CRM 2015 – What is the CRM Outlook reading Pane?

I have started using CRM 2015 SP1 and the navigation tweaks are awesome.  So I will congratulate Microsoft on the navigation tweaks and wonder how they got it so wrong in CRM 2013!

Outlook contact form but it still has fields which were removed from the contact form.

So what’s the problem?

I haven’t used the CRM outlook add-in for ages, so I had to do a bit of clicking and looking around.

Searching the internet didn’t bring up anything useful, which was odd because if this was a problem then lots of people would have mentioned it.

Think, Think, Think, Think

I wondered if Outlook wasn’t refreshing properly but after un-installing and installing it still didn’t fix it.

I ended up clicking around and looking for settings, I then clicked on view.  Hmmmm Customize Reading Pane, what does that do?

So I clicked it

AHA

and more AHA

The data which was being shown was the Reading Pane and the data it shows are not customizable (except you can remove some sections if you want).

What is the CRM Outlook reading pane?

The reading pane is a quick way to view contact information in a read only view.  It’s useful Microsoft have provided some quick view functionality, frustrating you can’t edit it and puzzling I couldn’t figure out where this information was coming from.

If you think of the CRM reading pane working like the normal Outlook reading pane, which shows you some details about an email without you having to open/read the email.

The CRM reading pane works in a similar way, showing you some details about the contain without having to open the contact record.  This works OK except when you have customized the contact record significantly because the new fields won’t be shown in the reading pane and fields you have removed from the form will be displayed

More information

Customize the Reading Pane in CRM for Outlook

Navigating the CRM Outlook Client

How to Hide Tabs in Reading Pane for Dynamics CRM Outlook Client