Email Sync from Gmail to Salesforce

By Erika Desmond | 04/7/2016

ARCHIVE | This blog post was published in 2016 and only reflects functionality from that time.

Struggle to keep Salesforce up to date or tired of spending time logging emails?

Today we are excited to announce automatic cloud Email Sync for Cirrus Insight, so you can eliminate data entry and always have the emails you need in Salesforce.

Email sync is a cloud service. What does that mean? Cirrus Insight syncs your emails from Google to Salesforce, so it doesn’t matter what browser, client, or device you’re using. If you use Gmail as your email server, Cirrus Insight can automatically sync your emails to Salesforce.

Why Email Sync?

“If it’s not in Salesforce, then it didn’t happen.”

It’s popular saying in many sales organizations. Cirrus Insight offers email sync and calendar sync to make sure that every conversation and every appointment with prospects and customers is saved into Salesforce.

Save a lot of time

According to CSO Insights, salespeople waste 65% of their day doing administrative tasks like manually saving emails from Gmail into Salesforce. It’s not unusual for salespeople to send and receive hundreds of emails a day. Cirrus Insight email sync saves busy salespeople hours every week and keeps Salesforce automatically up to date.

Single source of truth

By syncing emails and appointments into Salesforce, everybody in your organization can see the status of the relationship with the customer. Cirrus Insight automatically attaches the emails and appointments to the right Lead and Contact records in Salesforce so that they’re easy for everybody to find and review. Sync makes collaboration across teams possible so that your customers get the red carpet treatment.

“You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”

Do you know how many activities (emails and appointments) are typically required for your sales reps to win a deal? Do you know if having 3 meetings with a prospect is better or worse than having 5 meetings?

Cirrus Insight email and calendar sync gets all your sales activities into Salesforce where you can track, measure, and report on the results. And we have 9 Certified Salesforce Administrators on staff to help you get set up with the right reports and dashboards to measure and improve your KPIs. Let us know how we can help.

Institutional memory

In addition to seeing the latest conversations and meetings with customers, sync is vital for maintaining institutional memory of customer relationships.

For example, when an employee leaves or a customer is transferred to a different region or division, the email and calendar data that Cirrus Insight has synced to Salesforce remains there to ensure continuous collaboration in service of your customers.

Compliance and backup

We’ve talked with a number of customers who have compliance requirements for saving customer history (emails and appointments) into Salesforce. Cirrus Insight can satisfy that requirement while simultaneously providing a backup of these important communications in Salesforce.

Support for any email client

Do you use Chrome or Firefox or Safari or Internet Explorer or Mac Mail or Outlook? No matter where you receive and send your email, you’ll never have to worry about adding an email to Salesforce again. Cirrus Insight email sync runs in the cloud to sync emails from Google for Work (aka Google Apps) to Salesforce, so it doesn’t matter what browser or email client you use to check your email.

Support for mobile email

Cirrus Insight email sync is 100% mobile compatible. You can send and receive email on your iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, or Blackberry. And you can use any mobile email app you like. We like Cirrus Insight mobile apps :-) Regardless, we can sync your emails to Salesforce.

No plugin required

You don’t need to download or install anything to start using Cirrus Insight email sync. You can enable email sync and calendar sync via the Cirrus Insight web dashboard. It’s 100% cloud. Of course, we recommend installing the award-winning Cirrus Insight Chrome extension in Gmail as well. And we’ve added a slick Welcome Screen to our Gmail plugin to make it easy to enable email sync, calendar sync, and email tracking. A tour of the new welcome screen is below.

Sync emails to and from Leads and Contacts

Cirrus Insight syncs emails to and from Leads and Contacts. If you’re sending or receiving an email with a Lead, we will sync the email to the Lead record in Salesforce. If you’re sending or receiving an email with a Contact, we will sync the email to the Contact and Account records in Salesforce.

Sync emails to Opportunities, Cases, Campaigns, Contracts, and Assets with Smart Link

Cirrus Insight email sync has powerful settings to help you sync emails into Salesforce exactly where you want. For example, if you’re in sales and you want to sync emails to the most recently created Opportunity where the Contact has a contact role, there is a setting for that:

If you’re in customer service and you want to sync emails to the most recently modified Case on the Contact, you can do that instead.

Currently, we support Standard Objects in that setting. Support for custom objects is coming in a future release.

Power user tip: Even if you don’t enable email sync, you can use the Smart Link feature above to create a default setting for the Add to Salesforce button in Cirrus Insight in Gmail. That’ll save you from having to manually search for the most recently created Opportunity when you want to save an email into Salesforce.

Historical Sync

What if you have 5 years of emails and calendar appointments with prospects and customers in Google that you want to sync into Salesforce? Cirrus Insight historical email and calendar sync is ready to help. We can sync historical data into Salesforce to get your new Salesforce implementation off to the best start, or bring your existing Salesforce org up to date with your past customer interactions. If you’d like to sync historical emails and/or calendar events, please contact your Account Executive or get in touch.

What if my organization uses Office 365 or Exchange server for email?

Cirrus Insight email sync is coming soon for Office 365 and Exchange server. If you want us to notify you as soon as it’s available, please let us know. Cirrus Insight calendar sync is available for both Office 365 and Exchange customers.

What if my organization uses Lotus?

We don’t currently have email sync or calendar sync for Lotus customers. If you use Lotus and want sync, please let us know.

Can I prevent emails from a specific domain or email address from syncing to Salesforce?

Yes. The admin for your Cirrus Insight account can block specific domains and/or email addresses from syncing to Salesforce. These settings are available in the Dashboard > Control Panel > Organizational Preferences > Email Sync. For example, you may not want to sync internal emails from your own domain.

How do I keep junk email from going into Salesforce?

You don’t have to worry about junk email because Cirrus Insight only syncs emails that are to/from Leads and Contacts into Salesforce. That also means that you don’t have to worry about manually sorting through emails in the Unresolved Items folder in Salesforce. There aren’t any unresolved emails with Cirrus Insight email sync.

If you send or receive an email to/from a new prospect or customer and you want to create a new Lead or Contact in Salesforce, you can do so with the Cirrus Insight side panel in Gmail or with Cirrus Insight mobile. You’ll have full support for your record types, dependent picklists, required fields, and validation rules so that your Salesforce leads and contacts will be accurate and up to date.

How do I purchase Email Sync?

Email Sync is part of the Cirrus Insight Closer Plan. Every new trial user of Cirrus Insight can try email sync. If you’re currently on Starter Plan or a legacy plan and want to upgrade to Closer Plan to take advantage of email sync, please contact your Account Executive or let us know. You can purchase a Cirrus Insight subscription on our sign up page.

How do I enable Email Sync as a user?

The email sync feature is available by default to all current customers on the Closer Plan and all new Cirrus Insight trials. As a user, you can enable email sync in any of 3 places:

1. You can enable email sync from the Cirrus Insight side panel in Gmail:

2. Alternatively, you can enable from the Cirrus Insight web Dashboard without needing to install a plugin in Gmail. Go to Dashboard > Control Panel > User Controls > Email Sync

3. If you’re a new Cirrus Insight trial user and you’ve installed the Chrome or Firefox extension, you’ll be greeted by the Welcome Screen which makes it easy to enable Email Sync:

Can I just sync specific email threads?

Yes. You probably noticed in the screens above that you have a choice between syncing all emails with people in Salesforce or just syncing specific threads. How do you designate a thread to sync to Salesforce? It’s pretty easy. You choose that setting when you enable email sync. And then in Gmail you select an email you want to save to Salesforce. If you receive any replies to that email or send any more emails on that thread, all those emails will automatically sync into Salesforce.

Support for Shared Activities

What if you send or receive an email with multiple recipients in To, Cc, or Bcc? Cirrus Insight email sync will save the email into Salesforce and automatically relate the email to each of the recipients up to the Salesforce limit of 50 contacts. Note: You need to have Shared Activities enabled in Salesforce for one email to be related to multiple contacts. It is enabled by default.

What does Save Email Attachments to Chatter do?

Save email attachments to Chatter is a user setting available in the Cirrus Insight side panel in Gmail or in the web Dashboard. If you enable the setting and then save an email into Salesforce that has an attachment, the attachment will go into the Chatter feed on the related records that you select.

For example, if you save an email with attachment to Salesforce and relate it to an Opportunity, then the attachment will go into the Chatter feed on the Opportunity. We use that setting internally so that proposals, contracts, and SLAs all appear in the Chatter feed on the Opportunity where they are visible to the team and automatically shared to the people who follow the feed including the Account Executive, Sales Engineer, and Customer Success Manager.

How do I enable Email Sync for my organization?

The email sync feature is available by default to all current customers on the Closer Plan and all new Cirrus Insight trials. If you upgrade from Starter or a legacy plan to Closer (or if you previously disabled email sync), you can enable it in the web Dashboard. Go to Dashboard > Control Panel > Organization Preferences > Email Sync

As an administrator, how can I control user preferences for email sync?

As a Cirrus Insight administrator, you have control over 2 settings:

Allow users to change their email sync settings If you check the setting, your users can change their email sync settings in the Cirrus Insight side panel in Gmail or in the web Dashboard.If you uncheck the setting, you can force users to either:

Sync emails to/from people that are leads or contacts in Salesforce OR
Only sync emails on threads users designate

Allow users to set up a rule to determine which record to relate synced emails to If the box is checked, each user can define a rule for how they want to sync emails into Salesforce. If the box is not checked, then you control the rule. For example, you can require that emails automatically relate to the most recently created or most recently modified opportunity.

How do I disable Email Sync for my organization?

As the administrator of a Cirrus Insight account, you can disable Email Sync by unchecking the Email Sync box under Organizational Preferences in the web Dashboard.

How many Salesforce API calls does email sync use?

It depends. Understandably, if you sync more emails, it'll typically use more API calls. However, it's important to note: (a) we're keenly aware of API limits, (b) we're very conservative and smart with API calls (we've made about 2 billion calls over 5 years on behalf of 100,000 users so we know how to do it right), (c) we go out of our way to batch requests whenever possible, and (d) we regularly review ways that we can improve our API usage. If you need more information on API usage, we have 9 Certified Salesforce Administrators who would be happy to help.