If you spend most of your day sending and receiving e-mail in Outlook, you have a lot of customer information in your contact list. Now that you are working in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for Outlook, wouldn't it be great to move that information into Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online? You can use the Track in CRM button on the CRM menu to add and link contacts one at a time, but if you have dozens, or even hundreds of contacts, then you can use the Add Contacts Wizard to add them all at once.
The Add Contacts Wizard takes your contact records and creates records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and then links the records together.
Understanding Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online contacts and accounts
Outlook does not differentiate between contacts for people and for businesses. You enter them all in the same form. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, information about people and information about businesses are kept in different types of records:
- Contact records represent individuals who purchase products or services, or who are employees of accounts. A contact may also be a person involved in a business transction, such as a supplier or a colleague.
- Account records represent companies that your organization does business with, either as customers or suppliers. Accounts can have contacts and subaccounts associated with them and can be used to track competitors and vendors.
The Add Contacts Wizard adds your Outlook contacts as Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online contact records.
Organizing your contacts in Outlook
Before you start adding your contacts to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, there are some optional organizational and clean-up tasks that you can do in Outlook to make it easier for you to select contacts. This will also help ensure that the information is added to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online correctly. All of these tasks are performed in Outlook.
- Set up color categories and use them to sort your contacts. At a minimum, you can use categories to mark any private contacts, or contacts that you don't want to include in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Conversely, you could also use categories as a way to group contacts that you do want to have in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online that aren't from one company or domain.
- Verify that you are consistently using the same name and spelling in the Company field.
- Add a Contacts folder to sort your contacts. You could use a folder to hold all of your contacts that are businesses, for example, and not people.
- Remove or merge duplicate entries.
- Add contacts from other e-mail systems, such as Hotmail.
For more information, search the Help in Outlook for "organize your contacts."
Running the wizard
The wizard is started from Outlook.
- In Outlook, on the CRM menu, click Add Contacts.
- Review the overview, and then click Next.
- Select which Outlook contact folder you want to use. You may not have set up a folder. Click Next.
Note
You cannot select a delegated contact folder.
- Select how you want your contacts to be grouped.
- Categories are the colors and labels that you set up to organize items in Outlook. You may not have done this, or you may not have labeled contacts with categories.
- Domain is the part of the e-mail address after the @ symbol, for example, "@microsoft.com." All of the contacts with the same domain can be added at the same time.
- Company name is a free-form text field in the Contact form. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online looks for exact matches. "Microsoft" and "Microsoft Corp", for example, will not be grouped together.
- Click Next.
- Review the list of names and select which groups you want to add.
Tip
If you are finding that the groupings are too spread out, for example, there are too many variations of the company name, it may be easier to cancel the wizard and go back to Outlook and reorganize.
- To select a regarding Account record, click the down arrow in the Set Regarding column. You can either use the suggested name, select an existing one, or leave it blank to do manually with each new contact record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
- If you want the existing e-mail communications and appointments for the new contacts to also be added and linked in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, select the check box.
- Click Next to start adding contacts.
- In the Finish Import tab, you can see the total number of records added to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Click OK to close the wizard.
Note
This page will also show you the potential duplicates you may have created because the contact already existed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. You can use the Duplicate Detection feature to manage these duplicates. Learn more: Video: Cleaning up duplicate data
Running the wizard again
You can run the wizard more than once and select different groupings. If you select a grouping that already contains Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online records that are linked to your Outlook contacts, the wizard displays a color to warn you.
The column in front of the Set Regarding column indicates how many of the contacts are already linked to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online records.
- Green - 100% of the contacts are already in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
- Yellow - More than 50% of the contacts are already in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
- Red - At least one contact is already in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
The wizard will not create new records that have already been added, but will update the Set Regarding field based upon your selection in the wizard.
Related Links
Key steps to get started with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for Outlook
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