Have you already moved to Salesforce Lightning? Or are you planning to as Salesforce touts the benefits of this new user experience? If so, we have good news! Cirrus Insight is Lightning Ready.
Previously, Cirrus Insight users could automatically sync activities within their email inbox to Salesforce as a ‘Task’ object. Now CI users will be able to save emails to the ‘Email Message’ object to fit the new Lightning data structure & allow users to leverage the new 'Enhanced Email' functionality.
The ability to seamlessly and automatically log email activity is one of the singular features that have successfully sold many on using our sales productivity software suite (although we certainly have a lot more to offer!). For those that don’t use Cirrus Insight, the process of manually logging email activity, basically doubling the effort for what should be a simple task, remains a daily nightmare.
Today, we’ve improved our email sync feature to be even more useful for the busy sales organizations that rely on us.
Starting now, you’ll be able to sync email activity in an even more useful way.
Email Sync and Salesforce Lightning
For organizations that have upgraded to Salesforce Lightning from Salesforce Classic, you’ll be excited to learn that Cirrus Insight now pairs even better with the CRM.
As of the latest Cirrus Insight update, we support saving emails to the ‘Email Message’ object in Salesforce, which has some notable differences when compared to saving emails to the ‘Tasks’ object.
For those not using Cirrus Insight, emails added from Web-to-Lead, Salesforce for Outlook, and Lightning for Outlook are still only stored as Task records. As of this publication, the ability to save emails to the ‘Email Message’ object isn’t something that many sales productivity apps are capable of.
Why is this important?
For one, there are many orgs that already use the ‘Enhanced Email’ functionality in Salesforce, which includes specific requirements for compliance that many companies need, like making the Email Message records non-editable and respecting established mail compliance paradigms.
[Note that if your organization uses Enhanced Email, emails added from Web-to-Lead, Salesforce for Outlook, and Lightning for Outlook are still stored as Task records.]
Just as important, though, is that Salesforce will be using the Email Message object as their default way to store emails as they move to Lightning.
Before: Emails are saved as a ‘Task’.
After: Emails are saved as an ‘Email Message’ object.
Now, email messages have their own dedicated object in Lightning, labeled as ‘Email Message’. The implication of this change mostly relates to reporting, and the fact that you’ll be able to easily separate email activity from all other types of activities.
This feature creates more room for Salesforce to add functionality to the Email Object long term. Think of this as starting the process of 'future-proofing' the communication of your users.
This 'Enhanced Email' functionality is automatically enabled for most organizations using Lightning, with the exception of ones that are using Email-to-Case. Having emails stored in their own object allows admins to tap into the full range of Salesforce customization and automation tools -- including the ability to add custom fields, change up page layouts, leverage workflow rules, relate to other records, and more.
Another perk of using this object is that it allows HTML emails to show in their original format. When users click into the subject of the email, they'll see the full HTML version that they would see in their inbox -- not the stripped down text that they've been accustomed to seeing in Classic.
To enable email activity to sync as an ‘Email Message’, your Cirrus Insight administrator has the option to select the preferred object on our account management dashboard.
As of this update, which makes it so that you can natively support saving emails to the ‘Email Message’ object instead of ‘Activity’, we are Salesforce Lightning ready! Cirrus Insight will also continue our longstanding history of serving and supporting Salesforce Classic customers.
Final Thoughts: Salesforce Lightning: Saving Emails as an 'Email Message'
Cirrus Insight is the most advanced tool for logging email activity (and other events) to Salesforce. As of this update, we’re proven just how important the finer details around logging emails are to us.
Are you excited about the ability to categorize email activity more specifically in Salesforce Lightning? Spread the word by tweeting out this article!