Customer has enabled the synchronise contacts with Outlook feature on the Exchange Sync. Setup page in Business Central as described in this link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-au/dynamics365/business-central/admin-synchronize-outlook-contacts


Customer requirement is for the Personal Contacts from BC to be synced to a dedicated folder in Outlook (Office 365) where the source of truth for all the personal contacts is BC.
Customer wants to maintain the contacts in BC i.e. update the email address, name etc. and then run the Sync with Office 365 function to update outlook with the changes.
Note that the sales people will have no access to BC and rely on the synchronized contacts in outlook.

When existing BC Personal Contacts email address is changed i.e. updated and the Sync with Office 365 function is run a new contact in Outlook is created for this.

Microsoft described this as follows:
…”In the current design, there is no ID field that we can use in the Exchange Contact Sync to match the Exchange Contacts to the Business Central Contacts. As such, we have to use the email address field in order to identify matching contacts on either side. If an email address changes, then it is seen as a new contact. If a contact has to be fully removed, it must be manually deleted from both sides of the sync…”


We like to see the Sync with Office 365 function to use an ID field when syncing contacts from BC to Outlook to avoid creating new contacts( duplicate etc) in outlook when the email address is changed in BC on an existing contact.

Clients maintain thousands of personal contacts in BC and a change of address should not create a new contact in Outlook but update the existing one.

Conversely if a contact email address is updated in Outlook this should update the existing contact in BC and not create a new contact in BC as it takes place currently.

Regards Maritn