Email tracking in Dynamics 365 CRM

Get a comprehensive overview of all your emails.

What is Email Tracking in Dynamics 365?

Email tracking links your inbox to Dynamics 365 CRM, enabling you to save all relevant emails directly into your CRM system.

Email tracking can result in improved oversight and increased efficiency throughout your business. With Email Tracking in Dynamics 365, you can ensure that you always have the right information, and that essential emails are always easily accessible where they are needed.

Improved oversight and increased efficiency with email tracking.

With email tracking between Dynamics 365 and Outlook, for example, you can link emails to a specific contact person in your CRM system. Afterwards, you can find all tracked emails on the contact person’s timeline in Dynamics 365.

Emails can also be linked to many other objects in your CRM system, such as companies, leads, and sales opportunities.

With email tracking, you can avoid searching through your inbox, as you can find all tracked emails directly in Dynamics 365. This helps to increase oversight and make it far more efficient to find relevant emails.

Various forms of email tracking in Dynamics 365.

There are different ways to do email tracking in Dynamics 365 and Outlook. Manual tracking provides precise control over what and how emails are tracked. With automatic tracking, you set up a set of rules for how the system tracks emails. Finally, there is folder tracking, where folders in your inbox are linked to objects in Dynamics 365 such as companies, contacts, sales opportunities or similar.

By Dennis Rasmussen, Office365/Dynamics365 Consultant, Micropartner

Manual Email Tracking in Dynamics 365 and Outlook

Here, you have to manually choose which emails to track and which object in Dynamics 365 the email should be tracked to.

How does tracking work?

  • Step 1

    You open an email in your Outlook inbox and open your Dynamics 365 tab directly within the email.

  • Step 2

    The email is tracked using the “Track” option.

    Step 2

  • Step 3

    you can link the email directly to companies, contacts, leads, opportunities, or knowledge base articles in the Dynamics 365 system.

    It’s only possible to track so specifically with manual tracking.

Benefits and drawbacks of manual email tracking

  • Specific tracking with “set regarding” makes the Dynamic 365 timeline much more useful than just tracking all emails. It is typically not worth tracking all emails, as emails without relevant information just make it harder to find something useful.

  • Specific email tracking on an individual email basis is only possible with manual tracking. This is considered a best practice in the vast majority of cases where email tracking is used.

  • Manual tracking needs to be done on all relevant emails, and this takes a little time per email.

  • The organization does not have the same level of control over what is tracked and what is not tracked compared to automatic tracking.

Example of email tracking in Outlook. On the right side, you can see Dynamics 365 directly in Outlook. Here, the email is tracked to the company Coho Vinery and the contact person Jim Glynn.

Automatic Email Tracking in Dynamics 365 and Outlook

There are several options for automatically tracking emails, so the employee doesn’t have to do anything.

  • Track all mails

    Her spores alle emails, der relateret til Costumer Engagement. Hvis du vælger denne mulighed, vil Dynamics 365 spore samtlige emails, dette kan også inkludere junk-emails ud over forretningsrelevante emails. Denne mulighed anbefales generelt ikke.

  • Track all emails from Dynamics 365 contacts, leads, and companies.

    This only tracks an email if it comes from a sender registered in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement as a contact, company, or lead. This is recommended only if there is a low frequency of emails from your contacts.

  • Track emails from Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement records where email is enabled.

    Track emails from all record types, including custom record types, that contain an email address field.

Benefits and drawbacks of Automatic Email Tracking

  • It runs completely automatically, and the employee does not have to spend time in their workflow, which can streamline their workday.

  • There are no human errors, as all emails that meet the criteria are tracked.

  • The organization can control the rules for what is tracked and what is not tracked.

  • Automatic email tracking cannot track specifically to cases, leads, and opportunities, which makes it less useful compared to manual tracking.

  • Automatic email tracking can create unnecessary clutter in the timeline in Dynamics 365, as it does not sort and select as specifically as manual tracking.

Email tracking through folders in Outlook.

Folders in Outlook can be linked to contacts, companies, leads, cases, or opportunities in Dynamics 365. You can use manual folder tracking, where the employee has to move each email that needs to be tracked.

It is also possible to set up rules for automatically routing emails to specific folders. For example, you can set up a rule so that all emails from a MicroPartner contact are automatically moved to a MicroPartner folder, which is then linked to the MicroPartner company in Dynamics 365.

Benefits and drawbacks of Email Tracking via Folders in Outlook

  • It creates order in your inbox, and it is easy to locate emails in your folders.

  • Effective and simple for smaller businesses with a few associated companies and contacts.

  • The maximum number of tracked folders is relatively low per user, so this method typically only works for smaller businesses.

  • Increased risk of errors with manual moving, if an email is accidentally placed in the wrong folder.

  • Cannot track to a specific case, lead, or opportunity without creating a new specific folder or subfolder with a new specific rule attached.

  • Automatic routing of emails to folders has the same drawbacks as automatic email tracking – it is not specific and can create clutter with tracking unnecessary emails.

Benefits and drawbacks of Automatic Email Tracking

  • It runs completely automatically, and the employee does not have to spend time in their workflow, which can streamline their workday.

  • There are no human errors, as all emails that meet the criteria are tracked.

  • The organization can control the rules for what is tracked and what is not tracked.

  • Automatic email tracking cannot track specifically to cases, leads, and opportunities, which makes it less useful compared to manual tracking.

  • Automatic email tracking can create unnecessary clutter in the timeline in Dynamics 365, as it does not sort and select as specifically as manual tracking.

Example of email tracking between Dynamics 365 and Outlook. Here you can see the email linked to the company record in Dynamics 365. All tracked emails can be found in the timeline, which is in the middle of the screen.

Email Tracking is a great tool – if used correctly.

Email tracking is a powerful tool in a busy workday, where overview of information and communication plays a crucial role. Therefore, it is important that email tracking is set up correctly and the workflow with email tracking is used optimally.

If you need help implementing email tracking in your company or just want to learn more about the exciting possibilities, MicroPartner is ready to assist you.

Contact us to learn more or to schedule a free demo

Our team of experienced and dedicated consultants are always ready to help and guide you so you can make the best decision. Whether you need advice or if you want a personal demonstration, we are ready to assist you.

Contact us today through the form below, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

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