CRM Outlook Client: Emails Tracked to Inactive Records

The way the CRM Outlook client tracks emails and links them to CRM records is based on email address.  It will take the customer's address from the email and search the entire CRM system for any records with an exact match.  This search covers any entity with an email address field, including custom entities, regardless of record status or anything else, really.  This can sometimes create a couple issues:

Problem #1: Emails are tracked to entity types that you don't necessarily want them tracked to. 

Unfortunately, CRM does not let you dictate which record types the Outlook Client tracks emails to.  As long as there's an email address field on the entity, the Outlook Client will attempt to link to it.

The fix: There is no way to turn off individual entity types from Outlook tracking.  This is something to keep in my when designing your entities.  If you have an entity that must have an email address stored on it, consider creating the field as a simple, single line of text.  Unless it's configured as an email-type field, the Outlook client will ignore it.

It's important to note, too, that once you create an email field on an entity, Outlook will search that entity for matches, and CRM doesn't let you undo or disable that.  

Problem #2: Emails get tracked to inactive records.  
One thing we've noticed after several years of using the CRM Outlook client is that it does not discriminate between active or inactive records.  CRM will try to link emails to matching email addresses on records regardless of record status.  As a result, you may notice inactive records being linked to your emails.

The fix: As we already know, CRM take a blanket approach to linking emails.  The key in linking track an email against a record is the email address.  So, if you want inactive records to be ignored by the Outlook client you can create a workflow or plugin that deletes or changes the email address upon deactivation.  For one of my clients we just add "-inactive" to the end of the email address.  Adding this text will cause CRM to not recognize the email address and skip over it.