Many people ask me, ‘Brett, you teach the same SalesLogix classes over and over again, doesn't it get boring?' To their surprise, my answer is always ‘No!'. Why is that? Because whether it be an Administrator class, or a standard End User class, I am always on the receiving end of a steady stream of questions - some that I hear over and over, and can answer on the spot, and others that take time and research to answer. The latter is definitely my favorite.

One topic that leads to questions that often fit into the latter, and is never exceptionally easy to teach, is the Outlook Integration piece. There are a lot of options to choose from in order to set up Outlook Integration for you organization, and it is not uncommon for me to get some blank stares as I go through this section in training. Whether you've been using some form of Outlook Integration with SalesLogix for years, or you are brand new to this whole topic, you are bound to pick up something from all of this.

Let's start with the basics, shall we? Let's assume in this case, you have Outlook installed, and you are using the SalesLogix 7.5 LAN client...
First of all, if the install was done correctly, you should have the SalesLogix buttons in Outlook, which allow you to interact and save information in SalesLogix with a simple click. I am not going to go into a lot of detail here, but these are a slam dunk. They exist out of the box, and all you need to do is have Outlook installed and setup, and then install the SalesLogix client.

So... your email is covered. We can get relevant emails into SalesLogix very easily with those buttons. Of course, we want more though... we want activities to come over to our Outlook calendar. The most simplistic way to make this happen is to turn on Advanced Outlook Integration. What does this do, you ask? First of all, for the WHOLE ORGANIZATION (every SalesLogix user), meetings and phone calls scheduled in SalesLogix will zip right over to your Outlook calendar, and be shown there as Appointments. Important - meetings and phone calls only! Again, this is for EVERYONE, and there is no option to turn this off for some users. Make sure your users all understand what is happening before you turn this on! One more feature here, is that when scheduling a phone call or meeting, you will get another tab that will allow you the ability to pick out contacts, or other SalesLogix users and invite them via an Outlook invite. Be careful here, as whatever information you type into the notes will be included in this invite as well!

More advanced than Advanced Outlook Integration to come...