Your favourite Salesforce for Outlook is retiring on December 31, 2020. It has been helping teams being productive for a very long time but when Salesforce Lightning Experience ends extended support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 11, Salesforce for Outlook will also stop functioning. Its time that you head onto another next-generation product.
Recently Salesforce launched enhanced next-generation Microsoft integration products, the Outlook Integration and Einstein Activity Capture. They will be replacing the Salesforce for Outlook and deliver much more. Even the areas where Salesforce for Outlook was lacking!
Why is Salesforce retiring Salesforce for Outlook?
In the Winter 19 release, Salesforce for Outlook went into the maintenance phase and it was no more available to its existing users. So now when Lightning Experience will end extended support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 11, the Salesforce for Outlook will not work at all.
Salesforce for Outlook interprets APEX calls made from IE11 in the Lightning Experience. Since Salesforce Classic can’t interpret APEX calls, Salesforce for Outlook on the backend takes support through Lightning Experience for the developers working from both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic. Now when the Lightning Experience will end extended support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 11, all APEX calls made from it to Salesforce will no longer function!
How will Salesforce org be impacted by this?
There will be no impact on the customers’ existing events, email data, contact, or task because post-retirement the developers and admins will no longer have access to its settings, features, or user assignments saved in the Outlook configurations.
What is the replacement of Salesforce for Outlook?
Salesforce offers many alternative next-generation products to replace Salesforce for Outlook. Such as,
- Outlook Integration
Replacing the Salesforce side panel experience, Outlook Integration shows the Salesforce records to the user and uses some Salesforce features from the Outlook. - Einstein Activity Capture
Einstein Activity Capture replaces event sync and contact.
Where all will these changes impact?
The change will apply to the Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic in Contact Manager, Group, Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.
Other than Outlook Integration and Einstein Activity Capture, there are many third-party solutions available on AppExchange that can replace Salesforce for Outlook.
