BCM 2010 FAQ Part 1, Product and Implementation

We do quite a bit of Business Contact Manager Training and consultancy, but there is a limited amount of information out there on the new 2010 version of BCM. So I thought I'd post our BCM FAQ to answer some of the questions we are regularly asked about this most well-kept of Microsoft’s secrets. BCM 2010 is a big subject, so I’ve split it up, this Part 1 deals with getting and installing BCM and which database and implementation model to use. In later posts I’ll deal with Customising BCM, Reporting, and other BCM resources.  

How do I get Business Contact Manager 2010 ?

BCM is only available for new users if you purchase a volume license (five or more) for either Office Standard 2010 or Office Professional Plus 2010. Existing BCM 2007 users can download a free copy of BCM 2010 (from here) if both the following conditions are met.

You have a copy of Outlook with Business Contact Manager with Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office 2007, or standalone Office Outlook 2007
AND
You have a copy of Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010, Microsoft Office Professional 2010, or standalone edition of Microsoft Outlook 2010.

(For what it’s worth I think Microsoft or missing a trick here. If they made BCM2010 available as part of Microsoft Office Professional 2010 they’d get many more users. BCM is designed to work in small offices, most of these small offices don’t have Volume Licence Agreements with Microsoft.)

Can I upgrade from BCM2007 to BCM2010?

Yes, BCM will take your 2007 database and upgrade all the data and customised fields to the new version.

Can I run BCM2010 and BCM2007 on the same network? 

You can’t share data between BCM2010 and BCM2007, if you upgrade to BCM2010 everyone that uses that database will have to upgrade to access the data. It is theoretically possible to run some users with Outlook 2010 using BCM 2010 with one database and some users with Outlook 2007 using BCM 2007 accessing a different database, but it’s fraught with problems and probably won’t do what you want. If you want to upgrade from BCM2007 you have to bite the bullet and upgrade everyone to BCM 2010 at the same time.

Where does BCM2010 store its data?

The first thing to say here is that BCM2010 does NOT store any data in your Exchange database.

BCM2010 stores its data in a SQL database, this can either be Microsoft SQL server 2008 Express, the default option, which is a free edition of SQL Server that comes with BCM. Alternatively BCM2010 can use a Standard or Enterprise version of SQL Server 2008.

This database can be run in three ways:

• Stand-alone on an individual PC. The BCM installation installs SQL Express to enable this and this is also the way BCM can run a “local copy” of a remote database to enable laptop users to work away from the office.
• Shared on a network PC. This “peer to peer” model lets BCM run on a SQL express database hosted on a user’s PC. Other PC’s on the network then connect to this database to share data. This only really works well in small groups, where they do not have access to a server.
• On a Server. BCM can connect to a server running SQL Server Express or SQL Server 2008. You’ll need to download the Microsoft BCM Admin tool  to implement and manage this. Note that this server does NOT have to be the server running Microsoft Exchange, or the domain server, it can be a quite separate machine if necessary. However the BCM database will also happily co-exist with Exchange Server and other server applications. Many of our users are running BCM database on the same machine as Microsoft’s Small Business Server.

Why would I want to use SQL Server 2008 rather than SQL Server Express?

SQL Server Express is limited in the database size (Maximum 10GB) , Memory Usage (Maximum 1GB Ram) and CPU usage (No matter how many CPU’s in your server,  Express will only use 1).  SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition can use up to 4 CPU’s, with a memory utilisation of up to 64GB, and a database size of up to 524PB. If you have a big BCM database, or you think it will grow to be big, with a large number of concurrent users, say more than 10, then you’ll find that using Server2008 Standard Edition may be quite a bit faster.

Can I have more than one BCM database?

You can have as many BCM databases as you have room for on your server or PC, but you can only access one of them through Outlook at a time.  BCM 2010 comes with a “demonstration database” you can switch to at any time, just go to File>Business Contact Manager>Manage Databases. There you can select the name of the BCM database to connect to, or create a new one, or swap over to the “Sample Business” database. There is no way to move data between these databases, other than Export/Import, and you cannot access another database's data from within the database you’re using in BCM.

How many users can I have using BCM?

The answer to this depends a lot on your infrastructure, if you have a fast server, running SQL Server 2008, with all the clients attached on a gigabit network that you will be able to have 50 or more users concurrently accessing BCM. However if you are running BCM on SQL server Express, on a peer to peer network (no server) with older hardware, then you may struggle to get 10 users concurrently accessing. The bottom line here is that there is no Microsoft-imposed limit on the number of users, or database size, other than those imposed by SQL Express or SQL Server 2008. We have sites running 30 concurrent users on a small server very happily, but as so much depends on usage and hardware.  If in doubt over specify the hardware and under specify the number of users.

Can I import (or Export) BCM data to or from product X ?

BCM 2010 has a converter that will convert data from the following programs, ACT v7 (2005), v8 (2006), v9 (2007) v10 (2008) and v11 (2009), using the “.pad” files. ACT! 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 using a “.dbf” file, and Quickbooks using an “.IIF” file.

Other than these file types BCM can import data from a Business Contact Manager file (.bcm, .bcmx) Excel files (.xls, .xlsx) Access databases (.mdb, .accdb) and Comma Separated Files (.csv). It can also import from Outlook Contacts.

Exporting your data can be done to either BCM formats (.bcm, .bcmx) or Comma Separated (.csv).

Once you understand the BCM data model, you can import or export data fairly easily under BCM, now with 2010 you can even link Contact Records to Account records automatically, provided the Company Name is the name in both records, a major advance from previous versions. 

Can you use BCM with Outlook Web Access?

No, sorry. Outlook Web Access (OWA) is a web based interface to Exchange data, as BCM doesn’t store its data in Exchange there is no access from OWA to BCM data. If you want remote access to a BCM database we recommend using a Virtual Private Network.

You can synchronise BCM Contacts from BCM to Outlook,  In Outlook go to File>Business Contact Manager>Synchronize . There you can set up to synchronise BCM Contacts with Outlook contacts, this will enable them to be seen in OWA, but it’s only Contact data, and it’s for ALL the BCM database, so it’s a bit limited.

Can you access BCM data with an Iphone or Blackberry?

Usually non-microsoft smartphones will only synchronise with Outlook contacts, so you can use the Synchronization above and then sync your smart phone to get your BCM contacts onto your phone. An alternative is to use a third party tool called Companionlink. Again this is a bit clunky and again it is ALL the BCM data.

Can I restrict users to only see part of the BCM data, i.e. just their clients, sales or projects?

No, this is another area where BCM shows its small group thinking. All users of BCM can see (and modify) all the data on BCM. There is no way to restrict users to not see or change any data. Data creation and modification is logged, so you can see which user created a record, and when, and which user last modified a record, and when, but that is the only audit information available. Any user can delete any data. Deleted items go into a shared deleted Items folder and can be restored from there, but all users have the ability to empty the deleted items folder. The only function which is restricted is customising the BCM screens, this is available to the database administrator only, otherwise all users have access to all data throughout BCM.

Comments

[L Greene]

Can you tell me how to customize the Products & Services list on BCM 2010? There must be some way to do this, I'm trying to avoid having a list of hundreds of products with no way to group them or specify a "type" for them (although there is a column called "Type" that's impossible to insert any data into). Thank you!