In Dynamics CRM 2013 or later, synchronized appointments send meeting invitation emails to meeting attendees when they are created or updated. This is a feature that was commonly requested by CRM users, but there are some scenarios where you may not want this to happen.

Meetings created or updated after the meeting happens

Some users may want to update the appointment attendees to accurately reflect who attended the meeting. Or you may want to create an appointment record after the meeting occurred. In these scenarios, you don’t want the attendees getting a retroactive meeting invitation.

One approach that can help with this is to modify the appointment synchronization filter to only include meetings where the start date is in the future (say the next 500 days or something). Alternatively, you could create a “do not synchronize” flag on the appointment record, then update users synchronization filters to not include records flagged as “do not synchronize.

Gustaf Westerland says that if you don’t want any attendees getting notified, you may want to take more dramatic action, such as breaking appointments out to separate mapping entity and then using precreate/update plugin to prevent the notification email from being sent.

Sensitive meeting notes

Another concern is that if a user updates the body of the appointment with notes from the meeting, the attendees will receive a meeting update email. We addressed this in tip 287. Don’t use the appointment body/description for meeting notes. Replace it with the notes pane (or OneNote if you are online). Set the body to not synchronize between CRM and Exchange. This will prevent embarrassing notes or comments from being sent to your customers.