Integrating Outlook with Salesforce: What You Need to Know

Integrating Outlook with Salesforce is a very convenient option for your daily work. It allows you to unite your calendars between them and show your availability for your colleagues, as well as synchronize group calendars and upcoming events easily. In this post, you will get to know how to sync Outlook calendar with Salesforce and what benefits you will get from it. 

Salesforce, business – illustrative photo. Image credit: LinkedIn Sales Solutions via Unsplash, free license

Benefits of Outlook-Salesforce Integration

The process of Salesforce-Outlook sync provides teams with plenty of advantages. The key ones are: 

• Using the Revenue Grid feature, which allows you to synchronize Outlook with Salesforce in one click. 
• Ability to plan meetings by letting your clients select the preferred time from several variants. In this case, the calendar will be updated instantly.
• All updates are automatically synchronized, which lightens up your sales department work.    
• Your Outlook calendar data will be matched intuitively with the exact file in Salesforce.
• Ability to maintain contacts and leads instantly by synchronizing both tools. 
• Ability to adopt CRM software more effectively because synchronization refreshes data constantly. This option allows your employees to use the newest info in both tools.    
• Outlook-Salesforce integration boosts your team’s productivity. Salespersons will not have to spend time entering data manually in both apps. Hence, they will be able to dedicate more time to interacting with clients and improving their content, which undoubtedly enhances general efficiency. 
• Ability to access all Salesforce features in Outlook without leaving it. 

How to Integrate Outlook with Salesforce

This process is almost effortless. If you don’t know how to sync Outlook with Salesforce, you should perform the following actions:  

1. Login to the Salesforce environment, which is the dashboard of your Salesforce account. 
2. Click the Settings button in the upper right corner of the screen. 
3. In the Settings menu, navigate to the quick search bar and type Outlook. 
4. Click the search result labeled “Outlook Integration and Sync.”
5. Enable Integration next to the title “Let users access Salesforce records from Outlook.”
6. Activate the “Use Enhanced Email with Outlook” option.
7. Then click the “Activate and notify the reps” button. 
8. Click “Change,” click the “Active” button, and click the “Save” button. 

To complete Salesforce-Outlook Integration, you will need to do the following:

1. Open Outlook and click “Get add-ins.”
2. Select Salesforce add-ins for both account management and Inbox messages.
3. Login to Salesforce and confirm Salesforce and Outlook integration. 

Once you confirm the integration, you’ll enable Salesforce for Outlook, and the Salesforce sidebar will appear in Outlook. All of your Salesforce contacts and emails will appear in Outlook.

Customizing Your Outlook-Salesforce Integration

As we have already mentioned, Outlook-Salesforce integration allows you to sync contacts, emails, and various data between the Outlook client and the Salesforce CRM system. Customizing this integration will undoubtedly help you streamline your workflow and improve your productivity. To customize Outlook-Salesforce integration successfully, please do the following: 

1. Settle on what data you need to sync

Before customizing the integration, you should determine what data needs to be synced between Outlook and Salesforce. For example, a sales rep might want to sync all contacts, emails, and calendar events related to a specific client or account. Alternatively, sales managers may want to sync only certain types of emails, for example, those related to sales opportunities. Determining what data needs to be synced will help you customize the integration to your specific needs.

2. Set up filters 

Outlook-Salesforce integration allows you to set up filters and rules to manage which data is synced between both systems. For example, you can set up a filter to sync only emails from a specific buyer. Moreover, you can set up rules to automatically create new contacts or leads in Salesforce when you receive a new email from an unknown sender. Setting up filters and rules can help users save time and ensure that only applicable data is synced between Outlook and Salesforce.

3. Choose the synchronization method

Outlook-Salesforce integration supports one-way and two-way synchronization methods. The former method only syncs data from Outlook to Salesforce or vice versa. The latter method syncs data between both systems. You can choose which method to use based on your current needs. For instance, if you only want to sync emails from Outlook to Salesforce, you can choose one-way synchronization. If you wish to sync contacts, emails, and calendar events between both systems, you can choose two-way synchronization.

4. Customize the sync schedule

Outlook-Salesforce integration synchronizes data every 15 minutes by default. However, it is possible to customize the sync schedule to your specific needs. For example, you can choose to sync data hourly or daily. Overall, customizing the sync schedule can help sales leaders save system resources and ensure that data is synced at a convenient time.

5. Use third-party tools

There are several third-party tools available that can help users customize Outlook-Salesforce integration even further. For example, users can use Salesforce Inbox to access Salesforce data directly from their Outlook email client. Using third-party tools can help company owners and sales leaders to make the most of Outlook-Salesforce integration and get better productivity.

To crown it all, by determining what data needs to be synced, choosing the synchronization method, setting up rules, customizing the sync schedule, and using third-party tools, you can modify this integration to your exact needs and get the most out of both systems.

Summary

Now, you know all about how to integrate Outlook with Salesforce and what advantages it provides you with. This option will be suitable in your daily work if you use both tools to schedule your day, events, and calendar. By integrating Outlook with Salesforce, you can create a CRM-friendly environment. With cross-sync features, you can manage your clients more effectively and offer them deals in a short time and without any errors.