[dyednwool]

We are contemplating tackling RE/Outlook integration and I didn't see any threads about the general topic.

How many organizations out there have this successfully working?
What are the issues to consider before implementing?
How much modification to RE or Outlook was required to implement? (example: manual mentioned you needed your phone types in Outlook and RE to match exactly?)
Did you need any outside consulting services to get this working?
How sophisticated do end users need to be to understand and use the integration feature?
How does the synchronization feature work on a practical day-to-day basis?
Do the benefits outweigh the nuisances overall?

Lots of questions -- any input would be appreciated. All I have to work with right now is the Integration Guide. I need real-world input!!

Thanks,
Gina Gerhard
New Hampshire Charitable Foundation

[Vinojd1]

Hi Gina – my thoughts are in the body of your questions below – feel free to call me

Jim DiGiovanni
Application Manager, CSM
Wycliffe Bible Translators
407-852-3756
407-459-6756 (cell)
407-852-3601 (fax)
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Quote:

From: dyednwool
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 11:54 AM

Subject: [Microsoft Office-t-2421] Success using RE/Outlook integration


We are contemplating tackling RE/Outlook integration and I didn't see any threads about the general topic.

How many organizations out there have this successfully working?
What are the issues to consider before implementing?
[Jim DiGiovanni] There are many considerations:
- Is your entire org on Microsoft Exchange? If not, it complicates things. We’ve waited 2yrs from RE implementation because of this issue (were a Notes shop)
- If folks are not accustomed to using Outlook – let them master that first
- Try to have all users on same version of Office (2003 preferably as 2007 requires MORE adaptation (don’t want to throw users too much at once; 2007 not compatible with RE version 7.71 or older)
- Know your users’ capabilities/adaptabilities with RE, Outlook – they will be tested to think J
- Are you using thick clients on each user desktop or going thru a terminal server (or Citrix)? Challenges in both implementations
How much modification to RE or Outlook was required to implement? (example: manual mentioned you needed your phone types in Outlook and RE to match exactly?)
[Jim DiGiovanni] Phone types issue correct, must be e-mail in RE to match what Outlook needs, but no other modifications of magnitude; you add the REOutlook.dll from RE DLL subfolder to the COM add-ins section in Outlook (Tools, Options, Other, Advanced Options, COM Add-ins) – which puts 3 tabs for RE in your Outlook menu, the 3 tabs offer you configuration settings for integrating RE/Outlook B-U-T at first I would NOT allow users to implement integration. Instead, by just doing what I’ve described thus far, users can send email out from within RE & create actions automatically on a constituent record from an incoming email in their Outlook inbox. That’s cool enough to start with until you’re all comfortable with that much. Integration requires some knowledge of queries to establish Contacts integration & calendar/tasks integration, B-U-T, with regard to Contacts, everyone must understand where those ‘integrated Contacts will go in Outlook (into their default Outlook Contacts folder – which most of them will NOT want to do ‘cause it’ll clutter up their existing Contacts) AND few will understand the fact that if they make changes to their Contact in their Outlook and that contact is ‘linked’ via integration to a constituent record in RE, the change will ALSO BE MADE TO THE CONSTITUENT record in RE as well. You can easily see where a seemingly innocuous address change in my Contacts folder that changes that address in RE could mess up any other department using the common DB record for their purposes if they need the address that is already in the folder (and maybe the change in the Contacts folder is a ‘personal’ address that shouldn’t be in the RE record at all – poor example, but you get my drift)

Did you need any outside consulting services to get this working?
[Jim DiGiovanni] No

How sophisticated do end users need to be to understand and use the integration feature?
[Jim DiGiovanni] See above

How does the synchronization feature work on a practical day-to-day basis?
[Jim DiGiovanni] The simple sending email out & creating actions from incoming email – very smooth

Do the benefits outweigh the nuisances overall?
[Jim DiGiovanni] You’ll have to judge that for your org – jury’s still out here J

Lots of questions -- any input would be appreciated. All I have to work with right now is the Integration Guide. I need real-world input!!

Thanks,
Gina Gerhard
New Hampshire Charitable Foundation

[bmsamson]

I'm not going to get really technical, especially given the reply you've already received. I'm a fundraiser, so let me give you my perspective.

i find the outlook integration one of the most effort-relieving pieces of the way Re has been working. the facility of quickly attaching emails and even calendar events to records is so much greater than attaching media, for example. now users still have to go back and annotate the newly created action entries....filling in everything from solicitor to action type etc., but at least the basic information is there.

that said, since the introduction however many months ago of office 2007, it's been a nightmare. blackbaud claims that the latest update that we received a couple of days ago fixes all the problems with it (it just hasn't worked, bottom line) but we haven't had a chance to install and/or test, so i can't say. fingers are crossed, though, since i do rely on it extensively in my shop.

[Mlehn]

We have been a GroupWise shop for many years and our preference is to stay with it, but since the time has come to at least move to a new version (we are running GroupWise 6.0 which does not even have a DST patch), it seems like the prudent thing to do is to look at whether it is time to abandon ship and jump over to the "dark side" of Exchange and Lookout (I mean Outlook - is my bias showing?).

Except for the Raiser's Edge integration, which affect a relatively small number of our overall users, there is no compelling reason to migrate to Exchange, and in fact there are several positives in favor of staying with GroupWise. Nonetheless, I do see the merit to our Organizational Advancement folks having tight integration between Raiser's Edge and their e-mail. We have already figured out how to "e-mail merge" into GroupWise, but we have not figured out how to (or if we can) integrate to the GroupWise Calendar (and I am not sure we will get any help from Blackbaud as their standard reply will simply be that have only tested integration with Outlook).

Anyway, the question I stated in my title is do we necessarily need to go to Exchange Server, or can we simply let some users run the Outlook client against our GroupWise Server? The new versions of GroupWise allow users to run the Outlook client, and although we would typically not allow it (we prefer the security and reliability of the GroupWise client) we could open that option up to RE users.

Any thoughts? Is anyone doing this?

Thanks,
Mike Lehn
Catholic Charities - St. Cloud MN

I am not familiar with GroupWise or it's capabilities, but one limitation we just discovered with Outlook (which isn't in and of itself related to Raiser's Edge) is that you cannot send an attachment via mail merge unless you have a 3rd party plug-in/application. We decided to do an email to some of the constituents in Raiser's Edge, and found this out the hard way - after all the emails were sent. I don't know if this is a consideration for you guys, but thought you should be aware of it.

[Joe_Meehan]

As a suggestion, we post whatever attachment to the website and add a hyperlink to the file in the email. This prevents you from having to do mail merge with attachments - which can usually cause filters (S-P-A-M) to bounce messages.

Regards,
Joe Meehan
Milken Institute

[Matthew]

Hi Gina,

I just changed jobs...and I'm not sure yet what we do at the new job, but at the old job, we only used the RE/Outlook integration for adding Emails as actions. This was a very attractive feature that gave less technically advanced users a quick and easy way to add their information to the database. You mikght consider implementing the integraiton in pieces rather than all at once, and the "email to action" part is a great place to start.

Matthew

[dyednwool]

Thanks everyone for your helpful replies.

What we were most interested in was trying to solve the problem of having our Outlook being the favored place where people are updating phone, emails, addresses and neglecting to update RE with the same information. So that's the piece we thought would be the most helpful for us to somehow sync up these two sources.

But it actually looks like it's the more problematic one because of complexities around how addreses & contact info are structured. For example, we carefully add an address attribute on RE records related to receiving a Donor Statement and addresses that have this attribute have a pop-up message to warn people who are updating addresses to make sure that address attribute carries over. With any type of automatic syncing I'm afraid of losing this type of functionality/warning. We had the same problem when accepting address changes via NetCommunity,when you accept certain types of data you then have to go back into certain records to make sure that other elements have remained or place them again on those records.

So what seems to be a really useful process ends up being not useable because it lacks that level of sophistication needed to make it fully jive with your system?

If the changes could come in to an administrator who could review the suggested changes and then fully implement them, that might make it more manageable but I didn't see that the RE/Outlook integration had that feature -- it looks like records are either marked as linked or unlinked, and all changes are made across both systems when they are synchronized?

Gina

[Nina Williams]

My old job was fully integrated between RE and Outlook. So easy even a ..... well you know. My new job doesn't even use Outlook at all and our email system can not be integrated with RE. I miss it so. Here I can't get the bosses to record their contacts at all, and if we were integrated they would n;t even have to think about it, it would be there. We are loosing so much history, and sometimes even usefull information. If there is any chance you can hook up do it.
I may be missing something, but even connected to Outlook address changes would have to be manually keyed in so you should not have any different problems with the attribute. We olny have one person who is to allowed to make address changes, everyone else forwards them to me. We don't have a problem with changes not being entered correctly.

[dyednwool]

Nina -

We have a completely decentralized data entry model, so everyone is out there making address changes and fairly successfully -- but each person keeps their own Outlook information in their very own special way, so that's where I start to get concerned that however they are structuring their data in Outlook will carry over into RE.

So forgive me for some basic questions, but if someone has two addresses in Outlook -- home and business -- and in RE the business is marked preferred. Then the relationship manager finds out that this person is no longer at that business and deletes it from Outlook, how would that information sync with RE? What would happen to the business address that is marked as preferred in RE? Would the current business address in RE be marked as "previous" rather than being deleted? Would the remaining home address in RE become the preferred address? Yikes it's scary!!!

Gina

[Nina Williams]

We uncheck the primary business relationsip box and employee box, change their employment status in relationship to Former Emolyer/Former Employee and leave the business on the record. If we have a home address that becomes the primary. IF we do not have a home address we change to preferred to home with the address line of Lost, check the no valid address box. If the person is an Alumni or Major donor, I try to email them for thier new information (assuming we have a non-business email), also internet white pages search. A Note is put on their record indication why the constituent is lost.

[Joe_Meehan]

RE won't bring over the POSITION or ORGANIZATION NAME Field if you are trying to sync with an individual - who has business info on their record.

(It'll do it if they're linked to an ORG record, and marked as a CONTACT - but what waste of time/records...).

Also, 90% of our records have their business addresses as their preferred address, but when you sync with Outlook, it ends up in Outlook as HOME address, with "this is the mailing address" check box indicated. Ugh... not accurate at all.

I can't think it's that big of a fix-it, but until those items get fixed, I can tell people to sync with RE - because it's writing wrong info (or NO info) to Outlook (which goes to people's blackberry, etc).

Unless someone has a suggestion?

Regards,
Joe Meehan

[dyednwool]

Joe -

That's somewhat what I suspected -- where we go to great lengths in RE to distinguish between addresses, mark specific ones as preferred, carefully ensuring links are in place, have emails sitting in specific places on records for functionality reasons -- and then syncing with Outlook which just slaps the data onto a Home address.

I would LOVE to see this integration perform in a way that makes it actually useable-- so that an average user who is already putting lots of into into Outlook can without a manual in front of them actually get the data into RE!

It's one more area where I wonder how much thought went into the design of the feature -- we don't need "that sounds like a great idea so let's go build something" -- just ask any user out there how it works and they'll probably tell you they don't use it because it doesn't really do what the need!

Thanks for your comments --

Gina