Track Email Message Exchanges Between Salespeople and Contacts

Get more out of the communications between salespeople and your existing or potential customers by tracking email exchanges, and then turning them into actionable opportunities. Business Central can work with Exchange Online to keep a log of the inbound and outbound messages. You can view and analyze the contents of each message on the Interaction Log Entries page.

Set up Public Folders and Rules for Email Logging in Exchange Online

Before you can set up email logging, you must prepare your Exchange Online with public folders. You can do this in the Exchange admin center, or you can use the Exchange Management Shell.

Tip

If you want to use the Exchange Management Shell, you can find inspiration for how to set up your script in a sample script that we published to the BCTech repo.

The following list describes the main steps with links to learn more.

  • Create an admin role for public folders based on the information in the following table:

    Property Value
    Name Public Folders Management
    Selected roles Public Folders
    Selected members The email of the user account that Business Central will use to run the email logging job

    For more information, see Manage role groups.

  • Create a new public folder mailbox based on the information in the following table:

    Property Value
    Name Public MailBox

    For more information, see Create a public folder mailbox in Exchange Server.

  • Create new public folders

    • Create a new public folder with the name Email Logging in the root so that the full path to the folder becomes \Email Logging\
    • Create two subfolders so that the the result is the following full paths to the folders:
      • \Email Logging\Queue\
      • \Email Logging\Storage\

    For more information, see Create a public folder.

  • Mail-enable the Queue public folder

    For more information, see Mail-enable or mail-disable a public folder

  • Mail-enable sending emails to the Queue public folder using Outlook or the Exchange Management Shell

    For more information, see Allow anonymous users to send email to a mail-enabled public folder

  • Set the email logging user as an owner of both public folders, Queue and Storage public folders using Outlook or the Exchange Management Shell based on the information in the following table:

    Property Value
    User The email of the user account that Business Central will use to run the email logging job
    Permission level Owner

    For more information, see Assign permissions to the public folder.

  • Create two mail flow rules based on the information in the following table

    Purpose Name Conditions Action
    A rule for incoming email Log Email Sent to This Organization The sender is located Outside the organization, and the recipient is located Inside the organization BCC the email account that is specified for the Queue public folder
    A rule for outgoing email Log Email Sent from This Organization The sender is located Inside the organization, and the recipient is located Outside the organization BCC the email account that is specified for the Queue public folder

    For more information, see Manage mail flow rules in Exchange Online and Mail flow rule actions in Exchange Online.

Note

If you make changes in the Exchange Management Shell, the changes become visible in the Exchange admin center after a delay. Also, the changes made in Exchange will be available in Business Central after a delay.

Next, you connect Business Central with Exchange Online.

Setting Up Business Central to Log Email Messages

Get started with email logging in two easy steps:

  1. Connect Business Central with Exchange Online for your Office 365 subscription. Exchange Online handles your email messages. We've made this step easy by providing an assisted setup guide. You just need your administrator credentials for your administrator account in Office 365. To start the guide, go to Assisted Setup, and then choose Set up email logging.

  2. Make sure that valid email addresses have been entered in Business Central for your sales people and contacts, depending on whether they are potential or existing customers. To do that, for each customer or salesperson, open the Contact or Salesperson/Purchaser card and have a look in the Email field.

Tip

After you complete the steps in the guide you can check whether the connection was successful. Search for Marketing Setup, choose Process, then Functions, and then Validate Email Logging Setup.

Viewing Email Message Exchanges in the Interaction Log

Business Central creates an entry on the Interaction Log page each time a salesperson and a contact exchange an email message. To view the interaction log, open the Contact or Salesperson*Purchaser card for the person, and then choose Navigate, History, and then choose Interaction Log Entries. There are a few things we can do with each entry in the log, for example:

  • View the content of the email message that was exchanged by clicking the Show Attachments action.
  • Turn an email exchange into a sales opportunity - If an entry looks promising, you can turn it into an opportunity and then manage its progress toward a sale. To do that, choose the entry, and then choose the Create Opportunity action. For more information, see Managing Sales Opportunities.

See Also

Managing Relationships