I have been waiting a long time to write this blog post. Maybe too long actually. Engagement Cloud has had a fantastic Outlook plugin for years. The previous client-side plugin relied on downloading data to your laptop. In that sense it worked as an offline client. It allowed us to share emails and appointments, discover and update accounts and opportunities, and synchronize back all the information back to Engagement Cloud when appropriate. The Outlook 365 plugin is very similar in capabilities but very different in approach.
As Outlook 365 can run in a browser, so had the O365 Engagement Cloud plugin. Instead of synchronizing data, we now can upload, discover and update Engagement Cloud information in real time!
Let’s have a closer look.
Outlook 365 Plugin
When going over emails or appointments, the Outlook 365 plugin will recognize contacts in Engagement Cloud by their email addresses as can be seen in the screenshot below.
The plugin recognized Jonas Keller and Lisa Jones as a known email addresses. It puts them in context by sharing to which accounts, opportunities or leads the contacts are related.
Anyone using the Outlook 365 plugin for Engagement Cloud can also discover quickly who else has good relations with these contacts, by checking the top connections for each contact …
… and a complete timeline of all recent activities with each contact is available.
Sharing emails and appointments
Each email and appointment in Outlook 365 now can be copied to Engagement Cloud. This saves them from being deleted and shares the details with other Engagement Cloud users who are working with the same contact, account, opportunity or lead.
Before uploading the email as a completed activity to Engagement Cloud, it can be linked in Outlook to relevant Engagement Cloud information like accounts, opportunities or leads. This adds context to the email and makes it available for the right audience in Engagement Cloud.
The attachments can be marked to be uploaded into Engagement Cloud also.
Emails can not only be uploaded to Engagement Cloud, they can be a trigger to make changes in Engagement Cloud also. Imagine an email confirmation from a customer makes you believe you managed to push an opportunity into the next sales stage.
This change can be made from within Outlook 365. No need to open Engagement Cloud inside a browser. Just open the opportunity in Outlook 365 …
… go into edit mode and update the opportunity sales stage. Notice how this all looks very similar to how the Enterprise Mobile App looks and works.
Once the email uploaded, and once the opportunity updated, there is still off course the possibility to directly navigate to Engagement Cloud to complete other activities if that would be needed
Conclusion
The result of sharing Outlook365 activities with Engagement Cloud (besides saving them from being deleted) is to share them off course with other Engagement Cloud users.
Sharing an email with an account or opportunity team shares the content of the email with the team and adds to the interaction history. Notice how the email content was copied into the activity description, the attachment was uploaded, and the activity was linked to the selected account and opportunity.
But there is more! Just like the mobile app, the Outlook 365 plugin allows you to perform those activities in Engagement Cloud that can occur when going through your email or managing your calendar …. without being in Engagement Cloud. They can be performed directly in Outlook 365. How amazing is that!
