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Best Practice – Salesforce Connect for Outlook and Lotus Notes

Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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This presentation helps you to understand the best practices for using Salesforce Connect for Outlook/Lotus effectively in your organization.

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Page 1: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Best Practice – Salesforce Connect for Outlook and Lotus Notes

June 2009

Page 2: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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

Page 3: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Best Practice Overview

This presentation helps you to understand the best practices for using Salesforce Connect for Outlook/Lotus effectively in your organization.

Page 4: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Agenda

Product Overview

• Best Practices

• Planning and Design

• Rollout

• Ongoing Support and Administration

• Usage Tips and Tricks

Other Resources

Q&A

Page 5: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Salesforce Connect for Microsoft Outlook & Lotus Notes

– 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

These are standard plug-ins that give users easy interaction with Salesforce from their familiar Outlook or Lotus Notes interface.

Page 6: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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

Outlook+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Lotus NotesExchange

Salesforce

Page 7: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Key CapabilitiesAdd 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.

Synchronize your Contacts – Coordinate your Contacts with Salesforce CRM. Stay up to date with the latest information available on your customers.

Synchronize your Calendar Events – Coordinate your meetings with Salesforce. Changes in one system are now automatically reflected in the other.

Synchronize Tasks – Coordinate your Outlook Tasks with Salesforce CRM. Changes in one system are now automatically reflected in the other.

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.

Use the Salesforce CRM Address Book - Email Contacts and Leads directly from Outlook or Lotus using the resources in your Salesforce CRM org.

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Page 8: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Agenda

Product Overview

• Best Practices

• Planning and Design

• Rollout

• Ongoing Support and Administration

• Usage Tips and Tricks

Other Resources

Q&A

Page 9: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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.

Page 10: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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?

Page 11: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Planning and Design – Synchronization Settings Understand synchronization options:

– Synchronize with Salesforce

• Information is entered in either Outlook/Lotus or Salesforce

– Export to Salesforce (with/without overwrites)

• 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.

Page 12: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Planning and Design – Event Settings

Synchronize with Salesforce (most common)

– Use this approach if:

• You want the flexibility to create meetings in either location, depending on the scenario or user type

Export to Salesforce

– 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

Page 13: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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

Page 14: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Planning and Design – Contact Settings

Synchronize with Salesforce

– Use this approach if:

• 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:

• 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)

Page 15: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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.

Page 16: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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

Page 17: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Agenda

Product Overview

• Best Practices

• Planning and Design

• Rollout

• Ongoing Support and Administration

• Usage Tips and Tricks

Other Resources

Q&A

Page 18: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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

Page 19: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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

Page 20: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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

Page 21: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Agenda

Product Overview

• Best Practices

• Planning and Design

• Rollout

• Ongoing Support and Administration

• Usage Tips and Tricks

Other Resources

Q&A

Page 22: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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.

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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

Page 24: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Agenda

Product Overview

• Best Practices

• Planning and Design

• Rollout

• Ongoing Support and Administration

• Usage Tips and Tricks

Other Resources

Q&A

Page 25: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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!)

Page 26: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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*

Page 27: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

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)

Page 28: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Agenda

Product Overview

• Best Practices

• Planning and Design

• Rollout

• Ongoing Support and Administration

• Usage Tips and Tricks

Other Resources

Q&A

Page 29: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Other Tools & ResourcesWhat 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

Page 30: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Agenda

Product Overview

• Best Practices

• Planning and Design

• Rollout

• Ongoing Support and Administration

• Usage Tips and Tricks

Other Resources

Q&A

Page 31: Outlook & Lotus Best Practices

Questions & Answers

Thank You