Integration between Office Live and Outlook/Business Contact Manager
Is there currently any integration between office live and outlook for the business contact manager?
It is apparent that they have been developed with similar functionality (accounts, contacts, opportunities, products, etc.), but I can not find any way to integrate the two applications (other than possibly exporting and importing).
I would prefer to avoid duplicating all of the information manually. It would also be nice to be able to update in your own version of outlook/business contact manager and then have it synchronize when on-line.
Does this functionality exist currently? ( I can't find any reference). If not, are their development plans to integrate the two products? If so, is there any timeline for the integration?
Please let me know.
Thanks
Yes, in fact you can easily synchronize your contact information in the Business Contact Manager with Outlook using the "Connect to Outlook" feature. Simply go into Business Contact Manager, choose "Contacts" from the tabs above to navigate to your contacts, click "Actions", then choose "Connect to Outlook". You'll be prompted to add these contacts as a new set of contacts in your Outlook client. After doing so, you can make modifications to these contacts offline in your Outlook client, then choose to synchronize these updates to your Office Live Business Contact Manager using the "Connect To Outlook" feature.
Hope that helps,
Albert
I am familiar with teh connect to outlook feature for contacts.
Are there plans to integrate the other Business Contact Manager functionality? (e.g. opportunities, project management, products, companies, etc.).
There is a high degree of overlap between the products, and they appear to have a similar structure. It would be great to be able to make updates in Outlook Business Contact Manager, and then to have those updates reflected in Office Live.
The same would hold true for the accounting software.
Any future plans to integrate the two products (office live and Outlook - beyond contacts)
Spence,
We are evaluating integration potential between Microsoft Office Live and Microsoft Office Outlook Business Contact Manager for future versions of both products. Could you give a little more detail as to how you would use the integration and what your business needs might be?
Thanks,
Matt Smith - MSFT
I would see value in being able to automatically synchronize information between office live and outlook/business contact manager.
This would include products, opportunities, billing information, project tracking updates, contacts, clients, etc. I would use many of these items if they were available. This would allow for updates to be made in either outlook/BCM of office live to be reflected in the other location. To maximize the value, this should be done to the main database, rather then to an alternate location (e.g. as contacts does currently).
This could also be used to feed information into Microsoft office accounting as well. For this integration, it would include products, time and expenses, etc.
You would need to put in an option about what type of information is synchronized with each user. The administrator would need to be able to control who could synchronize.
The value to this would be significant for the more advanced user (or many users if it was made simple to integrate). Currently, the information needs to be created redundantly in each location. Outlook/BCM for your own use and Outlook live as a shared work space.
Hope that helps. Just some preliminary thoughts.
Thank you for your feedback.
Matt Smtih
Matt,
I have an officelive id and office 2007 enterprise edition, is it possible for me to integrate my office live id inbox in my outlook 2007? I tried to add it like any other email address but it gave me an error saying it couldnt find the server!!!
Another question regarding office live(maybe little off the topic), I registered a domain name with Office Live and the same domain name is available in aplus.net after a day of registration and my domain name is active!! Can you please help in understanding this?(If its appropriate here)
Thank you,
sath.
Hello,
I just wanted to voice another request for the integration between Office Live BCM and Outlook BCM. It would be great to not have to create the same information in two different places. Thanks for listening.
Dave
Sath,
If you purchase the Essentials or Premium version of Office Live, we provide Outlook Connector as a download for you to integrate your Windows Live Hotmail inbox into Outlook.
To your domain name question, if you register a domain with Office Live it is reserved.
Thanks,
Matt Smith - MSFT
Matt or other party,
I have a client who has 8K-10K contacts in her local machine MS Outlook. She says that she tried to sync with MS Office Live Outlook and received a message that she was limited to 1,000 contacts.
1) Is this true?
2) Will Business Contact mgr handle more contacts and be able to accommodate her.
3) Is their a web based application that will manage that many contacts
Please reply to lenjax@hotmail.com
Thanx
Hi Leonard,
According to our developers, there is no limit on the # of contacts that can be put into Office Live's Web BCM (Business Contact Manager) tool.
Thanks,
Chris
Unfortunately, the Outlook Connector does not seem to work very well. I've been trying for 3 straight days to get it to work with Outlook 2007. It connects, authenticates, and can send mail, but will not show any messages in any folders, any contacts, or any appointments that are in Office Live. I don't even get any errors - it just doesn't work.
And to say that the support for Office Live is pitiful is being kind....
Hi Jesse,
Sorry to hear you are having trouble with Outlook Connector and Office Live. I have been told that an upcoming version of the Outlook Connector will address many of the problems you are facing.
In the meantime, they recommend contacting the Outlook support instead of Office Live. Since you have Outlook Connector installed, there should be a "Contact Us" link on the menu in Outlook. It will take you to a page where you can choose your subscription. If you choose the connector, it will take you to support.microsoft.com with options pre-selected for you. If you are on a machine where it is not installed, you can navigate directly to support.microsoft.com and walk through the Outlook options.
Thanks for your persistence on this as we work out the issues.
I'm having trouble making sure office live essentials will upload all of our office outlook contacts (which are currently different on each computer) to one list on office live? Also, how does the calendar function of outlook sync with the calendar function of office live? Thank you
