5 Things We Love About the Integration Between Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics 365 (CRM)

Microsoft Office 365 offers a suite of productivity tools, fully integrated to Microsoft Dynamics 365. Well-known applications like Outlook, Excel, SharePoint and OneNote are complemented with a set of cloud-based tools that improve collaboration, communication and productivity in the workplace. At JOVACO Solutions, we love the mobility and accessibility offered by this integration, and make use of it in our daily processes.

Here are 5 different ways you too can benefit from it:

1. Our teams work daily with SharePoint to share documents and resources from a common portal. This improves collaboration and teamwork, while also reducing delays as everyone can work simultaneously on a given Word document. When a document linking to an opportunity or service request is created, it automatically creates a new path, making it easy to retrace your path within a client account.
2. We also make use of OneNote, a digital notebook that lets you take notes, highlight items, record voice memos, add files, and even draw. Notebooks can be linked to entities such as accounts, opportunities and cases, and can then be accessed by all involved team members so that they can add their own notes, improving collaboration and visibility.
3. You can edit CRM views and lists in just a few clicks, thanks to the integration to Excel Online. Make your changes, press save, and the modifications are immediately reflected in Dynamics 365. For more advanced data manipulations, you can easily import the information, modify it in Excel, then reimport it to the CRM.
4. Our sales team also loves the integration to Outlook. Client information can be accessed and updated directly from Outlook without having to switch between applications. Emails can be linked to the relevant account for quick reference later, and subsequent emails will also be automatically tracked in Dynamics 365.
5. The integration to Word also lets us access templates to quickly generate quotes, proposals and statements of work. This makes document generation a lot faster and ensures that branding and content is standardized across all documents that are sent out from our company.

These are just a few ways that the integration between Office 365 and Dynamics 365 allows us to increase productivity, improve access and mobility, as well as promote collaboration and teamwork. As the applications are always up to date thanks to the cloud, adopting Office 365 within your organization also means reducing infrastructure and maintenance costs, while putting a suite of proven and robust applications at your employees' disposal. Your staff members are likely already familiar with these tools, ensuring a high user adoption rate.

By JOVACO Solutions, Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration specialist in Quebec