Are you having trouble contacting a customer to arrange a meeting, respond to a service request, or obtain some critical information to move forward on a request? You’ve probably tried Phone Calls, and E-mail with little to no success.
Here is another trick that you can pull from your hat if you have Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 installed. Of course, whenever using this or other methods of communication with your Customer and Vendor base, you will always want to follow your company’s communication guidelines and business protocol.
Open a Contact view like Active Contacts in CRM. Find the Contact you would like to speak with but don’t open the Contact record.
Notice the small circle icon in front of the Contact name. Right click the circle icon and you will see several options. One of the options is to add the Contact to your Instant Messaging (IM) program.
When you select this option the Windows Live wizard will open to allow you to add the contact to Windows Live Messenger and will send the Contact an invite to install Windows Live Messenger if they do not have the application installed. Of course, please follow your company’s business rules for the installation and use of Messaging protocols. You may also want to contact the Customer prior to adding them to your Windows Live Account.
After you completed the wizard, and select the circle icon next to the Contact Name, the “Reply with Instant Message” option will be available and you can now send the Contact an instant message so that you can move the business critical items forward. Additionally, the circle icon will turn Green if the Customer is online and available.
This feature can really come in handy for those mission critical, customer satisfaction items like the Tee-Time and Directions for the round of golf you are sponsoring or where to meet before the Sporting Event that you are going to enjoy with your Customer.
Enjoy!
Donna Edwards 
Hi Donna,I don’t see the icon there? Is this an add-on or some special feature that needs to be enabled.Could you kindly let me know?Thanks.Regards.Gagandeep Singh
Hi Gagandeep,My apologies, I just noticed this comment. I believe all you need to do is login into your MSN Messenger account.
I am using CRM 4.0 web interface.
I have logged in my MSN account but still not able to view the option for instant messaging.
Is there any thing else that i need to do?
One thing I assumed was set which maybe I shouldn’t have is that you enabled the feature on the Contact Full Name in Customization.
You can check this by opening the Contact entity under Customization, then Open one of the views like My Active Contacts, then open the Attribute Full Name from the view and ensure the Enable Presence checkbox is selected. Hope this helps.
I also had an issue with a recent install I did of another messaging tool and had to reinstall MNS Messenger to get this to work again. Once that was done and I cleared the cache and restarted CRM I was able to see the Messenger option.
When I wrote this article nearly two years ago the feature was there but I’m not seeing it now either. I’ll have to investigate further.
Thank you!