Microsoft recently announced the General Availability of the CRM Online Spring Release ‘15 and we wanted to share yet another one of the new features that has been rolled out to CRM Online. This post will cover the new Folder Level Tracking feature that CRM Online users should start seeing, and CRM On Prem users should hopefully see in the near future.
What is it?
Folder Level Tracking is another way for users to track emails in Dynamics CRM from Exchange. With Folder Level Tracking, you don’t need to have the CRM Outlook Client installed. This means that Folder Level Tracking will work with native mobile apps. For example, if you use a Windows Phone, you can move emails from Exchange to CRM by directly using your Windows phone and we’ll describe how below.
How does it work? Well there are two main scenarios that Folder Level Tracking supports:
- Quick Track:
- This is the scenario where you want emails to quickly be tracked in CRM without setting a regarding.
- This is equivalent of clicking the “Track” button alone in the current CRM Outlook Client
- Users can move emails to a specific folder (e.g., “Track in CRM”) and all emails moved to that folder will be tracked in CRM automatically
- Set Regarding:
- This scenario is where your emails will be tracked in CRM, and be regarding a specific record in CRM
- This is equivalent of clicking the “Set Regarding” button in the current CRM Outlook Client
How do you set it up?
Folder Level Tracking has a few requirements for it to work. First there are system level settings that need to be enabled.
- First off, Server Side Synchronization needs to be enabled and configured within CRM System Settings
- Also, Folder Level Tracking needs to be enabled within CRM System Settings
- The User’s Mailbox in CRM also needs to be setup and enabled
Now the users themselves also have to go within their Personal Options –> Emails –> Configure Folder Tracking Rules. From here they can select the Exchange Folder, and then the CRM Record (optional) they want to track the emails against.
As you can see from above and as stated earlier, these are user specific configuration rules so each user can have their own synchronization setup. That’s it! Pretty simple right?
What does this mean for me:
This is a new powerful option to track emails. The beauty of this is that you don’t need to have a separate client installed, but it’ll work with any native client you’ve been using for emails. This is available for ALL mail apps on ALL devices.
There are a few tips we recommend when using this option.
- You can setup Exchange rules to move emails to specific folders (including the generic “Track in CRM”) to have the emails automatically track in CRM based on your Folder Level Tracking configuration rules
- As stated above, you can move emails using your native mail clients (Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, etc.) and have the Folder Level Tracking rules apply and create the email in CRM
A few notes that you should be aware of:
- The mapping between the Exchange Folder and CRM Record are using their respective ID’s, so you can change the name of the Folder or Record, and the tracking will still work.
- If an email is already tracked, and you remove it from the Exchange folder, it WILL NOT be removed from CRM. It will remain to be tracked.
- Removing a rule WILL NOT remove / delete the emails from CRM that were tracked because of it
- There is SDK support to manage the configuration rules (create, retrieve, modify)
- You can always specify a regarding for your rule at a later time if you don’t set it up upon create
- The Folder list in the Rule UI is updated periodically when the mailbox is synced via Server Side Sync and the last sync displayed on the mapping dialog
I hope you’re as excited for this new feature as I am. I’ve been a part of many mobile projects where the CRM Outlook Client isn’t installed (can’t be installed), yet the client wants to send an email from the device and have it tracked in CRM. To date there’s been no simple way to use the native mail client, and have those emails tracked, but Folder Level Tracking should solve that problem. Enjoy!