Login Prompt When Opening Web Resource From Outlook

I’ve been experiencing an issue since the launch of CRM 2011 (online and IFD). Opening a Silverlight web resource in a new window from the Outlook client causes the user to see a login prompt rather than the web resource.

Other people have been reporting the same problem in the CRM forums both here and here, but none of the proposed solutions seemed to work for me. I had to advise users to log into CRM from Internet Explorer and leave it minimised to get around the problem.

When Microsoft introduced CRM 2011 Update Rollup 8, they also introduced a number of new Xrm.Utility JavaScript functions.  Xrm.Utility.openWebResource jumped out at me as a possible fix to the login prompt issue. You can read more about the new functions on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM blog.

The JavaScript I had been using to launch my web resource from the ribbon button was: -

window.open("/WebResources/cnova_XRM_CV_SearchPage.html#/VacancyID/" + idString);

Note: idString is the guid of the record I am clicking the button from.

Using the new Xrm.Utility function, I amended that to: -

Xrm.Utility.openWebResource("cnova_XRM_CV_SearchPage.html#/VacancyID/"+idString);

Now, when clicking on my ribbon button, the web resource is displayed as expected, without the login prompt.

I can finally do everything from Outlook without needing to open an Internet Explorer session in the background!