Merge is not allowed: caller does not have the privilege or access.

Recently one of our users (non-admin CRM user) was trying to merge two accounts using the “Merge" button on the account main page:

 And she received the following error message:

Looking at the download log file doesn't give you much help about what's the missing security:


Unhandled Exception: System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[[Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.OrganizationServiceFault, Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35]]: Merge is not allowed: caller does not have the privilege or access.Detail:

-2147200255

Merge is not allowed: caller does not have the privilege or access.
2011-10-03T21:52:59.0495208Z 

The following is the steps shows how to find out what the missing security role is, before you start the process thou, make sure you have downloaded these tools on your CRM server:

Microsoft CRM Diagnostics Tool 2011

CRM Trace Log Viewer

The above tools will make it easier to workout the problem. However, you can always enable tracing by changing registry on the server and go though the trace files using notepad.

Step 1:
Enable the Tracing and Dev Errors in the CRM diagnostic tool:

Step 2:
Back to the CRM, logon and merge two accounts to generate the error.

Step 3:
Run log viewer and open the generated trace file:

The trace file should be under: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Trace folder

Step 4:
The the filter log level to warnings

Check the last line of the trace log for the generated error

This shows the user needs to have "Share" privilage enabled on account entity.