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Importing Emails Received in Outlook into Salesforce
Many people want to automatically incorporate emails sent and received in Outlook into their Salesforce activities. This is because email communications during business meetings contain important information that can be very useful when a handover occurs or a manager wants to understand the status of a business meeting. So you can improve operational efficiency by easily sharing information.
In fact, Salesforce has a function to integrate with Outlook. The feature called “Outlook Integration ( video) ” makes it possible to store emails from Outlook to specified business meetings and activities of business partners and business partner managers.
However, this feature is not unconditional if you use Outlook. There are “certain conditions” that must be met in order to use this feature. Some customers have signed up for Salesforce without being aware of these conditions, which can lead to problems later on, so be sure to check them out beforehand.
The conditions for using Outlook Integration are listed below.
Outlook and Salesforce Synchronization Conditions
- You must be using Office365 (Microsoft365) and the mail server must be Exchange Online.
- You are using an installed Outlook and your mail server must be Exchange Server.
Either of the above two conditions must apply.
In other words, you must be using either “Exchange Online” or “Exchange Server” as your mail server. It is often the case that some companies use an installed Outlook and their mail server is a rental server mail server. This is especially the case for most small and medium-sized companies. Note that in such an Outlook environment, the Outlook Integration feature that imports email into Salesforce cannot be used!
What is Exchange Online? It is a mail server for using Office365 (Microsoft365).
Just in case some of you are wondering, “What is Exchange Online anyway?” I’ll explain a little bit. For most people, Outlook reminds them of the software installed on their computer for sending and receiving e-mail, but this software is only for receiving e-mail. To actually send and receive mail, you need a mail server. In other words, you can only send and receive email when you have both Outlook and a mail server.
Most people are not aware of this, but Outlook receives mail by downloading mail data from the mail server. And Exchage Online is just that, a mail server that downloads mail data to your Outlook. As mentioned above, many small and medium-sized companies rent mail servers from rental servers.
Even if such companies want to import Outlook emails into Salesforce, they will not be able to use it because their mail server is not Exchange Online. The only solution is to have the mail server changed to Exchange Online, but this can be quite a difficult task.
What is Exchange Server, a mail server that runs on a Windows server.
Next, let me explain about Exchange Server. As the name suggests, it is a server, but it is a mail server. If a company is using this mail server, it will be possible to import Outlook mail into Saleforce.
If you are using this Exchange Server as your mail server, it will be possible to import Outlook emails into Saleforce. However, few companies use Exchange Server, and in many cases it is not relevant for most companies.
Finally
I hope you have learned that importing Outlook emails into Salesforce is convenient, but it is not an out-of-the-box solution. Please be careful not to implement Salesforce without asking detailed questions and regretting it later.
I would also like to mention a point that is often misunderstood when Outlook Integration is introduced. It is often said that you can import sent emails into Salesforce, but you cannot import received emails into Salesforce. (To be precise, it can be done, but it requires a separate setting.
The Salesforce help article is also included here.
