One of the most common things customers want in Salesforce, and one of the most confusing (to my mind) is Salesforce Outlook integration.  Most of our customers use Outlook for their email client, and they want an easy way to integrate emails into their account views.  There are few ways to do this, but I’m going to talk about 2 over the next couple of days…

The first way is to use the base salesforce tool to do it.  Outlook lightning is free with your subscription (not to be confused with IQ Inbox or Salesforce for Outlook).  You can get Outlook Lightning through the Microsoft Store and once loaded, its a pretty easy tool to use.

Every time you open an email, you’ll see a light blue cloud     in the top right corner.  In any email, just click that cloud, and a new panel will appear:

This screen will automatically find anyone in Salesforce that is on the email thread.  (see below for records that aren’t in SF).  ALL YOU HAVE TO DO to add the email is click the upload icon (note the bottom highlight allows you to add attachments as well).  When a user clicks the upload icon, the email is added, and a success screen is returned:

But what if the contact isn’t in Salesforce?  Easy to handle that as well, simply click the Plus sign (you’ll see it next to their name):

A Create Contact Icon appears and you simply key in the Account (or create if you need to) and Save it:

This is a great tool – built into your subscription.  And, while IQ is GREAT (it really is), this is a good starter and EASILY beats the old Salesforce for outlook.  Plus, as an added bonus it works!

Anyway, let me know what you think.  As far as Salesforce Outlook integration goes, this is a great way (and free way) to start.  I’ll do another article next week on building Exchange rules to handle automated email uploads…