These tools enhance Microsoft Outlook by providing connections to Microsoft Exchange Server Public Folders, databases and other contact management applications. Some can be adapted not just for sales force automation, but also for project tracking and help desk. We’ve also included tools that don’t have direct Outlook interfaces but do offer synchronization with Outlook.
For other types of contact tools, see
In addition, a list of pages containing contact tools is here.
Tools in the Spotlight
Contact management tool for Outlook 2000 or later, storing information in an Access database. Tracks correspondence and other items, and shares that data with everyone in the organization. Can associate any contact with any company. Performs merges to Word and keeps a record of the documents created. Maintains a group calendar collating colleagues' appointments. |
Tools
Customer relationship tool that integrates mail, contacts, workflow, and lead management. Also features spam blocking, customizable templates, automatic creation of contacts from incoming messages. | |
Unsupported Microsoft sample form application. | |
Web and WAP-enabled customer relationship management application with two-way Outlook integration for contacts, calendar, and tasks. | |
Contact manager, integrated with Outlook for e-mail, calendar, task, and activity functions. Includes tracking of outgoing faxes, merge to HTML mail with attachments, ability to view ACT! contact databases in Outlook address book. Contact databases can be shared. | |
Modify contacts in both ACT! and Outlook and the synchronization routine keeps your changes in sync. Create a contact in Outlook it will be exported to ACT! and new ACT! contacts will be imported back to Outlook. Custom fields you have defined in ACT! will be transferred to Outlook as well as contact notes. In order to synchronize specific contacts to Outlook, you can specify ACT! group(s) and sync exports only contacts from these groups. It is designed to skip private contacts as well. One way or two way merge is supported. Sync ACT! data with Exchange Public Folders, choosing any public contact folder for Contacts and a Task folder for Opportunities and Activities. All ACT! versions starting from 2007(9.0),2008(10.0),2009(11.0),2010(12.0) are supported. | |
Multi-featured CRM system with two-way, live synchronization with Outlook. Back end is either Microsoft SQL Server or Pervasive.SQL. SDK available. | |
Customer relationship management application built on Outlook and Exchange 2000, with sales force automation, customer service, and marketing and campaign management modules. Supports access via Outlook, web browser, or Pocket Outlook on a PocketPC PDA. Integrates with QuickBooks Pro 2003. Available either for in-house installation or by subscription as a hosted application. Version 2, now supports Exchange 2003. | |
CRM add-in for Outlook 2003 included in retail and volume license versions of Microsoft Office 2003 Professional and Small Business Edition. | |
BCM is now available as a free download for users who upgraded to Outlook 2010. | |
CCS Service Request provides a central point for tracking and managing service requests for departments such as HR, IT, Facilities, Sales and Marketing. Tickets are submitted from an Outlook form, email or web page. The ticket is routed to the department providing the service. Department staff is assigned the request. Includes full reporting, knowledge base and flexible forms. Easy to install, run. | |
Sync Outlook BCM data with BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices. Supports syncing Google data with Outlook or your phone. | |
ContactGenie DataPort, contact import/export for Microsoft Outlook 2000/2010. Full support for custom forms/fields in PST, Exchange Mailbox, or Exchange public folders. Ability to either add only or update pre-existing contacts using one or more user-selected fields as update keys. Export from Exchange GAL and Global Distribution Groups. Standardize primary field formats. Save unlimited import/export criteria templates for repeated use. Command line support for unattended operation. Native MS SQL support. (Previous Standard/Advanced editions combined into one as of v3.3) | |
ContacTree is a contact organizer add-in for Microsoft Outlook that automatically generates organization charts of a contact's company for easy searching and navigation. Available in versions for personal and enterprise use, ContacTree provides very simple new intuitive input forms with extensive auto-complete functions. By splitting contact data into linked levels of Contact, Contact's Manger, Organization and Location, it also becomes easy to develop and maintain records over time. Personal and Enterprise versions available. | |
Outlook 2007 has 65 usable fields for contacts. This utility captures all of them and presents them to you in a easy to read Access database. The information in Outlook is not altered at any time and the information presented in our application is read only. All contact additions and editing take place in Outlook. The user can refresh the database at any time. | |
Create all the accounts from your BCM contacts using this great tool. It also links the contacts to the accounts so that you can see them in the Accounts List. | |
Credenza turns Outlook into a professional practice management tool. Organize your calendar, tasks, email, documents, research, phone calls, notes, billable time and more according to your client matter files or projects. Credenza is helpful if you bill for your time. With Credenza you can easily track time as you work. Recapture lost billable hours stolen by email and bill for any activities in Outlook. Credenza also makes collaboration easy by allowing you to create a Team to share information with other users. Your Team can be any combination of people who work together; you and your assistant, your workgroups, or a firm with hundreds of users. | |
CureCRM for Outlook lets you see a threaded list of conversations with prospects or leads - it also automatically extracts contact information such as phone numbers, address, etc. When setting up meetings, Cure provides busy sales professionals with an automated scheduling assistant. | |
Davton CRM is a Customer Relationship Management system built in to Microsoft Outlook. It uses Microsoft Exchange Public Folders to store and share information. It incorporates and enhances all the features in Outlook which your team already use, so getting your team to use it will be straight forward. Features include: * Create Marketing Campaigns and Calling Lists * Project linking for Architects and other project oriented organisations * One click email processing and linking | |
DoubleLook will synchronize Outlook with your desktop PIM or CRM software. DoubleLook runs continuously on your computer as a background process (real-time). Changes to data in either Outlook or your PIM/CRM software are synchronized instantly. | |
Issue management solution for Exchange that could be used for a help desk, customer relationship management, software development, or other applications where you need to track "issues" and their resolution. User interface is via the web or custom Outlook forms. Connects to Exchange GAL and Active Directory, uses Exchange to send updates and alerts, and stores its data in SQL Server or Access. Web-based calendar can send and synchronize appointments with Outlook. | |
Customer relationship management application based on Outlook, Exchange, SQL Server and Internet Information Server. (Formerly CRM-Vision) | |
Integration with the InterAction customer relationship management solution consists of a MAPI address book provider (not compatible with Outlook 98 or 2000 in Internet Mail Only mode) and a tool to synchronize between Outlook and InterAction. | |
Use LinkPoint Vue to view Contact information from your CRM in your Outlook for each recipient of an email. View Opportunities, Cases, Notes, Tasks and Events from your CRM. View, Edit, or Create a new Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity, or Case directly from LinkPoint Vue. Click-to-dial a phone number using VoIP telephones like Skype or Vonage. View other data besides your CRM data – like Social Networks, data aggregators and soon internal corporate systems. Get maps and directions to the contact’s address with just a click. | |
Includes sales and service modules for managing customer information and activities. Some integration with Outlook in the sales module only. Also see: | |
Customer relationship management system for Outlook using Exchange public folders, structured like a relational database. Handles contacts, appointments, tasks, journal items, documents, and mail messages, as well as companies and opportunities. Can automatically copy contacts that a user owns from the public folder to the user's mailbox Contacts folder. Includes tool to import into Excel for reporting, plus pre-defined Crystal Reports reports. | |
Set of intranet collaboration applications that offer synchronization with Outlook. Available for local server installation and as a hosted application. | |
Outlook-based company/customer relationship management tool adding a custom toolbar and digital dashboard to the Outlook interface. Based totally on Exchange public folders (or for single users, Personal Folders .pst files), so all data is available offline. Provides synchronization between public task and calendar folders and users' personal folders, mail merge, consistent categorization, and customized searches. Separate OutlookCRM Reporter tool transfers data to Access for report development. New features include support for Outlook 2003, customizable toolbar, automatic folder synchronization, enhanced mail merge, and attachment processing. | |
Customer relation tool based using Outlook, SQL Server and Exchange Server. Heavy emphasis on the needs of mobile users. Separate SyncStream for Outlook tool also supports offline users. | |
Prophet is an add-on for Microsoft Outlook users which allows users to take advantage of Outlook's task, calendar, contact and email features while adding sales tools such as opportunity management, sales reporting, and information sharing/collaboration. Prophet 5 includes improved usability and more advanced contact management features fully integrated with Outlook, eliminating the need to shift back and forth between multiple applications. Version 5.0 | |
Public Contact after Reply for Outlook (Public CAR) is an addin for Outlook which automatically creates an Outlook contact after you reply to an email. Free. | |
Generate customized sales quotations that include Outlook data, and link the quotes back to the Outlook contact. Can be networked to maintain a central price list and generate unique quotation numbers to multiple users. | |
Manage real estate contacts, property locations, and campaigns from within Outlook. | |
Unsupported Microsoft sample form application. See OL98: Known Problems with the Outlook Sample Applications for a warning on how this application probably won't work in a public folder. | |
Sales force automation database that integrates with Outlook tasks, appointments and mail, plus several accounting packages. Includes capability of doing bulk mail with attachments. | |
Log sent and received email messages and log them into the Salesforce.com hosted customer relationship management service. Users can also keep Outlook contacts, tasks, and activities up to date in Salesforce.com. | |
SalesOutlook CRM 6.0 now leverages the power of Windows Desktop Search to provide lightning fast searches of your customer data. Search for a contact and see all related data whether it is on Outlook or on your computer. If it is indexed we will find it. Also new are customizable checklists, a leads module, email templates, Crystal XI support and much more. Version 6. | |
Contact management and customer relationship system based on Outlook, Exchange Server and SQL, and is compatible with other SFA’s/CRM’s and databases. Hosting is offered for companies without Exchange Server. A Lotus version is also available. | |
Contact manager for sales force automation and other applications with Outlook integration for email tracking; synchronizing calendar, contacts, and tasks; and creating SCM contacts directly from within Outlook. Outlook 2000 or later. For personal or group use. | |
ITIL helpdesk with automated ticketing and issue tracking for support team to log, analyze, collaborate, track and escalate support requests in an organized and structured way in Outlook. Can auto-process incoming support requests, auto-assign technicians, enforce service level, set due date and send automated notifications to cut the overhead of manual tasks significantly. Comes with integrated Knowledge Base, Asset Tracking, SLA, Report builders and OLAP Statistical tools. Support for Skype, SMS and Phone calls. Includes Web Access sites for technicians and end-users. Improves your efficiency to enable faster response time. | |
ITIL help-desk with automated ticketing and issue tracking for support team to log, analyze, collaborate, track and escalate support requests in a structured way in Outlook and SharePoint. Can auto-process incoming support requests, auto-assign technicians, enforce service level, set due date and send automated notifications to cut the overhead of manual tasks significantly. Comes with integrated Knowledge Base, Asset Tracking, SLA, Report builders and OLAP Statistical tools. Support for Skype, mobile SMS and Phone calls. Includes Web Access sites for technicians and end-users. Improves efficiency of support team to enable faster response time. | |
TeamKB for Outlook and Exchange is an enterprise-grade knowledge base, allowing you and your team to share information, reduce customer support, improve staff productivity and eliminate time wasted searching for information across disparate systems such as shared folders and paper documents, all inside Outlook. With TeamKB, your team can document best practices and solutions to common problems and reply to time-consuming and repeated queries from your users in a click. | |
TeamScope CRM for Outlook works fully within Outlook, storing all customer information in the Outlook Contact, Task, Appointment and Journal entries you use every day. Version 5.0 | |
SAM automatically sets the sender, signature, and folder for sent items based on several criteria. Use SAM to assign a sending account and signature to contacts, folders, or categories. Works with Outlook 2007, and 2010. | |
Xobni is the free Outlook plugin that saves you time finding email, conversations, contact info, and attachments. Get lightning-fast search and learn more about the people in Outlook through information drawn from around the web. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Salesforce, Hoover's info, and more-all right inside Outlook. |
More Information
- Contact Tools
- Project Management Tools
- Microsoft Access and Other Databases
- destinationCRM — news and reviews
- SellMoreNow.com — reviews and other information to help you evaluate CRM solutions
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- Maximizing Your CRM Investment — Seven tips for successful CRM projects
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Last reviewed on Apr 13, 2012
I am looking for a good tool for updating a large number of contacts in Microsoft Outlook 2007 .Thank you for any suggestions!! I believe it would be a mass email sent to all of the contacts requesting current -accurate information.
Actual contacts – linked at contact tools can do that. There might be others in the list that can do it too. Or if you use plaxo, you can use it to update.
More tools are on our contact data entry and updating page.