Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Administration Guide > Overview of Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite >

About Synchronizing Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite

You can use Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite to synchronize account, contact, appointment, and task records between Oracle CRM On Demand and Microsoft Outlook. This allows you to update contact records, schedule appointments, and keep To-Do lists in either application and then synchronize the information. For more information on synchronization, see How Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Synchronizes Data with Oracle CRM On Demand.

Synchronizing Contacts

New and updated contact records are synchronized between Microsoft Outlook and Oracle CRM On Demand. Contact activities are synchronized only when the contact is a primary contact for that activity.

You can associate the following information to contact records in Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite:

• Account information. You can associate an existing account record (an account record that is already synchronized to Microsoft Outlook) to a contact record. Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite only synchronizes the contact's primary account.
• Email. Email can be associated to a contact record. However, email attachments are not synchronized from Oracle CRM On Demand and Microsoft Outlook.
• Team members. Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite only synchronizes the contact's primary team member.

Synchronizing Appointments and Tasks (Activities)

New, updated, or deleted activity records are synchronized between Microsoft Outlook and Oracle CRM On Demand. Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite will only synchronize appointment and task records that are directly visible.

NOTE:  Completed email activities are not synchronized by default.

You can associate the following information to activity records in Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite:

• Account information. You can associate an existing account record (an account record that is already synchronized to Microsoft Outlook) to the corresponding activity record.
• Contact information. Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite only synchronizes contact activities where the contact is the primary contact for that activity.
• User information. User is the only association object synchronized by Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite in the same manner as Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop.

Synchronizing Accounts

New and updated account records are partially synchronized between Microsoft Outlook and Oracle CRM On Demand. The entire account record is not synchronized, only a few fields of the account record are synchronized. Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite synchronizes the following account fields: Account Name, Account Teams, Book Name, Location, and Description.

Email can be associated to account records and synchronized by Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite. However, email attachments are not synchronized from Oracle CRM On Demand and Microsoft Outlook.

Synchronizing Primary Users

Child records are not synchronized between Microsoft Outlook and Oracle CRM On Demand. However, there are some child records that are synchronized because they are necessary to maintain record associations. For example, Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite synchronizes the primary user of a contact or activity only if the contact is the primary contact for a contact or activity.

Synchronization Limits

The total number of records available to be synchronized is limited to 2000 contacts, 2000 accounts, and 3000 activities on the Oracle CRM On Demand server. If the limit is reached, then an error is returned. The error will not stop the overall synchronization process, just the synchronization of the impacted record. To avoid this error, you can use synchronization filters to reduce the number of Oracle CRM On Demand records that are available in Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite. For more information on synchronization filters, see Using Filters in Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop.

The frequency of manual full synchronizations is monitored in Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop. If a user tries to perform a full synchronization within four hours of the last full synchronization, then a unique error code is generated.

Synchronization Deduplication and Conflict Resolution

Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Lite supports deduplication and conflict resolution for accounts. For more information on deduplication and conflict resolution during synchronization, see How Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Handles a Conflict During Synchronization.