Slow Performing Outlook 2007 and BCM

[Mike]

Hi all,

I just recently upgraded a number of PCs from OL2003 (connecting to
Exchange - not cached mode) to Outlook 2007 w/ Business Contact Manager
(oviously cached mode as this is required).

The BCM database is on a shared PC using the BCM database tool.

I had experimented with one PC taking it off the cached mode and it had made
things speedy again, but I can't keep it like that due to the need for BCM.
Any clue what is going on here? Is it cached mode or BCM causing the issue?

The speed issues range from starting an email reply and having to wait for
what you type to catch up, to slow response if you click on another folder
in your mailbox. It's just hurting the Outlook 2007 experience because
performance is horrible. Please help!


Thanks,
Mike

 

[sdurman]

We are experiencing the same thing. We are using a shared database on the
server, set up with the BCM database tool.
It always happens when you are typing in an email, it will freeze for
anywhere from 30 secs to a few minutes.
This may or not be related: none of our computers have been able to install
the service pack 2 for MS SQL Server 2005 Express edition. Fails every time,
the error codes are different every time, and none of them link to a helpful
answer on the MS website.
All other updates are current, including SP3 for xp, we are not on vista.
I hope someone from MS is reading this, we will be forced to dump BCM if
this cannot be fixed very shortly, Outlook is nearly unusable now.

 

[Luther]

We are experiencing the same thing. We are using a shared database on the
server, set up with the BCM database tool.
It always happens when you are typing in an email, it will freeze for
anywhere from 30 secs to a few minutes.
This may or not be related: none of our computers have been able to install
the service pack 2 for MS SQL Server 2005 Express edition. Fails every time,
the error codes are different every time, and none of them link to a helpful
answer on the MS website.
All other updates are current, including SP3 for xp, we are not on vista.
I hope someone from MS is reading this, we will be forced to dump BCM if
this cannot be fixed very shortly, Outlook is nearly unusable now.










- Show quoted text -

I have a machine with Outlook/Exchange, but no BCM, that experiences
similar slow downs with the connection to Exchange cache mode. I
notice similar slowdowns when I open or start editing Tasks and
Calendar. Does having BCM in the profile make the slowness when
editing emails even slower?

 

[dmailer]

Same problem. It is definitely a problem between the cached copy of BCM and
the server copy. Our Outlook / Exchange combination works well with cached
mode and will even work over GPRS connections. BCM is a different matter. O
work at home over an ADSL connection a lot of the time. If I have BCM
off-line then performance of Outlook is fine - but I cannot manage some
critical activities such as email auto-linking. If I am on-line then BCM
exchanges approximately 100Mbytes of data with the server every hour!
Needles to say everything grinds to a halt and I experience the freezes
referred to above.

THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED

 

[Luther]

Same problem.  It is definitely a problem between the cached copy of BCM and
the server copy.  Our Outlook / Exchange combination works well with cached
mode and will even work over GPRS connections.  BCM is a different matter.  O
work at home over an ADSL connection a lot of the time.  If I have BCM
off-line then performance of Outlook is fine - but I cannot manage some
critical activities such as email auto-linking.  If I am on-line then BCM
exchanges approximately 100Mbytes of data with the server every hour!  
Needles to say everything grinds to a halt and I experience the freezes
referred to above.  

THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED






- Show quoted text -

BCM is designed to be responsive to changes on shared databases, so
that if one user changes an item, the other machines refresh
themselves--fetch data from the database. That works well on a LAN
with a server that responds immediately. If you have high network
latency, then you could consider using an offline database and
manually syncing with the shared databases when required.

 

[dmailer]

Working off-line is all very well but there are a couple of serious
deficiencies in BCM that make this prblematic.

1. When creating a new user it is not possible to set email auto-link whilst
off-line. I need BCM to set email-autolink for all users at all times so
that we do not lose any history.

2. We often get emails sent to two or more users at once. If working
off-line we do not knowe whether the other user has created a contact. So we
end up with multiple contacts. BCM does not seem to offer any tools to find
and consolidate multiple instances of ther same contact.

 

[sschmautz]

Luther, I disagree. BCM is not responsive on our gigabit LAN. The symptoms
described by the other users in this thread match ours precisely. Even when
working locally, connected at gigabit speeds, our BCM is TERRIBLY slow! The
entire BCM database slows outlook down to a crawl. It just took me about 20
minutes to compose a fairly simple e-mail that should have taken me 3-5
minutes. However, ever few words that I type, outlook stops responding and I
have to sit and wait. If I click anywhere else in my desktop, it loses all
of the typed words that occurred after outlook froze. So I am forced to sit
here and wait or try to catch it when it's unfrozen. sqlserver is
approximately 380MB, and is running my CPU at a very consistent 44-50% at all
times. In other versions of SQL, you can throttle the memory useage but in
this version of mysql, you can't.

How could Microsoft have released this product with such terrible
performance?!

 

[Garyd]

I and my 20 users are having the same problem. We just "Upgraded" to Outlook
2007 with BCM and solved the problem of the "...Outlook has encountered a
problem and must close" issue but now have the latency issue.

 

[Luther]

Luther, I disagree.  BCM is not responsive on our gigabit LAN.  The symptoms
described by the other users in this thread match ours precisely.  Evenwhen
working locally, connected at gigabit speeds, our BCM is TERRIBLY slow!  The
entire BCM database slows outlook down to a crawl.  It just took me about 20
minutes to compose a fairly simple e-mail that should have taken me 3-5
minutes.  However, ever few words that I type, outlook stops respondingand I
have to sit and wait.  If I click anywhere else in my desktop, it losesall
of the typed words that occurred after outlook froze.  So I am forced to sit
here and wait or try to catch it when it's unfrozen.  sqlserver is
approximately 380MB, and is running my CPU at a very consistent 44-50% atall
times.  In other versions of SQL, you can throttle the memory useage but in
this version of mysql, you can't.

How could Microsoft have released this product with such terrible
performance?!








- Show quoted text -

Typing an email involves Outlook and Word (which Outlook uses as an
editor). I have no idea why having BCM installed would slow down
composing email. I don't notice a difference composing emails in
Outlook with and without BCM.

I have heard that improved performance is the #1 goal in the next
version of Outlook.

 

[gamer2k4]

Hi all,

I just recently upgraded a number of PCs from OL2003 (connecting to
Exchange - not cached mode) to Outlook 2007 w/ Business Contact Manager
(oviously cached mode as this is required).

The BCM database is on a shared PC using the BCM database tool.

I had experimented with one PC taking it off the cached mode and it had made
things speedy again, but I can't keep it like that due to the need for BCM.
Any clue what is going on here?  Is it cached mode or BCM causing the issue?

The speed issues range from starting an email reply and having to wait for
what you type to catch up, to slow response if you click on another folder
in your mailbox.  It's just hurting the Outlook 2007 experience because
performance is horrible.  Please help!

We're having the exact same problem. The symptoms you've described
sound exactly like what my company is experiencing. We installed BCM
to improve productivity, but it's having the opposite effect. It's
very frustrating to try to access, read, or write email, to the point
where we may be better off sticking with our old contact management
system so that we can use email again.

Like the others here, I'd like to know why no one from Microsoft has
posted here to offer any advice on what's causing the problem and how
to fix it. I'd really like to use BCM, as it would be a much cleaner
and much more powerful system than Janna Contact, but if this
continues to be an issue, then the conversion seems unlikely.

 

[sdurman]

We have noticed if we update a contact in bcm, even if it is just one word
that changed, when the change is saved it will cause everyone's outlook/word
editor to freeze for anywhere from 20 seconds to a minute or more. Obviously
it is tying up either network traffic or local resources as it is trying to
update everyone's bcm at once. All of our computers have a min. 2gb ram, most
are duo-core processors.
What would work for us is if we could disable the 'updating' function, so
that it only updates bcm when you first open outlook, and not constantly all
day long. If a person needs to add or modify a contact, it would access the
database on the server to do this, it would update there but not send it out
to everyone until they closed and opened outlook again.

 

[Luther]

We have noticed if we update a contact in bcm, even if it is just one word
that changed, when the change is saved it will cause everyone's outlook/word
editor to freeze for anywhere from 20 seconds to a minute or more. Obviously
it is tying up either network traffic or local resources as it is trying to
update everyone's bcm at once. All of our computers have a min. 2gb ram, most
are duo-core processors.
What would work for us is if we could disable the 'updating' function, so
that it only updates bcm when you first open outlook, and not constantly all
day long. If a person needs to add or modify a contact, it would access the
database on the server to do this, it would update there but not send it out
to everyone until they closed and opened outlook again.







- Show quoted text -

I believe that in BCM 2007 SP1 the default polling interval (how often
BCM checks for new data) went from 1 second to 60 seconds. That should
lessen the load on the database server. If that's not enough, you can
experiment with increasing the interval.
http://beyng.blogspot.com/2008/01/pollinginterval.html

 

[sdurman]

Thanks Luther, I discovered the Polling Interval yesterday and have adjusted
most of the computers here to roughly a 3 hour interval. So far, so good, the
freezing in word editor in outlook seems to have stopped.
Anyone else reading this might want to evaluate the length of this polling
interval if having the same problems we were. We may have days where not one
change has been made to the database, other days maybe just a few
changes...the default of one minute updates was incredible overkill for our
organization.