Microsoft and Salesforce has made significant progress to their strategic partnership announced in May. They unveiled new joint solutions—including Salesforce1 for Windows, Salesforce for Office, and Power BI for Office 365 and Excel integrations with Salesforce—at Dreamforce 2014. 
The companies disclosed that in early 2015, they will release a Salesforce1 app for Windows Phone. Alongside, OneDrive will be linked to the Salesforce solutions. In addition, Office will also be incorporated with the Salesforce suite. Through the alliance, Microsoft will gain an opportunity to provide its user-friendly products to Salesforce users. Salesforce, on the other hand, will be able to sell its SaaS product in the more conservative enterprise channels, currently controlled by Microsoft.
The companies plan to integrate Salesforce into Office, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business on the Android and iOS platforms in the first half of 2015. Also, in the first half of 2015, the companies plan to ship a Salesforce app for Outlook. The second half of 2015 will also see a Salesforce1 app for Windows Phone along with a Salesforce app for Excel. Power BI for Office 365 and Excel integrations with Salesforce. With these new integrations, customers will be able to bi-directionally load data to Salesforce and Excel to build reports, visualize information and discover new insights. Power BI integration with Salesforce is anticipated for the first half of 2015. A Salesforce app for Excel is anticipated for the second half of 2015.
Some key things to note for existing features (live and preview):
- Linking is in future
- You can’t post from Salesforce to SharePoint
- Metadata updates made in Salesforce will stay in Salesforce.
- Files integration with SharePoint (OneDrive) is now Live
- Chatter and Search leverages SharePoint metadata and Security
- Respects security and compliance of SharePoint
- Files always remain in SharePoint, simply linked to Salesforce
- Similar integration and experience is missing in SharePoint, but some web parts are available.
Salesforce1 for Outlook (2nd gen)
- Built in latest integration
- Does not require installation of client software
- Works with outlook and OWA (require Exchange 2013 SP1)
- Within a OWA message launch a Salesforce app. It’ll open up people, opportunities associated, accounts, cases etc. in a modal window. Early 2015 availability
- Underlying Logic– similar to Delve. Predefined algorithm, will evolve as you go. It tracks each time an email is sent.
- Pilot on calendar sync in near future.
At Perficient, we have award-winning Microsoft and Salesforce practices, and we are very excited for what this partnership brings to the table. Stay tuned for future updates to this blog as I get my hands on these integrations.
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