Conversation Capture: Advanced Email Syncing to Salesforce

Conversation Capture: Advanced Email Conversation Tracking to Salesforce

Contents:

• Support and implementation.
• Sync results in Salesforce.
• Configuration.
• Using Conversation Capture in Outlook.
• Operational notes.

Support for Conversation Capture

Conversation Capture is supported for

• These Salesforce modules: Opportunities, Cases, Contracts (not Contacts), and Accounts (= organizations);
• Exchange and Office 365;
• Normal emails and Salesforce enhanced emails; and
• Track in CRM.

Implementation

Conversation Capture is powered by the Riva Conversation Capture Managed Package, available in Salesforce.

The managed package creates a Conversations module in your instance of Salesforce.

Sync Results in Salesforce

• An Outlook conversation is synced to Salesforce as a conversation object available in the Conversations module.
• A Salesforce conversation object contains all of a conversation's emails and their attachments.
• For every follow-up email in a conversation, only the most recent portion of the email body and its attachments are synced, not the entire body.
  • If someone's Outlook is set to attach the previous message instead of including it in the body, that attachment is not synced.
• Attachments are available on the conversation object, not on the individual emails.
   

Relationships:

• A new conversation object is related to an opportunity, case, contract (not contact), or account.
  Note: A conversation object's Related To field indicates what the conversation object is related to. The field is read-only.
• All of a conversation's emails are related to the corresponding conversation object.
   

Location of emails in a Conversation object:

• Normal emails are displayed under Activity History.
• Enhanced emails
  • In Salesforce Classic: Inbox items are under Open Activities, and Sent Items are under Activity History.
  • In Salesforce Lightning: Inbox items are under Next Steps, and Sent Items are under Past Activities.
     

Notes:

• Renaming a conversation in Salesforce is supported. The conversation's emails continue to be synced to the same conversation.
• Changing an email's Subject line in Outlook puts an end to the conversation.

Configuring Conversation Capture

1. Configure Salesforce.
2. Configure Riva.

Using Conversation Capture in Outlook

1. Start capturing a conversation.
   • Riva 2.4.56 or higher: When is a conversation automatically captured?
2. Ensure that a conversation continues to be captured.
   • How Outlook shows that a conversation email has been synced.
3. Stop capturing a conversation.

Step 1: Start capturing a conversation

• In Outlook, process the conversation's first email in one of the following ways:
  • In the Inbox or Sent Items folder, set the email's category to the value required to sync it; or
  • Move the email to one of Riva's drop folders; or
  • If you use Track in CRM, select the Track in CRM button in the email's top ribbon.
  Notes:
  • Every time one of the above actions is performed, a new conversation capture begins.
  • Conversation Capture respects sync filters. For example, if the sync of an email is permitted only if the email matches a contact in CRM, but there is no match, that email cannot be processed to begin capturing a conversation, and a sync error appears in the Riva Service Monitor.
  • Conversation Capture does not work retroactively. If someone starts Conversation Capture by processing a conversation's second email or a subsequent one, the capture begins with that email, and the earlier emails in the conversation are not synced. But, the contents of the earlier emails were quite likely retained in the email that was used to start the conversation capture.
  • (Riva 2.4.56 or higher.) A conversation is automatically captured when both of these features are enabled:
    • Conversation Capture; and
    • the automatic email sync from the Inbox and Sent Items folders.
    In Riva 2.4.55, even if those features were enabled, the conversation was not automatically captured. The first email (preferably the first email) in the conversation needed to be triggered, by either adding the Riva category or adding the email to the SmartConvert folder.

Step 2: Continue capturing a conversation

• By default, the follow-up emails and attachments in the conversation are automatically synced to the conversation object in Salesforce.
• Avoid taking an action that would cause Conversation Capture to stop capturing a conversation.
   

How Outlook shows that a conversation email has been synced:

In Outlook, categories are assigned by Riva to show that an email in a conversation has been synced:

• The conversation's first email is assigned the Processing Complete category.
  • Note: In your system, the category name "Processing complete!" may have been changed.

• The subsequent emails are assigned the Conversation Tracked category.
  • Note: The Conversation Tracked category can be renamed.
  • To rename the Conversation Tracked category:
    • Configure the following advanced option on the sync policy:
      Sync.Ex.ProcessConversations.ImplicitEmailCategory = new, where new is the wording that replaces "Conversation Tracked".

Step 3: Stop capturing a conversation

There are two ways to stop a conversation capture:

• In Outlook, change the email's Subject line while replying or forwarding.
  Results:
  • The Subject line change causes Exchange or Office 365 to treat the email as the beginning of a new conversation.
  • This new conversation is captured only if an end user manually starts capturing it or if it is automatically captured.

• In Outlook, manually move a conversation's follow-up email to a different Assign To folder.
  Results:
  • In Salesforce, a new conversation object is created, and the subsequent replies and forwards of the moved email are automatically synced to the new conversation object.
  • The previous conversation object is no longer updated, because one of its follow-up emails has been used to create a new conversation object.
     

Note: By default, if there have been no follow-up emails to a conversation for 180 consecutive days, that conversation is no longer going to be captured. It is possible to configure a different number of days. See Configure the sync policy for Conversation Capture.

Operational Notes

• When using Track in CRM with Conversation Capture, any normal email tracked to an opportunity or account creates a Conversation object in Salesforce and will be related to the specific opportunity or account. However, the individual email task will be related to the Conversation and not to the specified account or opportunity.

• Permissions:

  • A Conversation object's Object permissions are Read and Edit.
  • The following Field permissions are read-only:
    • Created By.
    • Created By Riva: For auditing purposes, the Created by Riva check box is selected when a conversation object is created by Riva.