The Salesforce for Outlook is a good product, but not perfect. It is excellent at synchronizing contacts and calendar entries between Outlook and Salesforce. Where it falls flat is with email and attachment logging.
1. De-Duplication: Salesforce for Outlook synchronizes from one Outlook client on a single computer to the Salesforce cloud at a time. That means that if you get an email from a client and your boss gets the same email, two copies of the email will be logged in Salesforce. On large sales team, this can be a real problem as the Contact and Account files get cluttered with dozens of duplicates of the same email. De-duplicating redundant emails is a boring and unproductive task; it is very difficult, if not impossible to automate de-duplication. Plus Salesforce.com charges extra for excess Data and File Storage, so duplicate emails can cost your organization money.
With Match My Email, duplicate emails in Salesforce.com are not possible. Each email is given a unique identifier and stored in the Salesforce.com database so that it can be shared by all the relevant files and objects.
2. Attachment Logging: Salesforce for Outlook does not log email attachments into the relevant Contact file with an email. This feature is promised for a future release.
Match My Email stores a single copy of each attachment in Salesforce.com, fully automatically, in the relevant Contact, Lead, Opportunity, Personal Account or Case. Google Docs users can have a second copy stored automatically in the Google Cloud.
3. Large Emails: From time to time, you may get a long email that exceeds the Salesforce.com size limit. Salesforce for Outlook just cuts off the email.
Match My Email stores as much of the long email in the Activity History Section as possible and then puts of remainder of the email in Notes and Attachments. MME inserts a link from the first section of the email to the rest of the long email in Notes and Attachments.
4. Legacy Email Reprocessing: Salesforce for Outlook only deals with current emails. Old or legacy email are not processed or synched.
Match My Email stores current email in the cloud for 45 days. If it discovers a new Salesforce Lead, Contact, Opportunity, Personal Account or Case, it links or matches the relevant legacy emails to that file or object.
5. Historical Email: Salesforce for Outlook cannot access historical email files and match/log them to current Salesforce.com files or objects.
Match My Email can import historical email repositories and match/log them into current Salesforce files and objects. Since historical email repositories are large, this import and processing is done as a email migration project.
Match My Email is a fully automatic cloud service that integrates Outlook to Salesforce.com via the IMAP open standard. Once MME is set-up with username and password, the system works completely in background. Most users never log into the Match My Email web tab; they only see the results of automatic email integration in Salesforce.com. Match My Email recommends that users continue to use Salesforce for Outlook for contact and calendar synchronization. It performs these functions better that the alternatives and it is free. Just turn off email synchronization and use Match My Email for that.
