Microsoft Exchange Email Integration in Oracle Sales

The Microsoft Exchange email integration lets salespeople send emails from the Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities, and Leads work areas in Oracle Sales. They can see an entire email conversation related to a particular record they're working on without leaving the work area.

Exchange Email Overview

The Exchange email integration saves sent emails to the activity feed and to the Sent Items folder of the native email client. When a recipient replies, the reply appears as a thread to the originally sent email in the activity feed. Exchange saves the reply to the inbox of the sender as well.

Here's a diagram of the Exchange email integration process:

The diagram depicts the Exchange email integration flow.

This table details the integration steps:

Integration Step Description

Administrator sets up the Exchange integration

Set up the integration in three areas:

  1. Microsoft Azure
  2. Microsoft Exchange Server
  3. Oracle Sales

In Microsoft Azure (callout 1):

Create an application for the integration and provide the read, write, and send application permissions. This lets the application access the mailbox.

In Microsoft Exchange Server (callout 2):

Create a rule to search for a keyword in the subject and the email body of the sent and received emails, and add the global address to the bcc.

In Oracle Sales (callout 3):

Set Exchange as your email server in Sales using a profile option. Using the email Integration page, associate the application you created in Azure with the rule you created in Exchange. This association means that the integration engine controls the compose email action in Oracle Sales.

User initiates an email conversation from Sales

When an email is sent to a contact from Sales (callout 4), the integration engine inserts the keyword in the background of the email body (callout 5) and sends it to the contact.

Exchange (based on the rule) forwards a copy of the email with the keyword to the sender's global address and saves it in the activity feed of Sales (callout 8).

Recipient replies and the salespeople see the reply in Oracle Sales

When the recipient replies (callout 6), the integration engine displays the reply on the Sales activity feed by identifying the keyword, auto inserted in the first sent email. All the sent and received email conversations in the thread (callout 7) are shown in the Oracle Sales activity feed.

If your user is using a native client, such as Outlook, the email chain also shows up in the sent items and inbox of the native email client of the sender (callout 9).

Microsoft Azure Setup Steps

If you have reused the Application ID and key of Microsoft 365 add-in for the Exchange email integration, before proceeding with the Set up in Microsoft Azure, read through the FAQ: I already have an app registered with Microsoft Azure for Microsoft 365 add-in. Can I reuse the Application ID and Key of that app for the Exchange email integration?

Here are the steps to create a new application for Exchange email integration that uses Microsoft Graph API:

  1. Sign in to Microsoft Azure at https://portal.azure.com.
  2. In the Azure Services, click Azure Active Directory.
  3. In the left pane of the Azure Active Directory Overview page, click App registrations.
  4. Click New Registration.
    The image shows clicking the New Registration button in the App registrations page.
  5. On the Register an application page, make these entries:
    1. Enter a name.
    2. For Supported account types, make sure Accounts in this organizational directory only (tenant name - Single tenant) is selected.
    3. Click Register.
  6. Microsoft Azure registers and generates an ID for your application. Copy the Application (client) ID for later use, as shown in this sample image.
    Copy the Application (client) ID
  7. Go to Certificates & secrets to generate the secret or the Application Key.
    1. On Certificates and secrets, Client Secret section, click New client secret, as shown in this sample image.
      Click New client secret to generate the application key.
    2. Enter a name, for example, Email Integration Secret.
    3. Select the longest tenure. Microsoft allows two years from the Start Date.
    4. Click Add.
    5. Copy the generated string from the Value field, as shown in this sample image. Value is the application key.
      Copy the value generated for client secret.
  8. Go to API permissions and click Add a permission.

    Here's a sample image of the API permissions navigation node and the Add a permission option:

    Add API permission.
    1. On Request API permissions, click Azure Active Directory Graph under Microsoft APIs, as shown in this sample image.Select Microsoft Graph.
    2. Click Application permissions.

      Here's sample image of the Application permissions option: The image shows selecting the Microsoft Graph app permissions.

      See also: Enable Microsoft Application Permissions So Sync Continues without Re-Authentication

    3. Expand Mail and select Mail.ReadWrite and Mail.Send permissions, as shown in this sample image.Add mail permissions.

    4. Click Add permissions.
  9. Remove the default User.Read Delegated permission, as shown in this sample image. Remove the default User.Read permissions.

  10. Click Grant admin consent and click Yes, as shown in this sample image.Grant admin consent for your tenant.

    The status of the permissions changes to Granted, as seen in this sample image.Status shows admin consent on the mail permissions.

Microsoft Exchange Administrator Center Setup Steps

  1. Sign in Microsoft Exchange at: https://admin.exchange.microsoft.com/.
  2. Go to Mail flow > Rules.
    Note: Ensure that your network settings allow access to Microsoft Exchange when you're connected on VPN. Otherwise, you might have to disconnect from your VPN before setting the rule.
  3. Click the plus icon and select Create a new rule.
    Add rule.
  4. Enter a name.
  5. For Apply this rule if, select Subject or body contains a rule and enter a keyword. Though Microsoft Exchange lets you to add many, add only one keyword. The keyword you enter here, is used as the hidden keyword in the Email Integration setup of the sales application.
  6. In Do the following, select Bcc the message to.
  7. Add your global address and click OK.

    The email you enter here is used in the Email Integration setup of the sales application.

  8. Click Save.
  9. Ensure that the priority is set to the highest.
  10. To set the priority to the highest, select the rule and click the edit icon, as shown in this sample image.
    Change the priority.
  11. In the edit mode of the rule, set Priority to 0 and save your changes.

Email Integration in Sales Setup Steps

Use the Manage Microsoft 365 task to configure the settings for email integration.

  1. In the Setup and Maintenance work area, use the Manage Microsoft 365 task: Go to the Sales offering > Integrations functional area > Manage Microsoft 365 task.
  2. On the Manage Microsoft 365 page, go to the Email Integration tab.
  3. Read and accept the integration notice.
  4. On the Email Integration tab, make these entries:
    1. Enter the Application ID, generated in Microsoft Azure.
    2. Enter the Application Key, secret value generated in Microsoft Azure.
    3. Select the Email Integration Enabled check box so that other applications such as Oracle Sales can use the email integration service.
    4. For the Email Integration Address, enter the global email you provided in the rule created in the Microsoft Exchange portal.
    5. For the Email Integration Keyword, enter the keyword you entered in the rule created in the Microsoft Exchange portal.
    6. Click Save and Close.
  5. Go to the Manage Administrator Profile Values task, search for the Digital Sales Email Options Enabled (ORA_ZCA_DS_EMAIL_OPTIONS) profile option and select the following Site value:
    1. MS Exchange with OS Native UI: Select this to route the email flow via Microsoft Exchange and use the native email client such as Apple mail. When a user clicks Compose Email in Oracle Sales, the native client compose window appears.
    2. MS Exchange with Redwood Compose UX: Select this to choose the Oracle Sales UI for composing the emails and send or receive them via Microsoft Exchange server.
    3. MS Exchange Office 365 UI: Select this to route the email flow via Microsoft Exchange and use Microsoft 365 (Outlook) as an email client. When a user clicks Compose Email in Oracle Sales, the Microsoft 365 client appears.
    Note: Oracle Email is the default site for the Digital Sales Email Options Enabled profile option. The email flow is routed through the Oracle Email service, using Oracle Sales as the email client. Salespeople send and receive emails using the Oracle Sales UI.

Run the Exchange Sync Process

Run the Microsoft Exchange Email Sync scheduled process to see the inbound emails in the activities list of Oracle Sales.

See the Microsoft Exchange Email Sync Job topic to learn more about this job.