Microsoft and Salesforce have announced plans to extend their strategic partnership to connect the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to Microsoft Office productivity apps and services. The partners plan to deliver new solutions that integrate Salesforce with Skype for Business, OneNote, Delve and Windows 10, to “empower companies to connect with their customers and collaborate more effectively”, they said.
The partners have now committed to working together to integrate Skype for Business with Salesforce Lightning Experience. As a result, Office 365 customers will be able to use Skype for Business to create web meetings, determine if colleagues are online or not, click to chat and make voice and video calls from the Salesforce Lightning Experience. A preview is anticipated in the second half of 2016.
There will also be OneNote integration with Salesforce Lightning Experience. Users will be able to associate notes with Salesforce records, and view and edit notes directly in OneNote from the Salesforce Lightning Experience. A preview is also expected in the second half of 2016.
In addition, Salesforce will be integrated with Office Graph and Office Delve. Enabled by the Office Graph – an open ecosystem for sharing, collaboration and discovery – Office 365 users will be able to view and discover Salesforce content in Office Delve, such as sales opportunities, customer accounts and service cases. Availability of this service is anticipated in the second half of 2016.
Finally, the appearance of Salesforce1 Mobile App for Windows 10 will deliver a Windows 10 app to empower sales teams to move deals forward while on the go, using their favourite Windows device. Availability is also expected in the second half of 2016.
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, said: “Our collaboration has been so successful, now we’re doubling down and delivering even more innovation that will help our mutual customers be more productive and connect with their customers in a whole new way.”
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said: “As a platform and productivity company we are focused on bringing together the best of Microsoft Azure, Office and Windows with partners like Salesforce to empower our mutual customers to network, collaborate, communicate and discover information in more effective ways.”
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