Dynamics 365 For Sales: Scan Business Cards

Some of my colleagues are sales professionals, and they regularly receive important business cards when interacting with people. They needed a quick method for scanning these business cards into Microsoft Dynamics and capturing the information in fields and they needed to be able to do this from their computer and mobile devices. I managed to create a basic solution to the problem using CamCard, but I felt that this would be a good feature to include in Microsoft Dynamics out of the box. With the Dynamics 365 for Sales 2019 release wave 2, business card scanning will be included as an out of the box feature.

The new business card scanning feature enables you to scan the cards on a variety of mobile and web devices. The scanner will automatically analyse cards for relevant information, and update respective fields in the system accordingly. These fields can include details such as the first name, last name, job title, email address, and phone numbers displayed on the card. You can also configure the feature to populate additional fields with information if required.

This feature is particularly useful when on the move, at conferences, and during meetings. Business cards can be scanned into Microsoft Dynamics using a mobile application as soon as they are received. This greatly reduces the risk of losing crucial contact details from misplacing or losing a business card and frees the sales professional to focus on their highest priority tasks. In addition, this opens up the possibility for salespeople to begin investigating sales leads straight away, leading to faster qualification and more opportunities.

This business card scanning feature will be available in the Unified Interface only, so custom solutions will be required if you are using the Classic Interface. The feature enters general availability from October 2019.