This advisory provides information for customers reluctant to upgrade to Sage CRM 2022 R2 because of reliance on the Classic or Lite Outlook Integration.

The 2022 R2 Release Notes make the following references to Outlook Integration:

When you upgrade from a Sage CRM version where the Classic or Lite Outlook Integration is enabled, enabling the import of contacts and email messages does not disable the Classic or Lite Outlook Integration.

We no longer support these plugins and they are not available in new Sage CRM 2022 R2 installations. Use Import contacts and email messages from Exchange Online instead. If you had the Lite or Classic Outlook Plugin enabled in a previous version of Sage CRM, upgrading to Sage CRM 2022 R2 does not disable the plugin. Please note that Sage Support will not address any issues related to the plugins.

To elaborate, our support for the Outlook Plugins in any version of Sage CRM is limited, because the Plugins were based on ActiveX and therefore require Internet Explorer 11, which has been out of support since 15th June 2022.

Please see the advisory: Support for Outlook Plugins in Windows 11 using Internet Explorer Mode in Microsoft Edge

The Outlook Lite plugin passed testing. The Outlook Classic Plugin did not pass testing.

Sage redesigned the features for Sage CRM that were provided by the Classic and Lite Outlook Plugins for Sage CRM 2022 R2 to remove all dependency on browser plugins.

Sage will investigate and attempt to resolve customer issues using the plugins in supported versions of Sage CRM, however, Sage will not release any further software updates to fix problems with the Outlook Plugins. 

Sage will provide the same limited support to customers who need to upgrade to 2022 R2 but want to keep using their existing Lite or Classic Outlook Plugin.

As mentioned above, upgrading to Sage CRM 2022 R2 does not disable the plugin.

Sage advice remains that all Sage CRM customers should use the Import Contacts and Emails feature introduced in 2022 R2.

This article applies to Sage CRM stand-alone and when integrated with Sage accounting products: Sage 50, Sage 100, Sage 200, Sage 300, Sage X3 and Sage Intacct.