How to integrate Business Central and an Outlook account

Microsoft has put in major work to make their products one-stop-shops in terms of integrations with other features and applications—all in the name of boosting productivity. It can be disruptive to toggle between multiple applications, workspaces, and windows, and a helpful feature can help you send documents directly from Dynamics 365 Business Central to save time and simplify processes like quotes and invoicing while managing business interactions with customer and vendors.  

Integrating an email account to Business Central using an Outlook add-in can help users better keep track of which documents are sent to which contacts. Here’s how you can integrate Business Central with Outlook, plus a few of the scenarios where you’d want to use this helpful feature. 

When to use this integration feature

Keep in mind that users must have administrator rights in Microsoft 365 and Business Central to set up this integration, as well as enabled add-in access. Not sure if you have add-in access? Learn more and check out this information for adding Outlook add-ins manually. 

Using this add-in synchronizes messages, contacts, and even meeting appointments between Business Central and your Outlook account, with the ability to set filters to control which contacts are synced and viewable as needed. The integration allows you to access Business Central data like contacts and vendors from within Outlook as well—even letting you create and send orders, quotes, invoices, and other Business Central Documents from Outlook. While in Outlook, you can open a customer’s company card and find an overview of their information as well as relevant documents (which you can easily navigate through using a quick document lookup feature), a contact or account’s sales history, and the ability to create new Business Central contacts right from the Outlook window.  

So, what are some of the scenarios where this feature could come in handy? 

Let’s say you have received an email from a customer requesting a quote—quite the common occurrence. Users can view the customer’s contact card information, create a sales quote, enter data, and post it without ever navigating away from the Outlook window. This feature also enables users to create invoices for billable appointments from within the appointment view by opening the Business Central add-in within Outlook.  

Courtesy of Microsoft.

The Outlook outbox in Business Central also lets users create draft emails, attach outbound documents, and send invoices from within the same window, eliminating the need to navigate back and forth between windows and applications. That way, outbound sales orders and invoices can be sent without the hassle of saving a document as a PDF and uploading the correct attachment in an email.

Here's how you can get started with this add-in using the timesaving assisted setup guides in Business Central: 

How to set up email functionality within Business Central

Courtesy of Microsoft.

To set up the email functionality within Business Central, navigate to the Setup & Extensions menu item and select the Assisted Setup page—or, select the Search icon and type in “Assisted Setup.” From there, select the “Set up email” guide and follow along with the setup guide prompts.

You will be prompted to select an email provider—although several types of inboxes can be integrated, it’s recommended that an Outlook inbox is used as add-ins are designed to be used with Microsoft 365 products. Select “Microsoft 365” as the email provider and enter your email address and password. You will be able to send a test email to ensure the setup was successful and then finish the setup guide.  

To set up the Outlook integration in Business Central, navigate back to the Assisted Setup page and select the “Set up your Business Inbox in Outlook” guide. You will be prompted to choose between setting up your own inbox or your entire organization—select “My mailbox” and follow the remaining prompts to finish the setup guide.  

Setting up email logging and interaction tracking

There are also additional features you can enable through the Outlook integration with Business Central that can aid in interaction tracking through emails with clients and prospects. Setting up email logging allows users to track emails and log interactions between Business Central users, customers, and prospects. To enable this feature, open the Assisted Setup page and run the “Set up email logging” guide. From there, you will need to login to Microsoft 365 using an administrator account, and then accept the default settings. Follow along with the remaining steps to finish the setup, then navigate to the Marketing Setup Page and select “Actions,” then “Functions,” and then click “Validate Email Logging Setup” where a message will popup saying the email logging setup was successfully validated and completed.  

Courtesy of Microsoft.

Administrators can also manage customer relationships by setting up tracking for interactions between specific salespeople and potential or existing customers. From the Sales and Relationship Manager Role Center, open the Salesperson List page, and enter the email addresses of the users you’d like to enable this functionality for. Then, do the same for contacts on the Contact List page. 

To check the interactions, open either the Contact List or Salesperson List, choose the specific entry, then navigate to the interaction log entries—which show all interactions between a salesperson and a contact. From the interaction log entries list, users can convert interactions to opportunities and being the opportunity management process using the guided steps within the sales cycle.