microsoft Dynamics 365 v8.2.2.112, on-premises (not cloud).
The problem is this: millions – yes, literally millions – of Contacts are being created for no apparent reason.
Our users access CRM via an intranet page, but also using the CRM Outlook Plugin.
Since upgrading to v8.2 in January, something in CRM is creating millions of CRM Contacts.
The same Contact is being repeatedly re-created hundreds and thousands of times for the same user. And this happens for multiple Contacts and for multiple users. The end result is that millions of Contacts are being generated. The contact gets created every 5 minutes (approx).
You can easily see the Contacts being created. If you run an “Advanced Search” on Contact order by “created_on” descending order, you can see the same new Contact being generated every five minutes or so, and whose details exactly match the one created 5 minutes ago.
We’ve got about 20 users who seem to be particularly prolific Contact creators. Possibly because of the nature of their role, they add lots (ie dozens) of Contacts to Outlook (but they definitely don’t add hundreds of thousands of the same person!)
I'm absolutely baffled as to why this should happen.
The prevailing view at my company is that CRM Outlook synchronisation is to blame. We use the Outlook plugin widely. We use version 8.2.3.8 of the Outlook CRM plugin. When users sync their Outlook Contacts, maybe it doesn't recognise that the Contact is already in CRM, so regenerates it? We think it's a bug of that nature.
We can’t turn off Outlook synchronisation, because users require it in order to do their jobs. They need to be able to sync Activities, Emails, Contacts and so on.
We've checked all our custom code (C# plugins) to ensure that no Contacts are being create anywhere. We've especially checked the "on create" of Contacts to ensure it’s not creating an additional Contact. No code generates Contacts.
I understand that I am able to turn off users' Outlook Synchronisation filters. But I don’t want to do so as they do need to be able to sync with Outlook. It’s one of the reasons we use Dynamics CRM.
Does anybody know what’s causing this? Has anybody come across this before? What’s the solution to stop this happening? I'm after a root-cause if possible!
Just wanted to keep this post up to date, for the benefit of any other poor souls who encounter this ghastly problem.
We were in touch with Microsoft who have been very helpful (although weren’t able to provide a “silver bullet” solution). The case is ongoing.
The first suggestion was that the problem was down to a customisation, integration or homemade plugin that had got itself into an endless loop, creating CRM Contacts ad infinitum. After searching absolutely every line of code and custom logic, I was able to confirm that the problem is not down to any of our customisations.
What we then did was to examine the Contacts being created on mass. We identified one Contact that was being generated over and over again. We checked its owner, let’s call this owner “John Smith”, and found that John Smith was the one creating this contact over and over. So we checked John Smith’s “Appointments, Contacts, and Tasks” syncing. We did this by “Settings -> Email Configuration -> Mailboxes”, then searched for John Smith’s mailbox. From John Smith’s mailbox, under the “Synchronization Method”, we set “Appointments, Contacts, and Tasks” from “Server-Side Synchronization” to “None”.
After doing this, the mass Contact generation immediately stopped. I’m not suggestion this is the solution to the problem (because we need to use syncing), but I am suggesting that this proves that the problem is down to a CRM bug in synchronisation (and not caused one of our customisations).
So if you’re getting this issue, and you want to rule out your customisations, I would follow these steps (above) to prove that it’s not your code that is responsible. If you turn off syncing for a user, and it stops generating millions of the same contacts owned by that user, I’d say you’ve got the same bug as me.
I think this bug is described in 2 possible places:
“Duplicate contacts are created if the rebuild of ID mapping fails after a test and enable.”: https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/4046463/service-update-9-for-microsoft-dynamics-365-8-2-1
OR
“Contact synchronization that uses server-side synchronization causes infinite updates.”: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3203310/update-0-1-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2016-service-pack-1
The suggestion is that we’re getting this problem because we’ve not installed cumulative updates before installing a major version. I can’t agree that we were meant to. We installed the latest version as directed on-line. Obviously we can’t now install the updates which allegedly fix this bug, because we’re on a later version. We went from CRM 8.1.1.1005 to 8.2.2.0112 by skipping 2 cumulative versions (i.e. 8.2.0.0749 and 8.2.1.0176). It is alleged that these skipped versions had a bug fix for this issue in it (see link above), and by not installing them, this issue happened. I can’t really agree that it says anywhere to do this (install cumulative updates before installing a major version). Anyway, that’s the suggested cause of the issue.
Anyway, we’re still busy with the Microsoft guys. I’ll get back to you when there’s a definite course of action we can take. So it’s still work in progress.
We’re planning on deleting the millions of instances of that Contact from the user’s Outlook, then deleting the millions of that Contact from CRM (which has taken a week in a bulk delete), then we’re going to turn on “platform traces” (requiring a registry change), then we’re going to reactivate syncing, and gather the logs, and send them to Microsoft.
I’ll be back when there’s a definite solution.
Updated with a definite solution:
For the sake of completeness and in order to help anybody else who experiences this...
This nightmare was resolved by installing CRM patch v8.2.13.21. [NB We had been on v8.2.2.112] As soon as the patch was installed, the system ceased generated all these Contacts. They stopped being generated to the second!
We're still cleaning up the mess of the unwanted 20 million Contacts which shouldn't be there. But at least the issue is fixed.
I think the lesson is to keep your CRM system up to date in terms of patching!
I faced similar issue in OnLine when we enabled outlook synchronization for Dynamics.
Even we had contacts been created randomly. If you look in advanced find for contacts Created randomly it should be created by System user.
There is user setting in CRM as below and I think in your case Automatically create records in Microsoft Dynamics 365 is set to YES
You will have to change this to No.
For other users you can use XRMToolBox plugin called User Setting Utility and there in you can see every user's personal setting as below
with the same XRM Tool Plugin you can bulk edit user personal setting as well
Im having this issue today, we developed some apps years ago, with an adobe id from one of our developers. The person who own the account doesnt work with us anymore, so we are trying to migrate the account, just for the certificates we have there (apple and google) , cause i dont think we have the source files of those certificates.
Anyone had this issue in the past? Any idea how can we resolve this?
Thanks!!
This is a tricky one - I'd recommend creating a "company" Adobe account going forward so that you don't run into this again.
Beyond contacting that user for access, perhaps log a support request with Adobe.
Even with that option though, there's no way to download the keys/certs from PG Build, so your best bet is to obtain them from the source - your Apple Developer and Google Play Developer accounts.
I've been and Indie developer for 10 months now, but today I can't login to Appcelerator Studio anymore.
When I look at the Appcelerator Dashboard, it says I'm inactive and my plan is set to Free Trial and it says it's expired. However in my payment history it says I've paid for all months (including the current month february)
The 'support' doesn't help much, they just say they've passed the issue to the billing people...
Anyone else have this problem?
Thanks,
Joost Anbeek (joost#distridata.nl)
After seeing you post here I checked my plan and saw it's being set to free trial as well. I just wrote support via that chat option on https://developer.appcelerator.com/ you get if you're logged in.
They just fixed it, without any hesitation. Just be patient.
Greeting Dom
cross-post from Xamarin Forums
When I bought an annual license last year, my understanding was as per what Xamarin states in their FAQ page (http://xamarin.com/faq):
Your Xamarin license acquired with an annual subscription is perpetual. If you choose not to renew your annual subscription, you will no longer have access to new releases or support, and we will be very sad.
My subscription expired a couple of months ago. When I now try to launch Xamarin Studio and try to launch their EmployeeDirectory sample app, I get the error msg that I have to renew in order to continue using the software.
It's understandable that I should not expect future software updates or support, but to not be able to use the software that I've already paid for seems just plain wrong...
Is there anything I can do about this ?
At this point in time, just install the free version of Xamarin. https://www.xamarin.com/platform
I don't know if this question is proper for stackoverflow or for other Stack site, so please migrate it to the correct place:)
I got VS 2013 Express Preview and after 15 days it expired. I have this message:
Where may I sign in to extend the license? I'm already signed in with my MS account(you can see the Sign out text in the lest). I tried to search on google, but most result are not related to VS 2013(other versions get in the way!). I read some blog posts about this but nothing got me to the right place.
Maybe you've already seen this but posting anyway:
Apparently there has been a bug related to the time zone that affected the license renewal. It could be that bug that makes it impossible to renew for you. A workaround is apparently to change the time zone to Pacific Standard Time before launching VS then changing it back again. This can be done in a command shell with:tzutil /s "Pacific Standard Time".
Hope this helps.