In 3 Easy Steps to Category-Based Tracking with Dynamics 365 App for Outlook

When Microsoft released the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook, some features were strongly missed by the Dynamics 365 community. A lot of features, originally from the Dynamics 365 add-in for Outlook, were missing in the new application. Category-Based Tracking was one of those features missed by a lot of users. But Microsoft seems to listen to their community and is slowly releasing these old features to close the gap between the Dynamics 365 add-in for Outlook and the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook. Since the 8.2 release of Dynamics 365 Online it is possible (again) to track tasks, emails and appointments with a special category in Outlook through server-side synchronization. In this article we want to explain to you how to enable it in 3 easy steps with the help of the Organizations Settings Editor.

Enable Category-Based Tracking for Dynamics 365 App for Outlook

1. Import the Organizations Settings Editor on your instance.

First of all, you need to download the latest Version of the Organizations Settings Editor.  We are not going to explain how to import a managed solution on a Dynamics 365 instance, click here for some help.

2. Open the solution and activate the tracking.

Press Ctrl + F and search for the term “TrackCategorizedItems” and click on the “Add” button to activate it.

3. Set the “TrackCategorizedItems” Boolean to “true”.

Edit the Boolean and update the value to “true”.

After executing these steps, you are free to delete the solution from your Dynamics 365 instance. Be careful if you decide to leave the solution on your instance. Some of these settings can have a massive impact on your system and should always be checked before you edit them. You can now start to work with the new category in the Outlook client.

Track emails in Outlook via the new category

Usually, emails are tracked every quarter of an hour, depending on how you configured your synchronizations settings for emails. Make a right click on the email you want to track and go to “categorize” and choose the “Tracked to Dynamics 365” category.

Thanks to the Dynamics 365 frame build in the Outlook client, you are able to see that the email was successfully tracked.

Track appointments in Outlook via the new category

There is not a huge difference between tracking an emailand tracking an appointment in Outlook. Right click on the appointment, categorize and choose the “Tracked to Dynamics 365” category. If you make someone a delegate user with editor permissions and allow them to manage your emails and calendar, the delegate can access your categories and track items for you. Learn more about allowing someone else to manage your email and calendar.

Track tasks in Outlook via the new category

Same old story, just to be complete, here a picture of how to track tasks in Outlook. If you remove the category from the items, be aware that the record in Dynamics 365 won’t be deleted, just untracked. Go to the Dynamics 365 system and select all records you untracked and delete them, if you want to keep a clean system and the records are not necessary anymore.