Recently Salesforce announced the retirement of the “Salesforce for Outlook” application. Via a phased approach, functionalities will simultaneously stop working. In this article you can find more information regarding the impact and alternate solutions so you can keep integrating Salesforce and Outlook.
Before we start, how do you know what type of Outlook integration you are using?
Salesforce for Outlook (SFO) is an executable application (.exe) you need to install on your computer and allows users to sync your contacts and events as well as relating emails from your Outlook client to records in Salesforce.
Lightning for Outlook (LFO) (eg: Salesforce Add-In) has very similar functionalities as SFO but the big difference lies in the fact that this solution is cloud-based and the customizable panel allows you to use custom actions (eg: create a lead record), fields and even lightning flows. If you did your implementation at Customer Link chances are big that you’re using this integration.
What’s next & what steps do you need to take?
Salesforce for Outlook (SFO) retirement
Since Summer ’21, SFO users are no longer able to create Salesforce records from Outlook using the side panel action menu. Once the action menu is retired, the “new records” button will no longer be available in the side panel, and reps can no longer create Salesforce records from Outlook using SFO.
Once the product is fully retired, admins and users no longer have access to SFO features or the settings nor user assignments saved in Outlook configurations.
Important sidenote: there will be no impact to a customer’s existing contact, event, tasks, or email data because of the retirement.
As the full retirement is scheduled for June 2023, we recommend Salesforce users who are using the SFO application to already start preparing for the retirement as well as planning to move to a replacement product.
What about Lightning for Outlook (LFO)?
Chances are you’re using the cloud based LFO integration such as the Salesforce Add-In for instance. For this type of integrations, Salesforce announced some changes as well.
As of Winter ‘21, Lightning sync, used for syncing contacts and events will no longer be supported, all in-dept info can be found in this Salesforce article. Instead, Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) will be the long-term solution for syncing contacts and events between Microsoft or Google applications and Salesforce.
Standard, all organizations will have 100 free EAC licenses available. Meaning this will be the go to alternative to sync your contacts and events as well as automatically log emails to Salesforce. Automate logged emails via EAC will remain visible in Salesforce for 6 months. In case you want to extend this period, you can upgrade your EAC license.
IMPORTANT sidenote for you:
All manual actions such as manually creating a lead, contact, opportunity or manually logging an email will keep working. Also, manual logged emails will stay visible forever in Salesforce, only the automatically logged emails via EAC will remain visible for 6 months.
If you’re in doubt of the functionality your organization is using or what the impact will be in specific for you because of this retirement. Make sure you contact Customer Link’s supportteam via support@customerlink.be to guide you through this process.