Notes on the Installation of the Email Router

There are several very good blog posts out there giving a general overview of the Email Router. Having just installed it myself on our Exchange server, I can say that the instructions seem straight forward but still it took myself and a sysadmin over 4 hours to get it to work. It’s a bit like the naughty girl in fairytales…”when she was good she was very very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid…”

Still, it IS working and now it’s time to add a few thoughts of my own to the blogsphere regarding this blackmagic.

First of all, when you first install the email router component you are presented with two options which are :

a)       Update installation files (strongly recommended)

b)       Do not update installation files

We discovered that if you checked the ‘highly recommended’ option, the install would invariably fail. We never did get to the bottom of it but I suggest that you use option B instead. It seems to work.

Secondly, the ubiquitous ‘No Visual C++ Runtime Environment installed’ warning comes up again and again. Microsoft, please fix this! It’s not a big thing but when you are in a hurry and you know you have just downloaded and installed this component not five minutes before, it’s extremely irritating.

Just a warning note to the unwary though. Before installing the Email Router, you should ensure that MAPI (exchangemapicdo.exe) is installed or the Router installation will fall flat on it’s face – again….

It should also be noted that neither myself nor my Sysadmin were at all sure that this email router would work cross-domain. For instance, MyCompanyLtd host a CRM system for TheClientLtd, but TheClientLtd would like to use their own Exchange server for emails. Happily, the answer is that it will. In the Microsoft CRM Dynamics Deployment screen, you should set the following criteria….

a)       Deployment = My Company (option 1)

b)       Dynamics CRM Server = http://<CRMserverName>/<BusinessName>

c)       Access Credentials = Other

d)       User Name = <domain>\<Superusername eg Administrator>

e)       Password = password for Administrator account

f)         Profiles = In / Out

For option point ‘B’, you should be careful to enter the BusinessName exactly as it appears in your CRM installation. Apparently, it is case sensitive. If you are unsure, you can (carefully) check the SQL installation and run the following query :

   1: SELECT Name FROM dbo.OrganizationBase

Now, all you need to do is set the appropriate forwarding boxes and rules in the Outlook Client and hey presto, you’ve got mail.