Chapter 8. Microsoft CRM Sales for Outlook
In this chapter
Offline Concepts
The Microsoft CRM Sales for Outlook Interface
Mailboxes and Folders
Typical Microsoft CRM Configuration
Going Offline/Synchronizing
Synchronization Under the Hood
Configuration and Customization
Deployment Considerations
Use Case Corner—Mobile Portal: Extending the Reach of Microsoft CRM
Summary
Now the real fun begins. Sales people all over the world finally have the kind of tool they have always wanted but could never find; a CRM system that is fully integrated into their email, contacts, and calendar application.
Microsoft CRM's Outlook client, Microsoft CRM Sales for Outlook, provides an interface that combines email, contacts, calendar, and tasks with true CRM functionality; and it does it all within a unified interface. For purposes of brevity I'll refer to Microsoft CRM Sales for Outlook as CRMSO. With CRMSO, there's no more switching from CRM to email and no more pasting emails into CRM work notes. On top of all that, sales users can work with their data even when they are not connected to their network.
Before we go any further, we should explain what is and what is not included in this chapter. This chapter covers using the CRMSO interface. It does not repeat most of the information covered in Chapter 7, “Sales Force Automation.” If you haven't read Chapter 7 yet, you'd do well to go through it before reading this chapter.
Because we're fresh from discussing the feature set of the Web (that is, online) client of Microsoft CRM, let's compare the features found in the offline versus the online clients. Table 8.1 lists the main feature sets of each version.
The offline client is focused on sales functionality and also adds Microsoft Word merge functionality for producing mail merge letters, as well as merge documents such as quotes and invoices. Also, if you look at the Actions list on Leads, Contacts, and so on, you'll notice that the mail merge functionality takes the place of the Bulk Email functionality. This enables the user to perform Microsoft Word mail merges that can produces letters, envelopes, lists, and emails.
Users of CRMSO have access to all the functionality that their license provides, even if this functionality is not part of the CRMSO client. An icon on the CRMSO client provides this access. This icon, labeled Online Services, lists Reports, Cases, Contracts, and Settings links. When a user clicks any of these links, the Web client is launched and the user can access the requested function.