Using Business Central as your Business Inbox in Outlook
Business Central Outlook add-ins, you can see financial data related to customers and vendors, as well as create and send financial documents, such as quotes and invoices.
Getting the Add-in
In Business Central add-ins are then automatically added to your Outlook.
Then, when you open Outlook, you will see an email message from Business Central Admin. The new add-in is added to the Outlook ribbon, and in Outlook Web Access, you can see it in the add-in ribbon, immediately above the body of the email message. The add-in itself will be updated periodically, and you'll get notified that a new version is ready for you in Outlook.
Some companies using Office 365 restrict users’ permissions to deploy add-ins. So you must make sure that you have an Office 365 subscription that includes email and allows you to deploy add-ins. If you want to try out the add-in anyway, you can try Office 365 for free.
Using the Contact Insights Add-in
Let's say that you get an email from a customer that wants to get a quote on some items. Directly in Outlook, you can open the Business Central without leaving Outlook.
In the add-in, you can create a sales quote and send it back to this customer without leaving Outlook. All of the information that you need to send the sales quote is available in your business inbox in Outlook.
Once you have the data entered, you can post the quote. You can then send it by email. Business Central generates a .PDF file with the sales quote and attaches it to the email message that you draft in the add-in.
Similarly, if you get an email from a vendor, you can use the add-in to work with vendors and purchase invoices.
Sometimes you want to see more fields than you can see in the add-in, such as when you want to fill in lines in an invoice. To give you a bit more space to work with, you can pop out the add-in to a separate window. It's still part of Outlook, but you have more space. As you enter data for the document in the pop-out view, the changes are automatically saved. When you are done entering data for the document, you can choose the OK button. Choosing the add-in frame in Outlook automatically refreshes the document with the changes you made in the pop-out view.
Creating Invoices from Your Meeting Appointments
Some businesses record all billable appointments in the Outlook calendar. With Business Central add-in, look up existing information or create an invoice or another sales document right there.
Doing Quick Document Lookup
The Business Central Document Links add-in gives you quick access to documents mentioned in email messages. The add-in is available for an email message if a document number is recognized in the body of the message. Opening the add-in provides quick access to the document.
For example, if you receive an email message that mentions the text S-QUO100, Business Central identifies that as a sales quote, and so you can open this document in Outlook. In Outlook, choose the Document Links button immediately above the body of the email message. In the Outlook Web App, choose the S-QUO1001 text in the body of the email message.
In the Document Links add-in, you can modify and take actions with the document, just like you can in Business Central.
Adding the Add-ins Manually
In some cases, the add-ins do not get added automatically to Outlook. Even if you or a colleague ran the assisted setup guide on behalf of the company, Business Central add-ins manually.
First, you must verify that you have access to the add-ins in your Office 365 account. Quite simply open your Outlook Web Access in a browser, and then add /owa/#path=/options/manageapps to the URL in the address bar. This opens the Manage add-ins window, where you can enable Business Central should be available.
Similarly in the Outlook desktop client, you can verify that Business Central is listed in the Manage Add-ins window.
In both cases, if Business Central is still not available, you have to get the add-in manifest files. For more information, please contact your Office 365 administrator.