Outlook Email Plugin
The purpose of the Outlook Plugin is to capture information from emails that are sent and/or received from people that have a corresponding record that exists within your platform, this information is then stored under ‘user communications’ and ‘company communications’.
Once installed, the plugin allows Outlook emails to be stored in the Communications area of your accessplanit platform, making them easily accessible to yourself and your colleagues.
Using the Outlook Plugin
The plugin is not Mac compatible and you will need to be running Outlook version 2010 or later to use the plugin. It is also not compatible with the web app version of Outlook.
This is a chargeable module/integration, please speak to your CSM if you would like any more information about this feature.
Downloading the Outlook Plugin
The Outlook Plugin is a separate piece of software that you can access via your Implementation Manager if you are in your implementation project, or via your Customer Success Manager if you are no long in implementation.
Your Implementation Manager or Customer Success Manager will send you a link to download the accessplanit Outlook Plugin.
Once you have received the link and you are ready to install the Outlook Plugin, you will need to close your Outlook application on your computer before running the installation.
Setting up the Outlook Plugin
To configure the Outlook Plugin, open Microsoft Outlook.
Go to the toolbar at the top of the screen. Left click the small arrow beneath the tile.
When the Settings dialog box opens, enter the following information:
Accessplan URL: Your accessplanit system config (e.g. tesco.accessplanit.com)
User ID: Your accessplanit User ID.
Password: Your accessplanit Password.
When entering the URL, only enter the first word, e.g. 'tesco' then tab out of the text box.
You can then decide how you wish to configure the remaining settings of the Outlook Plugin:
Auto Link Conversations Enabled
If this option is enabled, any emails that you receive that have a corresponding email address within accessplanit will be copied directly into the Communications area of accessplanit. If this option is disabled, emails will have to be linked to accessplanit manually.
Work Offline Feature Enabled
This option is not currently available.
Debugging Enabled
With this option enabled, information regarding any errors found in the plugin will be reported back to accessplanit. Generally, you don't need this enabled unless you're experiencing problems with the plugin.
Email body formatting option
This area is used to determine how emails display within the Communications area of accessplanit. There are three possible settings:
Plain Text (Keep Line Breaks) - this is the default and is the recommended setting. This displays the Communication in plain text and keeps the original line breaks of the email to make the communication easier to read.
HTML - this copies over the full HTML and keeps the formatting of the original HTML email.
Plain Text - this option displays the whole email as one block of text. We don't recommend using this setting, as it can be difficult to read.
After configuring the remaining settings, click Validate. This will check that your URL, User ID, and Password are correct.
Click Save to save your settings.
Using the Outlook Plugin
Once configured, the plugin works in the background, synchronising Outlook emails either manually or automatically with your accessplanit Communications area. This means that your emails don't need to be copied and pasted into Communications.
There are two options available for linking your Outlook emails with accessplanit:
Auto Linking
This setting allows Outlook emails to be automatically linked to your accessplanit Communications area.
To turn on Auto Link, go to Outlook and open the Link To Accessplan Settings.
Navigate to the Auto Link page.
Tick the Auto Link Enabled tick box.
Click Save to save your settings.
Once Auto Link is enabled, composing an email in Outlook to an address that is stored within accessplanit will change the Link To Accessplan tile from this:
To this:
The chain across the accessplanit logo indicates that this email is linked with your accessplanit platform. The email's content will therefore be stored within the Communications area against the corresponding email address.
Enabling Auto Link will mean that any emails that are sent between a User with the Outlook Plugin and an email address within accessplanit will be stored within the Communications area of accessplanit. This includes all internal emails between Users within your organisation. These emails will therefore be accessible to all Training Administrators.
To prevent this from happening, go to Outlook and open the Link To Accessplan Settings, and navigate to the Auto Link page.
Go to the free text box, and enter your company's email domain. This will mean that the plugin will no longer store emails sent to or from anyone with this email address domain.
You can add as many domains into this section as you wish.
Any updates to the setting would need to be saved by clicking the save button at the bottom right, if the save button is greyed out then the validate button will need to be clicked first.
Manual Linking
Manual linking is the recommended method of recording communications within your accessplanit Communications. This setting can be applied by ensuring that the Auto Link checkbox is not ticked on the Linked To Accessplan Settings > Auto Link page.
To manually link an Outlook email to accessplanit, click the Linked to Accessplan tile after composing your email.
This will display a drop down menu. From here, you can select whether you want to Link To User or Link To Company.
If you select Link to User > Select User the next dialog box that opens will be a list of users that you can link the email to. You can change the Account these pull from by selecting a new Account from the "Company" drop down.
In order to select the object to link to you will need to check the box next to the relevant names and click OK.
Dialog
Please note that if you have a large number of users in your system (typically over 500) the grid of user will not show, you will need to visit the third tab in the Outlook Plugin settings called Dialog and tick the 'Use Search Dialog For Select Users' Option
Clicking one of these options will allow you to browse all of the Users or Companies on your system in a popup window.
Select the User or Company from the popup list that you would like the email to be stored against within the Communications area.
Viewing Communications
In order to view the emails that have been stored in accessplanit from the Outlook Plug in you will need to navigate to the Communications Data Grid.
If you expose the column "Communication Type Label' you can see which emails have come from the Plugin as they will have the label "Outlook"
You can also navigate to the User or Account that the email has been linked to and view a pre-filtered Communications Data Grid from there.
You can read more about the Communication area within accessplanit here.