Synchronize Microsoft Outlook Contacts to BrokerForce Sales Force Automation

How do I use my BrokerForce™ contacts with Microsoft Outlook™?

BrokerForce™ can integrate with Microsoft Outlook versions 97 and beyond. Your customer or vendor contacts can be shared with your Outlook contacts folder and calendar reminders can be set from within BrokerForce™ via the contacts communications journal. These capabilities are useful for sharing contact data with Pocket PC™, Palm Pilot™, ACT™, and Gold Mine™ products. The word "Vendor" may be substituted for "Customer" below when referring to categories.

When you click <Outlook Refresh> on the Customer or Vendor form in BrokerForce™:

1) The Outlook Contacts folder is examined for customer contact records that were not placed there by BrokerForce™. Only contacts that have a "BrokerForce™ Customer" Category designation and that have a Company Name are imported. Contacts without a company name or those with a Customer ID will be ignored. If you want to add a new customer contact to BrokerForce™ via your Outlook contacts folder, you must enter a company name and select or enter "BrokerForce™ Customer" as the Outlook contact's category.

2) If a record is found without these criteria, you will be prompted to let the process add the new contact to BrokerForce™. If the company name is new, a customer record will be added first and then the contact record will be added and associated with that company. Otherwise, the contact record will be associated with the existing customer record. The Outlook categories field will also be examined for the customer type, and status. If the status (Suspect, Prospect, or Active) is missing, the record will be appended as ‘Active’. The record will be removed from Outlook until it is refreshed in the next step.
Caution: If a company or contact name is spelled differently, this could result in a duplicate record being added. Click <No> if you want to skip a contact and continue with the review of other contacts.

3) You will be prompted to refresh your Outlook contacts. Important: Any changes made to the contact records within Outlook will be replaced and will not be propagated to BrokerForce™. If you click <Yes>, all of the Outlook customer contact records placed there by BrokerForce™ will be removed and refreshed with ‘Active’ status customer contacts. The refreshed contacts will be designated in Outlook as "BrokerForce™ Customer" category and have a BrokerForce™ Customer ID.

4) To view a customer contact's snapshot in Outlook, click <Notes>.

To export BrokerForce™ contacts for use with Outlook and Symantec ACT
1) Select the 'Contacts ASCII' entry from the EDI form's Export drop list.
2) Choose the path and file name for the intermediary export file. If you leave the file extension as *.csv, the file will be automatically recognized by most programs as a Windows Comma Separated Values file. Click <Export>. All of your BrokerForce™ contacts will be exported with the company name shown for customer contacts. Field names are included in the first row of data exported.

To import BrokerForce™ Contacts into Outlook
If you are not using Outlook 2000 or later and are using Outlook 97 or 98, the Map Custom Fields button will not be available during the import. A remedial patch must be downloaded from Microsoft to alleviate this condition so that the fields can be correctly mapped. For more information and a link to the download, see: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q182/7/28.ASP

1) Open Microsoft Outlook. Click the Contacts folder and, pending that you would like to keep your business contacts separate from your personal contacts, you may want to create a separate contact folder for them within Outlook by right-clicking the contacts folder and selecting <New Folder>.
2) In Outlook, select <File>, <Import and Export>, 'Import from another program', and 'Comma Separated Values (Windows)'. When prompted for the location of the file, <Browse> for and locate the file you created in step 2. Select your <Contacts> folder for the destination. Some contacts exported from BrokerForce™ may be duplicated if a contact is affiliated with more than one company. At this point you must decide if you want to allow duplicates in order to show all the companies with whom the contact is affiliated. To update previously imported data, select the 'Replace Duplicates with items imported' option. Click <Next>
3) Click <Map Custom Fields>. By default, this should correctly map the available information. If not, map BrokerForce™ fields to the corresponding Outlook fields by dragging each field from the window at left to the window on the right. Clicking the + to the left of any entry in the right window will show the related Outlook field choices for mapping.
4) Click <Ok>, and <Finish>.

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Microsoft Outlook and Pocket PC are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. ACT is a trademark of Symantec Corporation, and Palm Pilot is a trademark of Palm corporation.