Salesforce integration with Outlook and Exchange – Spring '16 | Salesforce

I'm Damien Joly, product manager here at Salesforce for the Sales Cloud, working on the integration of Salesforce with Outlook and Exchange. So today I'll be talking about keeping Salesforce users productive while they work in Microsoft Outlook. So what is the business context that we have here? We know that sales users are spending a tremendous amount of time in their Outlook application reading emails, sending emails. Emails remain a very successful way to communicate with customers. To convert communication into business. Salesforce is the system of record for customer details. This is the place where you keep track of your opportunities, your opportunity pipeline, your customer details as well. So merging emails and Salesforce makes your life easier and is very natural. The benefit of merging the two together is that there is no need to toggle between your emails and Salesforce so that you can stay in your emails and keep on using Salesforce without even realizing it. Both applications are also enriching each other by providing relevant content in the right place. So when I'm reading emails and I get an email from a client or prospect, Salesforce is capable of telling me who that person is. If that person doesn't exist in Salesforce, I can create that person and so on. The outcome of that integration is that you get a better adoption, an increased adoption, and you're starting to share knowledge with with your coworkers in your organization in a much better way as well. So what's the solution to that business context? The solution is twofold. First, we want to show Salesforce where users are when they are reading emails. The idea here is to have a Salesforce page embedded in Outlook so that you can save your important Outlook emails into Salesforce and share that communication with other people. Email indicate to the rest of the organization that you are engaged. You can also indicate what your appointments are about and relate your calendar events to the right leads, to the right opportunities, and so on. And finally, you can remain productive in Outlook and create new Salesforce records in Outlook. The second component to that integration is that we want to synchronize data so that if sales reps have a wealth of information available on their phone in their Outlook application, we want to bring that knowledge into Salesforce to benefit the rest of the organization. And the other way is true as well. If the organization knows a lot about contact, about account information that they may have imported with Data.com, we want to push that to their fingertips on their phone and in their Outlook application. And the same goes for the calendar. Whether you're looking at your calendar on your phone, your Outlook application, or In Salesforce, it is the same. Salesforce for Outlook is a plugin that provides those two components. So Salesforce for Outlook has been in the market for many years now. It's a mature product and it integrates with Outlook applications on Windows PC. Here on the slide, I have a Screenshot of Outlook 2016. So you're familiar with Outlook. You can see your list of emails and that email content. When you install Salesforce for Outlook, you get the side panel, that right column indicating who is included on the email you're reading. In this case, Matthew is included, Angela is included. You can understand with data coming from Salesforce what Angeli's job is, who she's working for, the past activities that you've had with her, ongoing opportunities and cases with her. You can also save that email into Salesforce using the side panel by associating to the right Salesforce records. You can search any kind of record, including custom object records. The second component that I was talking about is that synchronization engine. It's happening in the background between the Outlook application on Windows PC and Salesforce. So this is Salesforce for Outlook, a solution that we're very familiar with and that you install on your Windows PC. Now, the next generation of integration that we're working on is departing from that installation approach, and that's the app for Outlook and Exchange Sync. So again, I'm navigating back into Outlook 2016. This is a familiar interface where I now get to expand the Salesforce tab embedded in Outlook and see the app for Outlook where you get Salesforce details similar to what Salesforce for Outlook Site Panel used to do. And in the background you also have Exchange Sync. Exchange Sync is an integration between your Exchange Server and Salesforce. So there's really nothing to see here. It's a process that Salesforce hosts and that communicates with the Exchange server so that your contact data and your calendar event data flows between Salesforce and Exchange. So that's a beautiful architecture because you're not installing software on your user's machine anymore. You don't have that it overhead to maintain and upgrade those pieces of software. So the app frau Outlook is manifested on the Exchange Server and Exchange Sync is configured in Salesforce to talk to the Exchange server. So with that, I'm going to switch it over to my Surface Tablet and demo the app for Outlook as well as Exchange Sync. So I'm on my Surface tablet now and I'm going to Open Outlook 2016 to read my emails. I have an email from Matthew and I'm going to expand the Salesforce add in. That will help me understand who Matthew is and the business that we're conducting with Matthew. So I've expanded the Salesforce tab and I now see people included on the TO and CC line. On that email I see Matthew is a general manager. Lisa, who is also included on that email, is a finance director working for Accusage. Greg is also included and it looks like Camilla is not a known person in Salesforce. I can take action and create a contact for Camilla. You'll see that some information is already populated for me, so I don't really have to do much. I'm going to populate the account she belongs to and save that. Now I get navigated back to the app for Outlook and I see that Camilla is in Salesforce. With a couple of clicks I was able to add Camilla as a contact in Salesforce. While I stay in Outlook, I can also see what the account is about. So I'm going to click on the account and look at the information that Salesforce knows about that account. You'll note that the layout is very familiar. It is because we're consuming the layout defined in your organization to display information. So if you have custom fields and if you're tracking specific pieces of information, the app for Outlook will show that. Now let me navigate back and I'll keep on scrolling over to the right in the app for Outlook. And I can also see opportunities that are open for that account and that I have access to as well as cases. I can drill down on the case and you'll note an icon here that is pretty powerful. I can click on that icon and get navigated into Salesforce. I'm authenticated. I don't have to search for that record. The app for Outlook gives me a link into Salesforce right away so I don't have to worry about toggling between the two applications and logging back in searching for that record again. The context that I have in my email helps Salesforce bring you to the right page right away. We Also, in spring 16 have introduced the ability to display global actions. And by the way, the app for Outlook is typically taller, but the resolution that I have here today on my machine is kind of small, so you'll have to forgive me about that. So let me talk about the global actions here. You'll see that I have a few global actions available at my fingertips that allow me to take quick actions as I read that email. The list of global actions is configurable by the admin and you'll see custom objects in there that I had created earlier in my org. So let me create a new asset. Some information again was pre populated for me. Whatever pieces of information and fields make sense for that new asset are available on the Global Action. I'm going to save this and get navigated back into the app for Outlook. The administrator can configure all this from Salesforce Setup. So let me switch over to that configuration page. So I'm in Salesforce. I'm going to click on Setup and I'll search for Outlook. You'll see a few entries. App for Outlook Settings is the page where I want to go. At the top here we have a little description on how to enable the app for Outlook for you. And you'll see that I have a publisher over here. So this is where administrators would go to make those Global Action appear in the app for Outlook for Outlook users to use. Since we have time, I'll also tell you how you can push the app for Outlook to a bunch of users as an administrator and show you the power of a cloud solution. I'm going to log onto my office 365. Org and by the way, this also applies to on premises deployment of Exchange. For the sake of simplicity, I'll use an office365.org. So let me log onto my emails as the administrator. I'm signing in to my emails using Outlook web app, the browser version of Outlook. And as an administrator I see an extra tile that lets me get into the admin portion of that office365.org and then I'll indicate how to navigate to make the appfro look available to all your users. So here I'll get into the Organization page and I'll click on the add Ins section. So here you can see that the Salesforce app for Outlook was added by the administrator and became available to users. If you want to add the app for Outlook, if you don't already have it, you would click on the plus icon and add it from the Microsoft Office Store where we published it. The app for Outlook is right here in the Editor Speaks section. You click on it and click on the Add button from the store. Then you get navigated back over here. I'm going to edit that one and show you the different options available to the administrator to make that app available across users. So they can enable it by default, they can make it mandatory, they can make it optional. This is really powerful because instead of installing a piece of software, packaging that software, pushing it out, and then installing it locally. You can do all this centrally from the Exchange Server as an administrator. Once you've done this, this is where the Salesforce tab appears in your inbox. So let me log out of this and I'll show you what the end user gets. I'll log back in as an end user. So the Outlook application is loading. I'm getting the same emails as those emails I was reading in Outlook 2016. And when I click on this icon, manage add ins, I also see my Salesforce app for Outlook. My administrator made it available to me, but I can turn it off, I can turn it on, I can decide what I want to see in my emails. So this is really cool. That's the visual experience you get. This is the Salesforce page that you see as you read your emails. Now let's talk about the background process that syncs contacts and calendar events. This is Exchange Sync, so let me switch over to my People section. Okay, I have a SalesForcesync folder. All those contacts are syncing with Salesforce. If I look at those contacts in Outlook or in Salesforce, the information is the same. So now let me get back into Salesforce and edit a contact. I have a contact here. His name is actually not Alan, it is Alex. So I'm going to edit that populate an account. And now in Salesforce, that contact was updated. Any device or application connected to the Exchange Server, may that be an Outlook application or my phone is now going to benefit from the synchronization between the Exchange Server and Salesforce. So I can look at people over here and see that Alan's first name was changed to Alex in my Outlook web app, the browser version of Outlook. Also in my outlook 2016, both of those applications are connected to the Exchange Server, but other applications are connected to the Exchange Server. IT organizations are already doing a great job at connecting all those applications and devices. So for the purpose of this demonstration, I'm going to use my iPhone. My iPhone is connected to my Exchange Server through a wealth of applications. I have the Outlook application here. I have the native contacts application which I'm going to open and see here the groups that I'm showing in my contacts list. It includes the Salesforce Sync group. And I can see that Alex first name was already updated thanks to that Exchange Sync process. So this is a really powerful architecture because we are synchronizing between the Exchange Server and Salesforce. Whatever application phone is connected to that Exchange Server benefits from that synchronization. So let's take another example and this time we'll look at calendar events. I'm going to open my Outlook application on my phone and look at my calendar. Today is Friday and it looks like I have an event tomorrow on Saturday. I don't really work on Saturdays. It's probably a mistake. So let me edit that appointment and save it so that it happens on Friday. Today, later today at 4:00'. Clock. Now I'll go into my Salesforce calendar on the Surface tablet. I can do it elsewhere as well. Let's do it elsewhere. I'll go on the calendar in Outlook web app as well. So this is over here and it's in the process of synchronizing, so let's see how long it will take. And this is a process that is happening in the background. So my machine and my phone do not have anything installed locally and there is no process running locally that is also impacting performance. The synchronization is between two servers that are always on so that there is nothing to worry about locally on those machines. And since we're at it, I'm also going to edit this appointment in Salesforce to show you that the direction goes two ways. So this one is happening from 4:30 to 5. I'll move it to 5:30 until 6:30. Okay. Okay. So now this event was moved from Saturday to Friday and the event is already synced on my phone which is connected to Exchange to happen between 5:30 and 6:30. So that was Exchange sync on events. So earlier I was telling you that to integrate your emails with Salesforce, there are two components. The visual component where Salesforce is embedded in Outlook. So this is the app for Outlook Today in spring 16 it allows you to save Outlook emails in Salesforce. So in spring 16 we've worked at making that capability available not only to Office365 users, but but also to On Premises Exchange 2013 users. You can create new Salesforce records using Global Actions. And Global Actions are powerful. You can configure that list. You can configure the set of fields showing in global actions with ExchangeSync, you've got that background process synchronizing contacts and calendar events so that your contacts are available regardless of where you're working. The Salesforce organization gets all that knowledge that is currently present on sales reps, phones and Outlook applications into the. Org, and then you also keep your calendar the same. So if you prefer working in Salesforce or if you prefer working in Outlook, you can trust that your calendar is the same. Salesforce for Outlook is going to remain actively developed for many releases to come, and the reason is because it remains the solution of choice for customers who have an older version of Exchange. Exchange 2010 and older is the place where Salesforce for Outlook excels, because the plugin approach is is what is available on that Exchange server version. So we're going to continue investing in Salesforce throughoutlook, making sure that our numerous customers remain happy that Salesforce for Outlook continues serving them in the future. So no worries there as far as the app for Outlook is concerned. We're going to work in summer 16 at relating calendar events to Salesforce records using the app for Outlook. The same way emails get related to Salesforce records, we're also going to bring the ability to search and relate any kind of Salesforce record using the app for Outlook on emails as well as events. So if you don't see a record that the app for Outlook is showing, you can search for it and relate your appointments as well as your emails. And finally, I wanted to include this point on the slide here because I know that a lot of you are keen on seeing outlook format 2016 support. So today Mac users can use Outlook Web Access, the browser version of Outlook in any browser on their Mac machine. We are engaged with Microsoft and we're working very closely to go through the certification of Outlook for Mac. The partnership that we've signed with Microsoft allows us to have direct communication and interactions with Microsoft development. So we're working on Outlook for Mac support as soon as we can. At this point, it looks like we're going to introduce it in summer. Obviously we'll look at making it available sooner if we can, but at this point this is something that we're still actively working on. Mac users can use their browser for the time being. Let's talk about Exchange sync. So ExchangeSync is going to process and synchronize event deletions today. If you delete an event, an event that is not happening anymore, you would have to delete it in your Outlook as well as in Salesforce. And then we're going to bring Exchange Sync closer to the app for Outlook so that it brings sync capabilities to the app for Outlook. When you start relating an Outlook event to an opportunity or a lead, we're going to start syncing that event. The purpose being is that if the event is happening at a different time and you start editing it, we will keep on syncing that. So that's the roadmap for Salesforce for Outlook, the app for Outlook as well as Exchange Sync. If you want to learn more, please Go to the success community and navigate to the group called Salesforce for Outlook and App for Outlook. There you'll find system requirements as well as release notes going over all the features that I've just demoed. In a nutshell, if you have Exchange 2013 on premise or if you're using an office 365. Org for your emails, you are eligible to use the App for Outlook as well as Exchange Sync, provided that your Salesforce. Org is enterprise or app. If you have an older version of Exchange on premise, then you can use Salesforce for Outlook. It is a mature product that we are going to continue support and it's a great solution for those older Exchange deployments. Great.

Now, given the sheer number of our customers who are using the Exchange tools and the kinds of Microsoft products that we're talking about here, there are a lot of people who are going to be very excited to hear what you had to share. But something they may not know is that internally, Salesforce has committed to becoming TLS compliant. I mean, that's Trusted Layer Security compliant. How is that compliance going to affect our Salesforce for Outlook users?

Yes, thanks for bringing up that topic. So the PCI Council has just released an update and pushed out that compliance by two years. Salesforce for Outlook version 3.0.0 will become TLS 1.1 and 1.2 compliant. We're looking at releasing that client in a matter of weeks at this point, and we're early, I mean, mid January, so you're looking at a few weeks, maybe a month from now. It will allow you to become TLS compliant. When Salesforce implements that compliance next year, you'll have all this time to upgrade your existing Salesforce for Outlook Users to version 3.0.0 or higher, depending on the timeframe you're doing it. So we believe that that time frame will allow you to have enough time to upgrade to 3. 00 or higher.

Excellent. And just while we are on the topic of compliance and security, you did Talk about the ExchangeSync product. What do you have to say about the security for that aspect?

Yes. So exchangesync is a secure connection between the Exchange server and Salesforce. A lot of customers are asking us about security in that model. So to respond to their questions, we've actually posted a file in the Success community that goes over those security considerations. So I invite you to navigate to the community and to download the white paper that we've authored where you can get your security questions answered.