TAP has a limited amount of time before deciding whether to pursue a new Outlook integration product for Salesforce. If TAP does want to choose a new integration product then additional considerations need to be made around using the Salesforce Activity object vs the Affinaquest Activity Report object for logging interactions with alumni/donors/prospects. Choosing not to replace the Outlook integration will mean that the 60+ DOs and 4 RMs would need to manually log all of their email interactions through the current Activity Report process which can take between 2-5 minutes for generic reach outs. 

Salesforce for Outlook retirement

As mentioned in the SF Winter '24 release session, the Salesforce for Outlook feature that we're currently using will be retired in June 2024. TAP is currently using this feature to sync their emails from Outlook to Salesforce with just a few clicks, you can find the training guide here . 

Salesforce has new offerings to replace this legacy product, one of which is Einstein Activity Capture (EAC), for which we've already got 100 licenses in our existing Salesforce licensing. is currently using Affinaquest Activity Reports for logging interactions as opposed to Salesforce Activity. TAP is missing out on growing Salesforce functionality such as the To Do list, Pipeline Inspector, and increased efficiency in the Outlook Integration while using AQ Activity Reports. Please take a look at the video below for some of the potential that can be gained by using Salesforce Activities.

To unlock this functionality, TAP has chosen to adopt SF Activity. This will require analysing the functionality of SF Activity and what limitations we will need to factor into TAP business processes.

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AQ Activity Reports vs SF Activity

The barrier to switching over to Einstein Activity Capture is TAP's use of is currently using the Affinaquest Activity Report functionality instead of the native Salesforce Activity object. AQ has duplicated the SF Activity product because the SF Activity object automatically archives its data after 1 year, we can request and extension of up to 10 years if we can show a strong business reason for storing data for such an extended period.  

The SF Activity object is more streamlined and embedded in native functionality. This applies to the Einstein Activity Capture product, it will only create SF Activity records, not AQ Activity Report records. If we wish to use EAC, TAP needs to consider whether it wants to add significant customisation to duplicate the SF Activity into AQ Activity Reports (as we've done to use the current Salesforce for Outlook). I'd strongly recommend against that as AQ Activity Reports offer very little benefit to TAP and lock us out of using powerful tools like the Pipeline Inspector, native reporting functions, and ultimately will leave us out of any SF AI products like Sales GPT. process for creating AQ Activity Reports has more steps and more fields to complete in comparison to SF Activities. Please see the comparison in this Miro board.

Migrating to SF Activity

Moving to SF Activity will require a reasonable amount of preparation to avoid data loss and support change management. Some of the key actions that will be needed for this migration include:

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Activity Reports are currently a core part of the DOs KPIs. Most have a KPI around logging 100+ Activity Reports with the Substantive Activity flag each year. Having an Outlook integration reduces the time required to log each email and is especially helpful for the initial meeting request and introduction emails as DOs rarely need to add additional notes like they would after a meetingOptimising the process of logging these interactions and unlocking additional productivity capability will enable DOs to focus their time on strategic planning and engagements instead of general admin. There have been 15,690 Activity Reports created this yearin 2023, 2,390 of these are Introduction and Meeting Requests. 

When the Salesforce for Outlook feature does retire in June, DOs and RMs will still be able to log their emails manually. I walked around the office this morning and asked DOs to estimate how long it takes them to log an Activity Report. Most said between 2-5 minutes for logging an email manually or a quick call and 10-15 minutes for a face-to-face meeting report. Many also admitted that they were failing to add most of their initial meeting request or introduction emails because it isn't directly reflected in their KPIs. Omitting these reach outs has significant impacts on other TAP teams like PD or ASE who are unable to measure how effective their leads are because there's no interaction data to report on. 

If you're curious, I took some screen shots on the process for logging a SF Activity vs an AQ Activity Report. The process for logging an AQ Activity is more streamlined but can still have customisation added if there are fields TAP absolutely want to add in. The time and complexity for logging an interaction will be significantly lower for most scenarios.

Next Steps

TAP needs to decide whether or not to prioritise preparing for a new Outlook integration product.