Modules – Microsoft Outlook Add-In

Keeping up-to-date with your emails, appointments, and calendar is important when handling several mortgage clients and partner interactions. If you use Microsoft Outlook to handle your email communications, calendar scheduling, personal contact management, and task tracking, you can connect your CRM to Outlook so that your emails, tasks, appointments, and contacts can be synced between both environments and seen in whichever format you are working. With only minimal set-up, your information will be synchronized and you can focus on your business.

In order to link your email communication between Outlook and your BNTouch CRM, you will first need to download a small add-in for your Outlook program. This will allow you to configure a two-way, automated synchronization of your messages and contacts. Emails you send in Outlook will create corresponding tracker events for records in your CRM, and those you send from BNTouch will be accessible from your Outlook interface.

To download the BNTouch Outlook Add-in, open the User Menu in the upper-right corner of your screen. Click “Modules” and find the “Outlook Add-in” option. This module is enabled by default, so you just need to click the “Learn More” link. Here, you will see a “Download” link among the support options. Click this link and save the add-in file to a location on your computer that you can find easily. Once downloaded, find the file on your computer, open it, and follow the installation instructions.

The “Modules” section of your CRM is only accessible by Administrative users. If you need help setting up this feature but do not have access to Modules, please contact your administrator.

Next, you’ll need to add the module to your Outlook program. If Outlook is already open, we recommend closing the program and restarting it. Once it is open, click “File” in the upper-left corner of the screen, then click “Options”. In the “Add-ins” tab, look for the “BNTouch.OutlookAddIn” line in the list. Select this option, then click the “Add-in Options” button.

The settings here will be separated into several sub-tabs. First, you will need to log in to your BNTouch account from the “Account” sub-tab. Enter your login credentials used to access your BNTouch CRM, then click the “Apply” button below.

Once your user account is connected, you can choose what calendar events will be synchronized using the “Calendar” sub-tab. Here, you can choose an Outlook calendar to sync with BNTouch using the drop-down menu and enable the Appointment Sync using the checkbox below.

  This is generally preferable, as it is a quick and simple process. “Full Appointment Sync” will update all upcoming and past appointments, which can take quite a while for users with a large history of appointments. If you need to clear appointments brought into Outlook from your CRM, you can click the “Remove All BNTouch Appointments” button. In this case, only appointments added via the synchronization will appear in Outlook.

Like your appointment calendar, you can also synchronize your client and partner records from CRM communications as Outlook contacts in the “Contacts” sub-tab. The same options will be available as when syncing and importing calendar events. You will also see an option to bring co-borrower contact information into Outlook from your CRM as a separate contact from the borrower. In your CRM, borrowers and co-borrowers are kept track of as a single record; however, you can separate these contacts in your Outlook client if you prefer.

In the “Email” sub-tab, you can choose whether to automatically log incoming and/or outgoing emails into BNTouch. If either of these is left unchecked, that type of email can still be copied to your CRM, but each will need to be logged manually.

Lastly, the “System” sub-tab will include error-reporting and debugging options. Generally, leave these settings as they are unless one of our support staff asks you to enable or disable advanced diagnostics for account support purposes.

Now that you have configured your Outlook Add-in settings, you will be able see your appointments, tasks, and contacts from BNTouch in Outlook. This information will update every time your Outlook performs the “Send/Receive” action.

When you send or receive an email in Outlook, a log of that email will be sent to BNTouch automatically if you had that type of email selected in the Add-in Settings. If not, you will be able to right-click on an email to see options for logging that email to your CRM manually. When you click “Log to BNTouch”, a log of the email will be sent to your CRM and attached to the record with a matching email address. You can also use “Log to BNTouch to Contact”, which will open a prompt in Outlook that allows you to choose which record the email will be logged to in your CRM. You can search through your CRM records, then click “Log Email to Selected Record” when you find the right one.

For synced calendar appointments, new appointments that are made in the Dashboard tab of your CRM will appear in your Outlook Calendar whenever you perform the “Send/Receive” function in Outlook. Similarly, appointments you make in Outlook will be sent to your CRM calendar when you “Send/Receive”.

In addition to CRM Calendar events, you can also send Tasks from your CRM to Outlook if you have the Appointment Sync feature enabled. When you create a task from a record in your CRM, it will be added to your Outlook Calendar when you perform the Send/Receive action--just like an appointment.

Syncing your Contacts between Outlook and BNTouch is just as easy. Any records from your CRM that you brought over through the Contact Sync feature will appear in the Contacts section of Outlook. When you Right-click on one, you can click “Open in BNTouch” to go directly to that record in your CRM in a browser window. If you create a new record in Outlook, you’ll see a different option when you right-click it–”Add to BNTouch”. This will open a prompt that will let you choose what information will transfer from your Outlook Contact to a new CRM Record. Any relevant information from the Contact will automatically populate, and you can choose which type of record it will be using the drop-down menu at the top. When finished, click “Save to BNTouch”, and the record will appear in your CRM once you perform the “Send/Receive” action.