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These days, organizations use email as a major part of their marketing efforts, with correspondence going back and forth every day. This enables them to share important information with prospects, customers, and vendors effortlessly.

However, organizations usually have a very high volume of messages which makes sorting through emails very stressful.

Fortunately, Dynamics 365 has a feature that can automatically filter through the inbox and select important messages for you!

Automatically Collect and Track Emails with Dynamics 365 Auto Capture

The Auto Capture feature in Dynamics 365 makes it is easier than ever to find relevant messages in your Exchange inbox by converting them into tracked messages in Dynamics 365.  It captures data automatically from emails, eliminates manual entry, and ensures that relationship data is kept up-to-date.

This is a typical example of Microsoft using artificial intelligence capabilities to improve communications and increase efficiency for sales and service professionals.

Auto Capture and Relationship Insights

Auto Capture is available as part of a set of features called Relationship Insights.

In Relationship Insights, customer interaction data already stored in your Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Exchange databases are continuously analyzed to help you better understand your business relationships, evaluate your activities in relation to previous successes, and choose the best path forward.

Other features of Relationship Insights include Relationship Assistant and Email Engagement.

Why Should You Use This Amazing Tool?

With Auto Capture, your organization can achieve a lot with regard to emails. It works by giving you the capabilities that are normally reserved as a marketing automation tool. Some of these are:

  1. Enabling the team to access communication with customers more easily while working on a deal.
  2. Helping to improve business email effectiveness by acting as a personal assistant.
  3. Gathering information related to a certain record, e.g., an opportunity from your inbox quite easily.
  4. Tracking any of the suggested messages in Dynamics 365 to make them available to your sales team.
  5. Allowing you to bypass add-ons that are usually needed to track emails into Dynamics.
  6. Helping businesses spend more time selling and less time filtering through the data.

How Does Auto Capture Work?

Auto Capture works by querying your Microsoft Exchange account each time you open the Activities column for a record in Dynamics 365.

It filters through emails from your exchange inbox, checks for relevant messages that are related to whatever (record) you are working on, and suggests them to you for tracking. For instance, messages received from the same person or pertaining to the record will be suggested.

Messages retrieved from your Exchange inbox by Dynamics 365 are not stored, but are only shown to users under the “Record Activities” pane. To store the messages on Dynamics 365, these messages must be tracked. A message tracked on Dynamics 365 can then be seen under Email Activity.

You can still track messages in Dynamics 365 in all the ways that you could before; this just adds another way to bring emails from Exchange into Dynamics.

At the moment, the Auto Capture feature is only available for Dynamics 365 Online version.

How to Enable Auto Capture?

  1. Log in as Dynamics 365 Administrator (you must be an administrator to enable it).
  2. Go to Settings > Administration.
  3. Choose System Settings and click the Previews tab.
  4. Read and accept the license terms.

Organization Can Benefit from Auto Capture of Emails in Dynamics 365

  1. Scroll down to the Relationship Insights section and select the Yes radio button to enable the Auto Capture feature.

Relationship Insights

A user can also disable the Auto Capture feature on the Email tab within Personal Options, by changing Show email not tracked in Dynamics 365 in the Activities list to No.

Things to Note

  • The Auto Capture feature is quite easy to use but you will need support from your administrator to be able to use it.
  • It should be noted that each email is private and visible only to you unless you choose to convert it to a tracked email.
  • To track incoming email messages, you must set up server-side synchronization.
  • Messages found by Auto Capture are merged with other relevant Dynamics 365 activities and shown in the Activities column for the record they apply to.
  • You must use Microsoft Exchange Online as your email server.
  • Users must use the web client for Dynamics 365 (online) (other front ends are not supported).

There you have it, even though you may think it is unnecessary to use this feature, it will be worth it when you see the benefits to your organization, especially for the sales and customer service teams. Auto Capture, with other features of relationship insights, helps to contribute to more efficiency and an increase in customer base, which is the primary goal of all businesses.

Written by The Sherweb Team Collaborators @ Sherweb