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Salesforce for Outlook will be retired in December 2020 when Lightning Experience ends extended support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.
Most of our Salentica Elements clients are NOT USING the Salesforce for Outlook tool, but rather have already been set up with the Outlook Integration. Only if you're one of the exceptions, using an old version of Outlook, 2010 or prior, will you need to continue reading.
Recently Salesforce has made key advancements on their next-generation Microsoft integration products: the Outlook Integration and Einstein Activity Capture. These products not only replace Salesforce for Outlook, but also deliver solutions in areas where customers have reported that Salesforce for Outlook falls short.
How will orgs be impacted by this change?
After retirement, admins and users no longer have access to Salesforce for Outlook features or the settings and user assignments saved in Outlook configurations. There is no impact to a customer’s existing contact, event, task, or email data as a result of the retirement.
Data Impact
Admins and users lose access to Outlook configurations only. All other Salesforce and Microsoft Outlook data remains unaffected.
- Users do not lose any Microsoft Outlook data that has synced to Salesforce before the December 2020 product retirement. That is, any information from Microsoft Outlook contacts, events, tasks, or emails that were added or synced to Salesforce remains in Salesforce.
- After the December 2020 retirement, admins and users will lose access to their Outlook configurations. Outlook configurations are the admin- or user-configured collection of Salesforce for Outlook settings that determine how users sync, which users sync, which features users have access to, and some additional product settings.
Feature Impact
Users lose access to all Salesforce for Outlook functionality and settings:
- Contacts, events, or tasks no longer sync between Salesforce and Microsoft Outlook. From the Salesforce for Outlook side panel, users won’t be able to connect to Salesforce, nor can they use any of the features there.
- Customers won’t be able to update settings or use features available from the Salesforce for Outlook icon on the Microsoft Windows desktop system tray.
- The Outlook Configurations page won’t be accessible from Salesforce Setup, so admins can’t access, create, or edit Outlook configurations.
- The Salesforce for Outlook page won’t be available from users’ Personal Settings, so users can’t download Salesforce for Outlook or view their Outlook configurations from Salesforce.
- Unresolved Items no longer lists unmatched syncing or associated items resulting from Salesforce for Outlook. Unresolved Items remain available for other products, like Einstein Activity Capture Lightning Sync, and Email to Salesforce.
How can Salesforce admins identify that their users that are impacted?
From Salesforce Setup, admins can refer to the Salesforce for Outlook login history report and export a .csv file to see who’s logged in over the last 6 months. If a more comprehensive list is needed of all users who have access to Salesforce for Outlook, admins can check Outlook configuration assignments to see which of their users are assigned to sync, access the side panel, and more.
What is the replacement and what are the key differences between the legacy product and the replacement?
Salesforce offers the following products to replace Salesforce for Outlook functionality:
- Outlook Integration (replaces the Salesforce side panel experience, where reps can see Salesforce records and use some Salesforce features directly from Outlook)
- Einstein Activity Capture (replaces contact and event sync)
For more details on the benefits of the replacement products, see Learn About the Next-Generation Microsoft Integration Products.
Customers should familiarize themselves with the scenarios in which the next-generation features are not able to replace Salesforce for Outlook. The following list includes a high-level glance at some of the differences.
- While Salesforce for Outlook can connect Salesforce to Microsoft Outlook 2010 and Microsoft Exchange 2010, our next-generation products are not compatible with those Microsoft applications. Microsoft is planning to end support for those applications. To continue integrating Microsoft with Salesforce, we encourage customers to migrate to versions of Outlook and Exchange that both Microsoft and Salesforce support. For details, see Learn About the Support Differences Between Salesforce for Outlook and the Next-Generation Products.
- Like Salesforce for Outlook, the Outlook Integration will not support IE11 after December 2020. For details about browsers supported by the Outlook Integration, see Outlook Integration System Requirements.
