Exchange/Outlook integration for contacts and calendar
Sales people use Outlook, period. And because that's what they use, that's where the information should be at. Best way to achieve this would be via Exchange integration so that people would have access to the same information even on their mobile and wouldn't just be dependent on a single plugin.
We do have a closed beta right now specifically to allow exchange users to use Meetings. You can reach out to your customer success rep who can sign you up for the beta. This beta allows anyone with Exchange to use the Meetings app, which creates a booking page allowing contacts to book meetings directly on your calendar.
I decided not to update the status of this thread because this beta is only adding an integration for the Meetings app.
Thanks everyone for the interest in this! I'm sorry for not providing more details on the larger scope related to Some areas of this work have been completed and some are still in progress, I'll try and break this down based on the different ways HubSpot needs to connect with exchange:
Inbox connection:
Provide the abilty to connect your Exchange inbox with HubSpot. This allows you to use our CRM for emailing and use the Sequences tool in sales. Today, the only way to connect an Exchange inbox is through IMAP - which is an experience that we are improving to make it easier for Exchange users to connect their email. This is currently in a closed beta.
Meetings sync:
This would allow users to use the HubSpot Meetings scheduling tool with an Exchange email address. This is currently in a closed beta testing group.
I hope this is helpful! Please let me know if there are other questions or features related to syncing with Outlook. We may break each of these features into separate Ideas to help with tracking and understanding.
@AndyPitre is the exchange connect for the calender function ready yet? We still use exchange and would love to connect the agenda's for the meeting part. I can only find the one for office and google.
This is basic functionality for professionals, and 12 months is more than enough time for Hubspot to have gone from "planning the functionality" to actually delivering something. Hubspot must be able to stay synchronized with Exchange/Office365. Today it is impeding uptake in my company, because our folks need to add the record in Outlook, then rekey into Hubspot. Then, they get out of synch.
Contacts
Calendars
Tasks
Bi-directional synch is a must have for this to actually be a productivity enhancer for our firm. While it is great that 3rd parties have stepped in, we should not have to buy, configure and maintain additional tools for this.
Would like an update as well. We see there has been a workaround made to get EMAIL integration working for non-Office 365 accounts, but there is no CALENDAR work around for non-Office 365 accounts.
@AndyPitre really curious to hear an update on this. We really need meetings created/updated in Office 365 to be created/updated on relevant deals and contacts in HubSpot as engagements with the type "meeting".
Definitely needed! thank you for working on it. managing both calendars is a bear.
My apologies if this has been said before: I have the gmail sync. Set it up in order to jumper over to outlook, but to no avail. One issue I have is when "add to gmail calendar" is checked, then it sends an invite to me and the contact attendees. I would like to be able to set up meetings on my calendar and have the option to not invite the attendee. The meeting entry is often where I write planning notes for the upcoming meeting and document the outcome. In those cases, i don't want to send that as an invite to the person i'm meeting with...anyway, keep at it as this will very helpful.
Also, make sure this integrates with the brand-domains functionality please
We are not using hubspot's calendar tool at all- just using outlook.
The contact profiles in the outlook extension is a nice try, but it's not really usable because it is opened by typing in the contact's email address. Expecting everyone to memorize all of our contacts' email addresses is fairly unrealistic. All you need to do is make it so it will look up a contact record based on typing in a name.
Just to be clear, per Support, the Office 365 Meetings integration will only work if:
1. The user is connecting to an Office 365 subscription account.
AND
2. The user's email account is hosted with Outlook 365.
NOTE: Simply having Office 365 connected to your company's Microsoft Exchange server will not work!
This is a low-point for the product as Microsoft Exchange is the industry standard for internally hosted email. Sure, some organizations use other services like G-Suite or Office 365, but the numbers certainly do not compare to Microsoft Exchange. If CRM is expected to be the unified work tool for sales and marketing professionals, this issue should be resolved sooner than later.
We are a relatively new HubSpot paid account... We are integrating the sales platform. I am very disappointed to know that we cannot do meeting scheduling through Microsoft Exchange Server even though we upgraded to Microsoft 365.
I see this thread has been going on for quite some time. I hope something will be done soon to fix this.
