Better together. No, we’re not about to lecture you on Brexit. This post explains how the combination of Microsoft’s Office 365 software with the 3CX PBX Unified Communications solution packs a powerful punch for your business.

The extensive functionality and substantial cost savings of both offerings will help your business boost its bottom line and realise a huge range of benefits.

The good news is that the integration of these two services is now completely seamless. When the latest version of 3CX was recently launched, it included full integration with Office 365. So, it’s never been easier to improve your corporate communications and maintain your competitive edge with your 3CX phone system. 

What is Office 365?

Office 365 is Microsoft’s cloud-based enterprise communications and collaboration platform. It lets your staff work anywhere where there’s an internet connection and brings tremendous benefits to your internal and external communications.

Forrester estimates Office 365 could help businesses realise an ROI of more than 150%. Forrester also estimates your organisation could save 30 minutes of lost productive time per employee per day using Office 365.

Office 365 is a feature-rich platform, which lets your employees work anywhere and gives you access to the latest suite of Microsoft’s tools and applications. As a result, it’s bound to have a positive impact on your productivity and operational efficiency.

For example, Power BI gives your staff free access to an array of Business Intelligence tools. Collaboration tools including Yammer and Groups also provide a simple and quick alternative to email communications.

Benefits of using 3CX with Office 365

The 3CX phone system can save your business up to 80% per year, compared to a traditional PBX. One of the most prominent 3CX v16 features is its enhanced integration with Office 365 So, you can now easily sync your Office 365 set-up with 3CX. This includes:

• One-way syncing of Office 365 users to 3CX extensions: this means you can automatically create, update and delete 3CX extensions from your Office 365 user list. New Microsoft 365 accounts will create a new extension in 3CX with all of the correct details, automatically.
• Sync personal contacts from Office 365 to your 3CX phonebook: your staff don’t have to switch between apps when searching for a contact with the 3CX phone system. Your personal 3CX phonebook now automatically syncs with your Office 365 contacts.
• Sync shared mailbox contacts to your 3CX Company directory: give everyone access to your shared mailbox contacts, by syncing them with your company address book in 3CX.
• Quickly make calls from synced Microsoft 365 contacts: with the 3CX Browser Extensions for Chrome and Edge, you can quickly start calls your personal Microsoft 365 contacts.
• Set your employees’ status on 3CX based on their Office 365 calendar: the 3CX integration module automatically sets your extension status and forwarding profile, based on your Office 365 calendar. If you’re “busy” or “working elsewhere”, this displays as “away” on the 3CX system. Likewise, if you’re “out of the office” or “away”, you simply appear as “away”. When your meeting finishes, 3CX switches your profile back to its previous status.

Furthermore, 3CX now provides integration with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 online CRM. This seamless server-side configuration allows you to easily manage customer interactions, providing support and a range of additional resources to your customers. These include:

• Contact synchronisation:  inbound calls from external numbers are automatically looked up in your CRM. These details are then added to the contacts in the 3CX phone system and the caller name automatically appears when the same external call rings up in the future.
• Click to Call: you can launch calls straight from Microsoft Dynamics 365 via 3CX and using the Click2Call Browser extensions.
• Pop-up calls: a customer’s record will automatically appear when you receive an inbound call. w
• Call Journals: calls are logged as call records in the CRM
• Click to Call: you can launch calls from Microsoft Dynamics 365 from 3CX using the Click2Call browser extensions.

In short, the combination of 3CX and Microsoft Dynamics 365 could help your business run a highly cost-effective and efficient CRM strategy.

Inbound and Outbound Calls

Your everyday communications activities are streamlined with Office 365 and 3CX.

In the 3CX phone system, if a contact is matched from an inbound call, the contact record is automatically shown in your selected browser. Your contact record is opened in Office 365 if the caller is already a contact.

When the call ends, the call details are added to the contact’s notes. If the caller is not a contact, it creates a new contact and saves the call information in the contact’s notes. You also have the option to create a new contact and save this information.

In Conclusion

By consolidating your communications into one platform with Office 365 and 3CX, your business will realise a range of benefits. If you’d like to find out more about the integration and how to realise these benefits and services for your business contact us.