Business Central CRM Email – Dynamics 365 Business Central Community

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During demo engagements I often get asked to demo BC CRM. This can be because it’s a good fit or a best of breed CRM is currently out of reach. As part of this they want to know how much can be done with emails – the bread and butter of CRM. There are a few different uses of the term “Email” in BC and how a user can send or review emails. I had to create a guide on each area so thought it might be worth a share. Given this is CRM focused it is worth noting that these features work with contacts*. I will cover the following email situations:

  • Outlook synchronisation (this is the main topic to cover)
    • From Outlook add-in
    • From within BC client
  • Create Interactions
  • Send By Email
  • Segments
  • Sending documents (*this works without contacts)

Outlook synchronization

For details on how to setup this up check out this video: https://youtu.be/LXum6xzpRxE

Once the main setup has been done each user will be setup like so and will have a new folder added to Outlook called “Queue”. Jump to the bottom of the blog for new user setup tips

If contacts in BC is a new concept the easiest way to get up and running is using the BC Outlook add-in. Brand new contact from the lens of the BC Outlook add-in will ask to create a contact for the email address. This is the simplest way to get moving with contacts if you don’t have them in place already:

Creates a contact record – which is essentially a copy of the contacts you store in Outlook:

Respond to the email in Outlook as you would usually do. For the original email and the response entries are placed in the special “Queue” folder:

The “Queue” folder can be emptied if the above codeunit is running on the job queue.

Once the job queue has run it will bring in the emails to the interaction log entries:

*note the “Salesperson Code” depicts who the email is to/from. The “User ID” is in fact the user which originally set up the integration.

If a user chooses “Show Attachments”

It will display this message:

Which opens a new tab with the email from Outlook

If you reply in outlook, then the email will be available to view in the Interaction Log Entries – which you can open as shown before:

Detail is all available on the contact card:

What about if you use the “Send Email” feature in BC?

I’m choosing it from the Outlook add-in here but it is the same in the BC web client too

That also goes into the Outlook “queue” folder. The “Send Email” feature allows you to send as a different email address (the from address). If that isn’t a user synchronised with BC then the email will not go to the interaction log entries.

When done with the “current user” the email will appear in both the “Sent Items” and the “Queue” folders:

Once an email has been passed to BC the “Queue” folder will no longer contain the email. Because you have done this in BC you can also see the entries in another location, other than the Interaction Log Entries:

The Interaction Log Entries also has a copy just like before

The “Queue” is accessible by other users so you can see email traffic that has gone to BC defined contacts:

Different user accounts inbox view

What about seeing the BC details from Outlook? From the add-in you can access interaction log entries in a couple of places:

Drilldown on the

Create Interactions

“Create Interactions” is an action users see in scenarios where contacts are in use. It is available directly on the contact, opportunities, tasks or on the interaction log entries page. When using the feature you are effectively calling upon ready to go email or attachment templates.

Here is a basic free type email interaction to a contact
This pops open the BC email page before sending and adds it to the contact card in the “History” section:
The “Queue” folder will receive an entry too

What’s confusing about this is that you end up with two interaction log entries. One is the one instantly created by using the feature and the second is part of the Outlook synchronisation:

If the user clicks on the “Attachment” for the entry for Outlook it pops the message from earlier

If you choose the none Outlook one it opens a page like this:

How do you tell the difference? Use the “Email Logged” field as “TRUE” with a filter

Segments

The exception to this rule, if you use the “Segments” feature which uses interactions you do not get the duplication in the interaction log entries.

Here are some previously logged segments where specific contacts have been targeted. Can be for sales, marketing or customer service purposes.
When a user chooses an entry it will just show it in the preview page and not by opening Outlook

Sending Documents

The last email scenario a user can do is for documents. Posted Sales Invoice for example has 2 email related buttons but they both result in the same thing ultimately, however the 1st to the left asks an extra question about the output

Extra page which is shown when using the 1st “Send” email option

This will also create an interaction log entry:

And show it in your users “Sent Items”:

New User Setup

If a new user wants to have their emails synched then they’ll need to firstly be setup in the user setup page and have a “Salespers./Purch. Code” assigned to them.

Following on from that the user will need to have their account synched. Access the above page from the early shown “Exchange Sync. Setup”. Add the “Queue” folder by choosing “Add Favorite” in Outlook. The “Queue” folder will be one of the options available to the user. If the new user doesn’t see any results in the Outlook “Queue” folder straight away don’t be surprised. Other users who have been connected for a while will see their activity though:
If you the user doesn’t get access to the folder then you can logon to exchange and force the issue by adding them to the public folder
New entries have the “JA” Salesperson Code

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