Improving Efficiency with Outlook Integration to NAV

How can integration with Microsoft Dynamics® NAV improve efficiency?

Many people are seeing Dynamics NAV as just another accounts or ERP package and fail to see the benefits that integration with Dynamics NAV can bring. The Dynamics Connector starts to give hints of what can be achieved but this is a Microsoft solution and leads most people to the conclusion that this only works because Microsoft have designed it that way!

In part, that is true, but the same design principles could also allow your business to pretty much improve the efficiency of ‘anything’ with Dynamics NAV. By ‘anything’, that is of course within reason, I mean, could you get NAV to control the temperature of your offices and meeting rooms based on use or to automatically maintain a fire register of your premises – well yes, in those instances you could. There are cost / benefit considerations to be had of course, but the main barrier to most of the possible innovation is imagination – or lack of it!

By way of a simple example of what can be achieved, we’ve extended our Document Receiving functionality to include a button in Microsoft Office® Outlook. Most businesses use Outlook as their email client, and most employees who use Dynamics NAV also use Outlook quite heavily, so how does this button improve efficiency?

An email in Outlook can be selected and the user can press the 'Send to Dynamics NAV button'. This will search the Dynamics NAV contacts database for any contacts with a matching email address to the email sender, take the email contents and any attachments and present them to Dynamics NAV for the creation or update of various Dynamics NAV documents (e.g. Sales Orders, Purchase Invoices, Service Orders, Sales Quotes etc.). Once created, the email details and attachments can be viewed against the document using the Document Receiving functionality. Additional details and attachments can be added to the document from further emails using the same functionality.

Watch our demonstration video to see how Outlook integration could enhance your business processes.

The Document Receiving Add-on is part of our Communication Management Add-on Suite, which also includes:

Dynamics Document Sending - Fully integrated document delivery solution
Dynamics Bank Reconciliation - Automated bank reconciliation
Dynamics NAVLync - NAV Integration with Microsoft Lync®
Dynamics NAV-CTi - NAV Integration with third party phone systems
Dynamics Parcelforce Integration - Manage deliveries with Dynamics NAV
If you would like further information on this new feature or any of our Add-ons or would like access to some imagination then please do contact us.

Tom Jenkins

Tom is one of the founding directors of Dynamics Consultants. He has worked on ERP / CRM systems since 1995, initially as an end user and later as a developer/consultant. Before founding Dynamics Consultants, Tom worked in a management role for a machinery importer / reseller, where his work included inventory management and purchase control, systems development, and IT project management.