Track Email Message Exchanges Between Salespeople and Contacts

Get more out of the communications between salespeople and your existing or potential customers by tracking email exchanges, and then turning them into actionable opportunities. Business Central can work with Exchange Online to keep a log of the inbound and outbound messages. You can view and analyze the contents of each message on the Interaction Log Entries page.

Set up Public Folders and Rules for Email Logging in Exchange Online

Before you can set up email logging, you must prepare your Exchange Online with public folders. You can do this in the Exchange admin center, or you can use the Exchange Management Shell.

Tip

If you want to use the Exchange Management Shell, you can find inspiration for how to set up your script in a sample script that we published to the BCTech repo.

The following list describes the main steps with links to learn more.

  • Create an admin role for public folders based on the information in the following table:

    Property Value
    Name Public Folders Management
    Selected roles Public Folders
    Selected members The email of the user account that Business Central will use to run the email logging job

    For more information, see Manage role groups.

  • Create a new public folder mailbox based on the information in the following table:

    Property Value
    Name Public MailBox

    For more information, see Create a public folder mailbox in Exchange Server.

  • Create new public folders

    • Create a new public folder with the name Email Logging in the root so that the full path to the folder becomes \Email Logging\
    • Create two subfolders so that the the result is the following full paths to the folders:
      • \Email Logging\Queue\
      • \Email Logging\Storage\

    For more information, see Create a public folder.

  • Mail-enable the Queue public folder

    For more information, see Mail-enable or mail-disable a public folder

  • Mail-enable sending emails to the Queue public folder using Outlook or the Exchange Management Shell

    For more information, see Allow anonymous users to send email to a mail-enabled public folder

  • Set the email logging user as an owner of both public folders, Queue and Storage public folders using Outlook or the Exchange Management Shell based on the information in the following table:

    Property Value
    User The email of the user account that Business Central will use to run the email logging job
    Permission level Owner

    For more information, see Assign permissions to the public folder.

  • Create two mail flow rules based on the information in the following table

    Purpose Name Conditions Action
    A rule for incoming email Log Email Sent to This Organization The sender is located Outside the organization, and the recipient is located Inside the organization BCC the email account that is specified for the Queue public folder
    A rule for outgoing email Log Email Sent from This Organization The sender is located Inside the organization, and the recipient is located Outside the organization BCC the email account that is specified for the Queue public folder

    For more information, see Manage mail flow rules in Exchange Online and Mail flow rule actions in Exchange Online.

Note

If you make changes in the Exchange Management Shell, the changes become visible in the Exchange admin center after a delay. Also, the changes made in Exchange will be available in Business Central after a delay. The delay might be several hours.

Next, you connect Business Central with Exchange Online.

Setting Up Business Central to Log Email Messages

Get started with email logging in two easy steps:

  1. Connect Business Central with Exchange Online for your Microsoft 365 subscription. Exchange Online handles your email messages. We've made this step easy by providing an assisted setup guide. You just need your administrator credentials for your administrator account in Microsoft 365. To start the guide, go to Assisted Setup, and then choose Set up email logging.

  2. Make sure that valid email addresses have been entered in Business Central for your sales people and contacts, depending on whether they are potential or existing customers. To do that, for each customer or salesperson, open the Contact or Salesperson/Purchaser card and have a look in the Email field.

Tip

After you complete the steps in the guide you can check whether the connection was successful. Search for Marketing Setup, choose Process, then Functions, and then Validate Email Logging Setup.

Viewing Email Message Exchanges in the Interaction Log

Business Central creates an entry on the Interaction Log page each time a salesperson and a contact exchange an email message. To view the interaction log, open the Contact or Salesperson Purchaser card for the person, and then choose History, and then choose Interaction Log Entries. There are a few things we can do with each entry in the log, for example:

  • View the content of the email message that was exchanged by clicking the Show Attachments action.
  • Turn an email exchange into a sales opportunity - If an entry looks promising, you can turn it into an opportunity and then manage its progress toward a sale. To do that, choose the entry, and then choose the Create Opportunity action. For more information, see Managing Sales Opportunities.

Connecting On-Premises Versions to Microsoft Exchange

You can connect Business Central on-premises to Exchange on-premises or Exchange Online for email logging. For both versions of Exchange, settings for the connection are available on the Marketing Setup page. For Exchange Online, you can also use an assisted setup guide.

Connecting to Exchange On-premises

To connect Business Central on-premises to Exchange on-premises, on the Marketing Setup page, you can use Basic as the Authentication Type, and then enter credentials for the user account for Exchange on-premises. Then turn on the Enabled toggle to start logging email.

Connecting to Exchange Online

To connect to Exchange Online, you must use OAuth2 as the Authentication Type. You must also register an application in Azure Active Directory, and provide the application ID, key vault secret, and the redirect URL to use. The redirect URL is pre-populated and should work for most installations. For more information, see To register an application in Azure AD for connecting from Business Central to Exchange Online.

You must set up your installation to use HTTPS. For more information, see Configuring SSL to Secure the Business Central Web Client Connection. If you are setting up your server to have a different home page, you can change the URL. The client secret will be saved as an encrypted string in your database.

To register an application in Azure AD for connecting from Business Central to Exchange Online

The following steps assume that you use Azure Active Directory to manage identities and access. For more information, see Quickstart: Register an application with the Microsoft identity platform. If you do not use Azure Active Directory, see Using Another Identity and Access Management Service.

  1. In the Azure Portal, under Manage, choose Authentication.

  2. Under Redirect URL, add the redirect URL that is suggested on the Marketing Setup page in Business Central. If the redirect URL on the Marketing Setup page is empty, find the suggested redirect URL on the Email Logging Assisted Setup page.

    Note

    If you do not specify the redirect URL, you can do so later by choosing Add a platform, and then choosing Web to add the web application and the redirect URL.

  3. Under Manage, choose Manifest.

  4. Locate the requiredResourceAccess property in the manifest, and add the following code in the brackets ([]) to add the required permissions. For more information, see Register your application.

{
    "resourceAppId": "00000002-0000-0ff1-ce00-000000000000",
    "resourceAccess": [
        {
            "id": "3b5f3d61-589b-4a3c-a359-5dd4b5ee5bd5",
            "type": "Scope"
        },
        {
            "id": "dc890d15-9560-4a4c-9b7f-a736ec74ec40",
            "type": "Role"
        }
    ]
}

  1. Choose Save.

  2. Under Manage, choose API permissions, and then confirm that the following permissions are listed:

    • EWS.AccessAsUser.All
    • full_access_as_app

  3. Under Manage, choose Certificates & Secrets, and then create a new secret for your app. You will use the secret either in Business Central, in the Client Secret field on the Marketing Setup page, or store it in secure storage and provide it in an event subscriber.

  4. Choose Overview, and then find the Application (client) ID value. This is the client ID of your application. You must enter it either on the Marketing Setup page, in the Client ID field, or store it in secure storage and provide it in an event subscriber.

  5. In Business Central, set up email logging on the Marketing Setup page, or use the Email Logging Assisted Setup guide for assistance with the process.

    • Provide the email account of the user on behalf of whom the scheduled job will connect to Exchange Online and process emails. The user must have a valid license for Exchange Online.
    • Provide the URL for your Exchange Online. Typically, this is the domain that you specified in the user's email address.
    • Provide the Queue Folder Path and Storage Folder Path.

  6. To start logging email, turn on the Enabled toggle.

  7. Sign in with your administrator account for Azure Active Directory (this account must have a valid license for Exchange and be an administrator in your Exchange Online). After you sign in you will be prompted to allow your registered application to sign in to Exchange Online on behalf of the organization. You must give consent to complete the setup.

Note

If you are not prompted to sign in with your administrator account, it might be because pop ups are blocked. To sign in, allow pop-ups from https://login.microsoftonline.com.

Using Another Identity and Access Management Service

If you are not using Azure Active Directory to manage identities and access, you will need some help from a developer. If you prefer to store the app ID and secret in a different location, you can leave the Client ID and Client Secret fields blank and write an extension to fetch the ID and secret from the location. You can provide the secret at runtime by subscribing to the OnGetEmailLoggingClientId and OnGetEmailLoggingClientSecret events in codeunit 1641 "Setup Email Logging".

To stop logging email

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature icon, enter Marketing Setup, and then choose the related link.
  2. Turn off the Enabled toggle.

See Also

Managing Relationships

Note

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