What's the big Deal
Published Dec 05 2016 09:22 AM 7,830 Views
Microsoft

Outlook Customer Manager (OCM) enables you to manage deals. A deal is a business opportunity or potential transaction with your customers. You can use OCM to manage, track progress and view all information related to the deal.

 

You can create a deal directly from OCM business contact view. When you receive an email from your business contact, you open Customer Manager and click + on the deal section. Type the deal name then click on the name to navigate to the deal view.

 

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3b_newdeal.png 4b_newdeal.png 

 

Similar to the business contact view, the deal view shows list of related contacts, tasks, timelines, notes, and files. Since the deal is created from Alex's view, he is automatically linked as a contact to the new deal. Furthermore, any future communication between you and Alex is automatically shown on the deal's timeline view.

 

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A new deal is created with no amount and due one week after the create date. You can manage the deal and update value by clicking View Details on the deal header.

 

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You can find the list of all deals you created by going to the Outlook's add-ins view.

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You can search for deal and filter based on the deal column value. You can also customize the list by updating the deal stages and adding column(s).

 

To update deal stages, click on the edit icon next to the Stage header:

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The customize stages view allows you to create, remove and re-order stages. For example, I add a new stage Under Review under Open category.

 

All the active stages should be created under Open category. A deal can be moved to inactive stages such as when a deal is won or lost. You can create a new stages to define a new inactive stage (For example Project on-hold) under Other.

 

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You can add new column to the deal list:

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For example, I add a new column to track win probability for the deal.

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Note:

  • OCM currently supports 3 data type: text, number and date, with support for more data types are planned in the future releases.
  • A maximum of 25 columns can be added to the deal list

 

OCM helps you to track deal due date by showing upcoming deals and deal past due on the Focused section the deal page. 

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The past due and upcoming deals are also shown on the OCM iOS mobile app to enable you to stay on top of your deals while you are on the go.

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In addition to create a deal from a contact, you can also create a deal from a company as well as create a stand-alone deal from the add-in view.

 

In this article, we talked about managing deals using Outlook Customer Manager. It helps you to manage deal, track progress and due date. In the next article, Miriam will talk about how to share the information with your team.

13 Comments
Copper Contributor

Hi Welly,

 

This is great information.   How would an organization of let's say 40 full CRM users and 20 "lite" CRM users use the OCM if the "full" users were already using a MS  CRM program already?   In other words, is there any "soft" linkage between the two?   I know there are not actual "connectors" between the two, but can you offer any guidance how the two might be used by one common sales team?   Obviously we could have "light" CRM users as part of a CRM package, but OCM is obviusly more economical since we have Business Premium already. 

 

Thanks

Microsoft

@Sean Polk, thanks for the comment. OCM is optimized for managing customer relationship for small business (10 users or less). We recommend larger company to use Dynamic 365. There is currently no native integration between OCM and Dynamic, but I understand the hybrid scenario you described above and we will look into that as we are planning our future versions.

What happens if a customer has 6 Office 365 business premium and 3 E3 license. How will this work with OCM?

Microsoft

@Hans van der Meer, the users who assigned business premium license will see OCM while those assigned E3 will not.

Copper Contributor

You mention the apple phone app in the article above.  I know apps for other phone operating systems are planned. Is there any update on the Microsoft Windows Mobile version of the app?

Hello,

you mentioned the iOS App. 

How/where Can i get it?

i write a couple of emails to  ocmappsu@microsoft.com

but did not get any answer or install-links. 

 

Any help is appreciated. 

Microsoft

@TOLYMP Turn∙Sport∙Spielgeräte, we are holding off adding more users to the iOS app as we are working on an upgrade to the app. We are starting rolling out the iOS app again in a couple of weeks - please contact me if you do not get the download invite by March 15.

Hello,

Now it is the 15th of march, I still did not receive invitation or information concerning the iOS App.
Can you please have a look to achive a solution.

Many thanks

Arno

Microsoft

Arno,

 

We are pushing the release of OCM app update until next week -- we are going to send the test flight invitation for new users by mid next week. Apology for the delay.


Welly

Hi,

now it is 28th of march, but no iOS App is available for me.
Can you again please check the actual status.

Best regards.

Arno

Copper Contributor

I am having issues updating customized stages within the deals section of Outlook Customer Manager.  I can add and rearrange stages but once I hit the update button it doesn't save the customization or change.  When I go back into the stages nothing changed.

 

It did work and update at one point but stopped and not longer will update.

 

Thanks.

Hi Shane - I tried the sceanrio you mentioned and was able to customize the deal stages successfully. The new stages were saved and available for use immediately. I am going to send you a message to request for additional information.

 

Srihari

Copper Contributor

Hello Srihari,

I tried deleting the cache but still haven't been able to customize my deal stages successfully.  Do you have another option?

 

Thanks,

 

Shane

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‎Dec 15 2016 09:40 AM
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