Microsoft Teams: Now you can bring in your data from Salesforce too | ZDNet

Software-as-a-service CRM giant Salesforce has made its app for Microsoft Teams more broadly available.

The Salesforce app for Teams has been available in preview since October. It replicates the Salesforce CRM app for Slack, allowing joint Teams and Salesforce customers to mention various Salesforce records in Teams channels and chats, such as opportunities, accounts, cases, contacts, and leads.

Service teams can also improve coordination and response times to open cases to help keep customers happy, reduce the support loads, and cut out productivity barriers caused by switching between Teams and Salesforce.

Announcing the general availability of Salesforce for Teams, Microsoft described Salesforce as part of a “new class” of “collaborative apps”. 

“Now, sales and service teams using Salesforce Sales Cloud or Service Cloud can bring account data and records into their Teams workspace for better collaboration. Sales and service reps no longer need to switch between windows to find key data; it’s all in one workspace so teams can stay aligned and work efficiently,” Microsoft said in a blog post

Salesforce acquired enterprise chat platform Slack in December for $27.7 billion, marking its biggest acquisition to date. The company plans to combine Slack Connect and Salesforce Customer 360, while Slack is set to be the front-end to Salesforce 360. 

Salesforce and Microsoft compete in CRM — Microsoft Dynamics versus Sales Cloud — and analytics with Tableau and Microsoft PowerBI. 

While the Slack purchase opened up a new front of competition between Salesforce and Microsoft, there is still room for collaboration between the two. Teams offers both Slack-like chat and Zoom-like video meetings, meanwhile Slack has been more about enterprise chat.  

Microsoft reckons the tie-up with its rival will help post-pandemic hybrid customer engagements. 

“Sales teams need to have the most recent and relevant context about accounts as they interact with their teams and customers to provide a seamless buying experience,” it said.

Salesforce users can now do the following when working within Teams:

• Pin records to Teams channel tabs and chats to make them easy to find
• Edit records directly within Teams.
• Post important conversation moments on the Salesforce Chatter feed of records pinned on Teams channel and chat tabs.
• Mention Salesforce records (opportunities, accounts, cases, contacts, and leads) in Teams channels and chats to facilitate collaboration.
• Preview more details about records mentioned in Teams channels and chats.