Salesforce for Outlook Retirement

Salesforce Outlook will do a major change in December this year on what most customers are using today.

What is changing?

Salesforce for Outlook will be retired in December 2020 when Lightning Experience ends extended support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.

Recently Salesforce has made key advancements on our next-generation Microsoft integration products: the Outlook Integration and Einstein Activity Capture. These products replace Salesforce for Outlook and deliver solutions in areas where customers have reported that Salesforce for Outlook falls short.

Why is Salesforce retiring this feature?

As of Winter ’19, Salesforce for Outlook entered a maintenance-only phase, which reduced existing users’ availability only. However, when Lightning Experience ends extended support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 11, Salesforce for Outlook can no longer function.

Salesforce for Outlook has relied on Lightning Experience to interpret APEX calls made from IE11. Salesforce Classic can’t interpret APEX calls, so on the backend, Salesforce for Outlook relies on Lightning Experience for both users working from Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic. After Salesforce ends extended support for IE11 for Lightning Experience, all APEX calls made from IE11 to Salesforce will be blocked to maintain the end of the IE11 product support. At that point, calls will be blocked to Salesforce for Outlook as well.

For more information, see Extended Support for Accessing Lightning Experience Using Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.

How will orgs be impacted by this change?

After retirement, admins and users no longer have access to Salesforce for Outlook features or the settings and user assignments saved in Outlook configurations. There is no impact on a customer’s existing contact, event, task, or email data due to the retirement.

Data Impact

Admins and users lose access to Outlook configurations only. All other Salesforce and Microsoft Outlook data remains unaffected.

• Users do not lose any Microsoft Outlook data synced to Salesforce before the December 2020 product retirement. That is, any information from Microsoft Outlook contacts, events, tasks, or emails that were added or synced to Salesforce remains in Salesforce.
• After the December 2020 retirement, admins and users will lose access to their Outlook configurations. Outlook configurations are the admin- or user-configured collection of Salesforce for Outlook settings that determine how users to sync, which users sync, which features users have access to, and some additional product settings. For a reminder about what details are retained in Outlook Configurations, see Create Salesforce for Outlook Configurations. Even if customers opt not to migrate to a replacement product before Salesforce for Outlook retirement, we recommend retaining the details saved in Outlook configurations if customers want to enable consistent Microsoft Integration functionality later.

Feature Impact

Users lose access to all Salesforce for Outlook functionality and settings:

• Contacts, events, or tasks no longer sync between Salesforce and Microsoft Outlook. From the Salesforce for Outlook side panel, users won’t connect to Salesforce, nor can they use any of the features there.
• Customers won’t be able to update settings or use features available from the Salesforce for Outlook icon on the Microsoft Windows desktop system tray.
• The Outlook Configurations page won’t be accessible from Salesforce Setup, so admins can’t access, create, or edit Outlook configurations.
• The Salesforce for Outlook page won’t be available from users’ Personal Settings, so users can’t download Salesforce for Outlook or view their Outlook configurations from Salesforce.
• Unresolved Items no longer list unmatched syncing or associated items resulting from Salesforce for Outlook. Unresolved Items remain available for other products, like Einstein Activity Capture Lightning Sync and Email to Salesforce.

How can Salesforce admins identify that their users are impacted?

From Salesforce Setup, admins can refer to the Salesforce for Outlook login history report and export a .csv file to see who’s logged in over the last 6 months. If a more comprehensive list is needed of all users who have access to Salesforce for Outlook, admins can check Outlook configuration assignments to see which of their users are assigned to sync, access the side panel, and more.

What is the replacement, and what are the key differences between the legacy product and the replacement?

Salesforce offers the following products to replace Salesforce for Outlook functionality:

• Outlook Integration (replaces the Salesforce side panel experience, where reps can see Salesforce records and use some Salesforce features directly from Outlook)
• Einstein Activity Capture (replaces contact and event sync)

For more details on the benefits of the replacement products, see Learn About the Next-Generation Microsoft Integration Products.

Customers should familiarize themselves with the scenarios in which the next-generation features are not able to replace Salesforce for Outlook. The following list includes a high-level glance at some of the differences.

• While Salesforce for Outlook can connect Salesforce to Microsoft Outlook 2010 and Microsoft Exchange 2010, our next-generation products are not compatible with those Microsoft applications. Microsoft is planning to end support for those applications. To continue integrating Microsoft with Salesforce, we encourage customers to migrate to Outlook and Exchange versions that both Microsoft and Salesforce support. For details, see Learn About the Support Differences Between Salesforce for Outlook and the Next-Generation Products.
• Next-generation features are not available for all Salesforce editions and licenses.  For details, see Learn About the Support Differences Between Salesforce for Outlook and the Next-Generation Products.
• Outlook Integration and Einstein Activity Capture have some feature differences with Salesforce for Outlook. For detailed feature comparison, see Compare Features Between Salesforce for Outlook and the Next-Generation Products.

Where can I get help migrating to the replacement products?
Check back here for our migration guide, coming in Summer ’20.

What about Lightning Sync?

You might recall another Microsoft Integration product, Lightning Sync, which also syncs contacts and events. Starting in Winter ’21, Lightning Sync isn’t available to new Salesforce customers. At that time, no additional enhancements will be made to the product. For that reason, Einstein Activity Capture is the long-term solution for syncing contacts and events between Microsoft or Google applications and Salesforce. We recommend that customers first explore Einstein Activity Capture to sync their contacts and events. We continue to introduce improvements to Einstein Activity Capture based on the needs we hear about from customers. To see when new features are available, keep an eye on the Salesforce release notes.

Reference: 
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=000353024&language=en_US&type=1&mode=1

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