Pending Update Contact Icon

After installing the CRM Outlook client you will have no doubt have noticed the CRM icon that gets associated to CRM contacts, emails, appointments etc. which is very useful to be able to determine visually that the record in question is in fact linked to CRM.

However you may have also noticed a contact icon that looks somewhat similar to the regular contact icon except that it has a little dot (clock?) in the bottom right hand corner. At first you may not even notice it but subconciously it will probably nag at you where you may feel that something seems amiss but you can't quite put your finger on it. Well that's kind of what happened to me....

... until I determined that in fact it was a distinct contact icon from the default contact icon. But then I was wondering whether it was CRM related or perhaps just something that I hadn't noticed before in Outlook. It certainly doesn't seem to have the appearance of being CRM related so initially I attributed it to something that I hadn't noticed before as part of Outlook behavior. But then the nagging question was - what did this similar-but-different icon denote? After all, there must be a reason for this variation...

In the end, it turns out that this in fact related to CRM. After you have made an update to a CRM contact and that update has not yet been synced to CRM, the contact will show with this icon. And once synced it will of course revert back to the standard CRM icon. So this icon indicates that limbo period between update and server sync. And I guess that little dot is indeed meant to be a clock...

Why this icon shows as a standard Outlook contact icon with a minor variation rather than the CRM Outlook icon with a minor variation (as it is very much still a CRM contact and it would be much clearer if it was depicted in this way) is a little beyond my understanding... But at least I now know what it means.