Infor CRM Sync for Exchange(beta) first look

I’ve been testing the all new integration solution for Infor CRM and Microsoft Exchange.  This new software is very different than the previous server-side solution called ExchangeLink.  The new integration solution is powered by web services rather than using a database type connection like ExchangeLink uses.  This is significant because it can work with hosted Exchange including Office 365.  There is no actual software to install except for the 5 small bundles contained in the .zip file.  Once the bundles are installed, you begin the configuration process all from within the Administration area of the Infor CRM web client.  One exception is that you must activate “Impersonation” for one of the Exchange users because that user can then read and write all of the changes and additions for all of the other users Exchange accounts which saves a lot of set up time.  Setting this impersonation user up in Office 365 took me less then a minute.

The new Exchange Sync allows you to set one-way or two-way sync for your Calendar, Tasks, Contacts and also now emails.  Syncing emails is significant because instead of your users having to click the Send to CRM and Save to CRM buttons in their Windows Outlook client, the Exchange Integration does it all automatically for any email where it finds a matching email address in Infor CRM. What’s more is that regardless of which Exchange email client you are using, Mac, OWA on a smartphone or the Office 365 web client, all of your matched emails create a history record in Infor CRM, cool.

One potential down side to the new Exchange sync is latency.  This sync process is not a push in real time however, you can set the sync interval to as short as every minute to keep things moving around.  Once my initial sync completed, updates were taking less then one second to process once the sync job fired.  Something else I noticed is that calendar items that synced to Exchange from Infor contain the linked contacts Account name and the Contacts phone number in the notes area, very handy.

I will continue to post updates as I continue my testing but so far, this is a winner.