Error c10312e7 – “This e-mail address already exists in this organization.”

I’ve been struggling with this error whilst trying to add an additional e-mail address to one of our groups in Active Directory:

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Microsoft Active Directory – Exchange Extension
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This e-mail address already exists in this organization.
ID no: c10312e7
Microsoft Active Directory – Exchange Extension

Being the good MCSE that I am I initially tried following MS KB280765, this didn’t yeald any results. On a side note “Method Two” which involves installing Network Monitor and sniffing the packet is a complete joke in my opinion.

I had much greater results following the details below which is from Jim McBee’s blog but originally from some pointers on a newsgroup by Rich Matheisen.

“Using the Windows 2003 Active Directory Users and Computers utility, right click on the domain, choose Find. In the Find: dropdown list, choose “Custom Search” and in the In: dropdown list, choose “Entire Directory”. Click the Advanced property page and enter the following LDAP query (in my example, at least):

proxyaddresses=smtp:snuffy@domain.com

Click Find and you should find the object that already has that SMTP address.”

However for me once I found the culprit I was surprised to see that the group which had the proxy address wasn’t current Exchange-enabled !!! i.e. Pull up the properties in Active Directory Users and Computers and note there are no Exchange tabs.
Thus I had to do the following:

Simple Solutions:

1. In ADUC Right-click the offending object->Click Exchange Tasks
2. Select “Remove Exchange Attributes”
3. As long as successful all should be done, otherwise see below.

Complicated Solution:

1. Install the Windows Server 2003 Support Tools from the Win2003 CD
2. Start->Run->ADSIEDIT.MSC – (Big disclaimer here – you can really do damage with this, so you’re on your own, don’t blame me!)
3. Navigate to the object returned in the steps above. Right-click->Properties
4. Find the proxyAddresses attribute, Click Edit.
5. Remove the offending SMTP e-mail address.

“Remote Installation Services” doesn’t appear as an option under Add/Remove Programs

Disclaimer: I’ve found no documentation to state the following, but as it’s no software company’s policy to document removed features this is what I have deduced.

We have a nice shiny new Windows Server 2003 R2 server which I wanted to take over the role of our old RIS server.  So I started by trying to add RIS to the new box by following http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;325862 “Install Windows Server 2003 RIS“.  However it there’s no “Remote Installation Services” on the list.  I’m not sure if it’s because Win2003R2 never has this option or if a subsequent update has removed it.

Our original RIS server has been upgraded to Windows Deployment Services (WDS) via our WSUS server and so I set about downloading WDS for our new server.  However I can’t find a reference anywhere as to where this can be acquired from.  I suspect that as WDS is listed as a feature of Longhorn (Windows Server 2008) MS are now holding this back.

This means that anyone with a Windows Server 2003 infrastructure can’t now start using RIS / WDS – disappointing.  I’d love to hear from anyone if I’m wrong as I can imagine needing to do this in the future.

MS CRM 3.0 DMF Gotchas

Having spent over a day grappling with the Microsoft CRM Data Migration Framework v3.1 for MS CRM 3.0 I thought it useful to document some mistakes I made.

1. In the CDF DO NOT insert rows into cdf_<entity>_info or cdf_<entity>_ext tables as these rows are created by triggers on inserts to the base table. Thus if you need to populate your custom fields in cdf_account_ext you first insert the row in to cdf_account and then UPDATE the auto-created row in cdf_account.
2. Do NOT populate OwningUser even when you’re sure you have the right lookup to cdf_systembase! Instead populate the OwningUserName column with the username in the form DOMAIN\USER
3. As (2) do not populate TerritoryID use TerritoryIdName and then use the CDF Data Mapping Wizard (under Cleanse CDF in the DMF app) to map the string to the correct picklist ID.
4. For an account [name] is a required field
5. LASTLY BUT MOST IMPORTANT, ensure you are running the DMF using an NT login with access to MS CRM and has a role assigned – a restricted access account does not seem to be sufficient for the DMF to create the rows. This got me for hours, not helped by the fact that the DMF has to be installed on the CRM server and funnily enough we don’t assign expensive CRM licences to the sysadmin accounts!

I really think MS need to look at this tool, the CDF is very good, especially for people who are good with MS SQL, however there is a complete lack of error messages. I lost over 4 hours (see point 5) due to the lack of errors. I’ve encountered the same error when adding accounts via the webservice directly and it generates an exception – why doesn’t DMF expose the exception?