Best Practice – Salesforce Connect for Outlook and Lotus Notes
Business Driver Customers want to avoid duplicate entry by keeping Salesforce.com and Microsoft Outlook/Lotus Notes in sync. The Salesforce Connect for Outlook and Lotus has a number of capabilities to assist with this process, specifically: – Automatically synchronize contacts, tasks, and calendar events – Associate Outlook/Lotus email messages with contacts, events, and tasks – Create tasks and cases from Outlook/Lotus email messages
Best Practice Overview  This presentation helps you to understand the best practices for using Salesforce Connect for Outlook/Lotus effectively in your organization.
Agenda Product Overview • Best Practices • Planning and Design • Rollout • Ongoing Support and Administration • Usage Tips and Tricks
Other Resources Q&A
Salesforce Connect for Microsoft Outlook & Lotus Notes These are standard plug-ins that give users easy interaction with Salesforce from their familiar Outlook or Lotus Notes interface. – Increase productivity by virtually eliminating double data-entry and making data input into Salesforce CRM easier than ever. – Drive adoption, as users are connected from their #1 ‘application of addiction’ directly into Salesforce CRM. – Improve information sharing by keeping data in sync across the enterprise
Basic Architecture Connect for Outlook and Lotus Notes standard plug-ins are – Installed on the user’s laptop/desktop – Talk to Outlook/Lotus Notes clients using the Outlook/Lotus Notes Object Model – Does not talk to Exchange or Domino Server – Talk to Salesforce CRM using the Force.com API Salesforce Outlook +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Exchange
Lotus Notes
Key Capabilities 1
Add Emails to Salesforce CRM as Activities or Cases – Quickly take the email in your Inbox or Outbox and get it into Salesforce CRM. No double data entry. Gives visibility into the mass of business critical data stuck in the organization’s inboxes.
2
Synchronize your Contacts – Coordinate your Contacts with Salesforce CRM. Stay up to date with the latest information available on your customers.
3
Synchronize your Calendar Events – Coordinate your meetings with Salesforce. Changes in one system are now automatically reflected in the other.
4
Synchronize Tasks – Coordinate your Outlook Tasks with Salesforce CRM. Changes in one system are now automatically reflected in the other.
5
Associate Events and Tasks with related items – Is your lunch meeting related to a key account? Associate it! Now you can conveniently jump into that Salesforce CRM Account record, directly from your Outlook Calendar.
6
Use the Salesforce CRM Address Book - Email Contacts and Leads directly from Outlook or Lotus using the resources in your Salesforce CRM org.
Agenda Product Overview • Best Practices • Planning and Design • Rollout • Ongoing Support and Administration • Usage Tips and Tricks
Other Resources Q&A
Planning and Design – Requirements Definition Model a “Day in the life” for your users – Where are they logging in from? (Salesforce Website, Mobile, Offline, etc? – What functionality do they currently use for managing contacts, events and tasks (Salesforce, Outlook/Lotus, Paper, etc) – What will be the easiest/most efficient way for them to enter contacts, events, tasks and emails? – What will be the easiest/most efficient way for them to find contacts, events, tasks and emails? – You may need to segment users into more than one group to properly model them.
Planning and Design – Requirements Definition Define Management requirements for tracking and reporting – What types of records do you want to see in Salesforce? What types of Records do you NOT want in Salesforce? – What do you want to see activities associated with? (Contacts, Leads, Accounts, Opportunities, etc) – What are the most important fields to track for these records? – How frequently will you be viewing reports on user activity? What are the requirements for timeliness of entry?
Planning and Design – Synchronization Settings
Understand synchronization options: –
Synchronize with Salesforce •
–
Export to Salesforce (with/without overwrites) •
–
Information is entered in either Outlook/Lotus or Salesforce
Information must be entered in Outlook/Lotus
Import from Salesforce (with/without overwrites) •
Information must be entered in Salesforce
Using “with overwrites” is generally recommended to avoid end-user confusion.
“Always Marc for sync” is generally not recommended unless:
–
You truly want every record to be synced, and do not care about associations
–
You understand the other limitations of this feature *
Conflict Resolution –
Accept the default (“Notify me when conflicts occur”), unless trying to do a large initial load addressing a specific issue.
Planning and Design – Event Settings
Synchronize with Salesforce (most common) –
Use this approach if: •
Export to Salesforce –
You want the flexibility to create meetings in either location, depending on the scenario or user type
Use this approach if: •
Most users are already comfortable using Outlook/Notes for their calendar events
•
Users need the ability to see other employees calendars or invite non-Salesforce contacts to meetings
•
You don’t need meeting attendee information in Salesforce*
Import from Salesforce –
Use this approach if: •
You may have multiple people editing an event.
•
You want to encourage people to use Salesforce to enter as much data as possible
•
Users do not schedule many internal or non-sales focused meetings
Planning and Design – Task Settings
Synchronize with Salesforce (most common) – Use this approach if: • You want the flexibility to create events in either location, depending on the scenario or user type.
Export to Salesforce – Use this approach if: • The majority of users are already actively using tasks in Outlook/Lotus
Import from Salesforce – Use this approach if: • You want to encourage people to use Salesforce to enter as much data as possible • You often may have multiple people editing a single task
Planning and Design – Contact Settings
Synchronize with Salesforce –
•
You have a low volume of updates and users who understand how to manage potential conflicts or duplicates that will arise
•
You are comfortable allowing some users to edit contacts in Salesforce and some in Lotus/Outlook
Export to Salesforce –
Use this approach if:
Use this approach if: •
You never have more than one person editing a contact
•
Your users already manage all their contacts in Outlook/Lotus and do not want to change
Import from Salesforce (most common) –
Use this approach if •
You want to avoid duplicate contacts or inconsistent data
•
You don’t trust users to appropriately tag contacts in outlook/lotus for sync
•
You are comfortable doing any export of contacts to Salesforce manually (i.e., one time load)
Planning and Design – Email Settings Emails are not automatically synced, but still require planning and design: – Users must click “Add Email”, “Add Case”, or “Send and Add” to move an email to Salesforce – Define Attachment Strategy • Is having attachments in Salesforce useful? Do you have sufficient free space? • If multiple versions of an attachment are sent back and forth, do you need them all? • Have you considered Salesforce Content to send hyperlinks instead of replicating entire documents?
– Set default “Related To” search options to speed up user experience – Consider using “show Item after adding email” option to encourage update to other fields in Salesforce (e.g., Type) – Consider using the “Email to Salesforce” feature as a simple alternative • Allows quick and easy syncing of inbound and outbound emails. For more information see “Email to Salesforce” in online help.
Planning and Design – Other Configuration Considerations Settings may vary by role/profile, but should NOT vary by user – Consistency is key in order to drive quality data and accurate reporting – Try to keep number of distinct configurations to a minimum
Synchronization Frequency – Less frequent = less obtrusive, once every 8 hours is usually sufficient – Consider having users sync manually if you need it less frequently. Tie it to a specific weekly event (IE forecast call) to make sure that it is done
To track information in Salesforce that is not already in Outlook/Lotus, consider a custom client field with field mapping – For example, tracking activity type in Salesforce for reporting
Consider Disabling the Splash screen to speed initial load time
Agenda Product Overview • Best Practices • Planning and Design • Rollout • Ongoing Support and Administration • Usage Tips and Tricks
Other Resources Q&A
Rollout Considerations - Deployment Fully Document Settings – Ensure all support, training and other staff fully understand configuration design and justification for it
Locking Down Configuration – It is strongly recommended to use a dictionary.xml file to preset and lock down settings for users • See the Advanced Admin Tip Sheet for detailed instructions • You may need to create more than one configuration file if you have user groups with different requirements
Rollout Considerations – Testing Use Controlled Test Groups before full rollout – Test configuration options and ensure tool is a help, not a hindrance for users – Use a representative sample to ensure all user types are included in test – Understand and document key user benefits and pain points of the tool – Consider limiting initial usage to only those objects/use cases which will provide the most value – After rollout, leverage focus group participants as “Power Users” to help assist / train co-workers
Rollout Considerations - Training Hands on, Use Case based training – Users should be trained with specific use cases in mind, IE: Log a call, send an email, add a contact, etc. – Leverage learning from “Day in the life” research to build use cases for each user group – Leverage “Power Users” from initial control groups to assist with training and communicate user benefits – Show users how the tool saves time by avoiding double entry and how the data will be used in reports – Use cheat sheets and handouts – Use activity reports to track adoption and reward top users
Agenda Product Overview • Best Practices • Planning and Design • Rollout • Ongoing Support and Administration • Usage Tips and Tricks
Other Resources Q&A
Ongoing Support and Administration Debugging Problems – Search the online Salesforce knowledge base for help – Logging is turned off by default – to debug issues it should be turned on through the registry (see the admin tip sheet for details) – Determine whether problem is widespread or isolated to: • A single computer (try looking for software/hardware issue with that computer) • A single configuration (try modifying configuration to see if eliminates problem)
– Locking down configuration with dictionary.xml file eliminates 99% of headaches later! – To troubleshoot synchronization problems, try one object at a time. – Test with the latest version of the connector (and Outlook/Lotus) when possible.
Ongoing Support and Administration Build upgrade plan – Recent new releases have added features, improved performance and fixed countless bugs. Make sure you upgrade to the latest version and STAY CURRENT! – If you are using a dictionary.xml file: • Upgrading users to latest client requires additional IT involvement and may be a significant effort. Make sure you include time in the plan for this with each new release
– If you are not using dictionary.XML file: • Consider enabling automatic upgrades (or notifications) for your users
Agenda Product Overview • Best Practices • Planning and Design • Rollout • Ongoing Support and Administration • Usage Tips and Tricks
Other Resources Q&A
Usage Tips and Tricks - General Emails – If associating when writing, use “Send and Add” – If associating later, use multi-select to add more than one at a time
Tasks/Events/Contacts – Associating records implicitly marks them for sync (do it at the time of creation) – Event/Task Type is set to blank by default. If you use this field for reporting (and you don’t use a custom field map) you must set it in Salesforce CRM after syncing
Other – Use the “View in Salesforce” link to quickly jump to a record in Salesforce (without even logging in!)
Usage Tips and Tricks – Conditional Formatting Use the Outlook ‘Automatic Formatting’ feature to get a quick visual overview of which records are Marked. – Set a rule that turns any event with a category of “salesforce.com” Blue – Can also be done with Tasks using “Customize Current View” option – Lotus users can achieve a similar result with custom views*
Usage Tips and Tricks – Using Separate Contact Folders Create new folder in Outlook and chose it in your Salesforce CRM sync Options – In Outlook properties set “Show This Folder as an e-mail Address Book” to make those contacts searchable and to work with “Check Names” – This trick will also work for tasks or events (using separate calendar folders)
Agenda Product Overview • Best Practices • Planning and Design • Rollout • Ongoing Support and Administration • Usage Tips and Tricks
Other Resources Q&A
Other Tools & Resources What else is out there that I can use?
Online “Help & Training” in Salesforce CRM – General Information – FAQ’s, Tip Sheets and Release Notes
Salesforce.com/community – Search for Outlook or Lotus to Access Dreamforce presentations, documents and training – Discussion Forums: Desktop Integration
Online Training Videos –https://admin.acrobat.com/_a13852757/notes2/ –https://admin.acrobat.com/_a13852757/outlookintro
Agenda Product Overview • Best Practices • Planning and Design • Rollout • Ongoing Support and Administration • Usage Tips and Tricks
Other Resources Q&A
Questions & Answers
Thank You