What is Outlook For CiviCRM?

Outlook CiviCRM integration, allows Outlook to directly interact with CiviCRM using REST apis. Emails from Outlook are filed into CiviCRM as activities against the contacts. An Outlook plugin and this CiviCRM extension makes the interaction possible.

Features:

1. Select email recipients in Outlook originally created in CiviCRM
2. Choose groups in CiviCRM to synchronize to Outlook either automatically or manually
3. Synchronize many contact fields in CiviCRM to Outlook (work and other email, phone and address, custom contact fields, etc) without overwriting other custom Outlook contact fields not mapped to CiviCRM fields
4. Optionally delete contacts in Outlook no longer in synched CiviCRM groups
5. Record emails sent from Outlook as activities of recipient contacts in CiviCRM
6. Supports multiple attachments to emails
7. Uses email address deduplication to attach emails to the correct contact including creation of a new contact if they don't exist.
8. Prompts for duplicate contacts so that user can select which ones he wants to create the activity with.
9. Remembers deduplication settings so you dont have to continually pick the contact if exists multiple times in CiviCRM
10. Allows each CiviCRM user to have their own personal settings

Prerequisites:

1. Download and install extension for CiviCRM - https://github.com/veda-consulting/uk.co.vedaconsulting.outlookapi
2. Download plugin for Outlook - OutlookForCiviCRM Setup/OutlookForCiviCRM-vX.X.zip

Installation Steps for Outlook Plugin:

1. Extract your OutlookForCiviCRM.zip folder

2. Locate OutLookForCiviCRM-vX.X.msi, and double click to initiate installation

3. Installation Step 1:

 
(Press next button on this screen)

4. Installation Step 2:

 
To install it to different directory, press browse and select the same.
Press Next button.

5. Installation Step 3:

 
Press Next button.

6. And that’s it, that will install OutlookForCiviCRM on your system.

Now when you open Outlook you should be able to see a tab on the main menu called “OutlookForCiviCRM”.

Post Installation Configuration:

• Step 1: Open Outlook 2013, you should be able to see OutLookForCiviCRM tab on the top. (Click here if you can't see the tab)


• Step 2: Click on OutLookForCiviCRM tab. You would see "Verify your Account" form.

  

   

  



• Step 3: Enter url, api key and site key. Follow the help text instructions to fill in these fields and hit Connect button
• Url - Can be found on Administer >> System Settings >> Resource URLs screen in CiviCRM.
• Site key - Can be found in the civicrm.settings.php file labelled CIVICRM_SITE_KEY.
• Api key - You will need to enter an API key that will be used by plugin to update CiviCRM contacts and / or file activities. In CiviCRM, pickup and create api key for a contact who can login and has permission to update other contacts (can also be admin user). There are two methods of creating an API key in CiviCRM:
A. Using Manual Method -
• Enter the key (usually 32 digit random alphanumeric string) directly in the database table civicrm_contact into the field api_key using your database tool. That would normally be phpmyadmin, MySQL Workbench or something like that.
• If you are using Drupal, you may want to check for sure which CiviCRM contact ID you need to modify - to make sure proper Drupal user gets the permissions. To find out Drupal user ID match to CiviCRM contact ID, check the table civicrm_uf_match
• If you know the ID of the contact you want to update, the query would look like this: UPDATE civicrm_contact SET api_key = "your_key_you_made_up" WHERE id = "id_of_the_contact_you_want_to_update"
• Remember that this user has to have "Access AJAX API" permission and possibly others (see API security other permissions - http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/API+Security)
B. Using API Key Extension -
• There is an extension available called API Key at https://civicrm.org/extensions/api-key that makes the setting of API keys for users much easier.
• Once installed, an 'API Key' tab will be available on contact screens for which you are authorized to manage the API key for this contact. You are authorized either if the contact if yourself, or if you are an administrator with the 'edit all contacts' permission.
• You can then add an API key, Edit an exiting API key (with either manual input or an auto-generate feature) or Delete an API key (by setting it's value to blank).
Once api key is created in CiviCRM, choose the same to specify for the outlook plugin.


• Step 4: If the above credentials are correctly verified, you should see the following. You are now ready to file emails in CiviCRM

  

Additional settings:

• Prompt for All emails?: If this setting is enabled - While sending emails, you would always be asked whether you want to record this email in CiviCRM (A small pop up confirmation box would appear). If you don't want to be asked every time and just want to record every email you send, turn this setting off
• Remember Duplicate Contacts: If this setting is enabled - For eg: The person to whom you are sending an email might already exist in Civi or might have duplicate contacts. In that case you would be shown a box with the list of duplicate contacts ( last name, first name:: email address). If you chose certain contact, OutlookForCiviCRM would remember this and next time(while sending an email) if the same contact is found, it will automatically create an activity with the last chosen contact. No preferences would be saved if turned off.





• Step 5: Start by sending an email. Compose and email and record in CiviCRM.


• Step 6: Login to your CiviCRM website and you should see an activity of email type is created under your contact and is assigned to whom you sent an email.