Salesforce brings Lightning components to Microsoft's Outlook

Salesforce will better tie its customer relationship app to Microsoft's Outlook as the two companies roll out the first products under a broad strategic agreement.

The two companies, which were reportedly competing to buy LinkedIn, outlined the following moves that revolve around Salesforce's Lightning user experience:

• Lightning components within Outlook. Joint customer will be able to use Salesforce's components to snap in functions. For instance, Salesforce SteelBrick CPQ price quotes will be available with in Outlook as will third party components.
• Those components will include prebuilt components such as lead to cash and click to dial. Salesforce data will appear with context in the side panel of Outlook.
• Lightning Sync. Microsoft and Salesforce customers can sync contacts and events with the two applications integrated.
• A redesign for Lightning for Outlook. The redesign combines one user experience to surface Salesforce records within Outlook.

Microsoft and Salesforce renewed their strategic partnership last year with the aim of integrating products. The partnership is now two years and features more than 10 integrations with tools like Outlook, SharePoint, Office and Salesforce.

Greg Gsell, director of Sales Cloud marketing Salesforce, said the idea is to take the Lightning experience to multiple applications. "Sales is the most common use case and bringing Lightning to Outlook will enable them to be more productive," said Gsell. "Sales teams are the most heavy users of email. There won't be any more toggling back and forth between the two applications."