Relationship Management Panel (RMPANL)¶

IFS Customer and Supplier Relationship Management Panel is an Outlook add-in which displays related IFS CRM/SRM information about the recipients of an email or the attendees of a calendar item and facilitates creation and update of records in IFS CRM/SRM. The purpose of this page is to provide the installation steps for IFS Customer and Supplier Relationship Management Panel. A component called RMPANL (Relationship Management Panel) is developed to provide this Outlook add-in.

Outlook Calendar Sync is used to sync data between an Outlook calendar and IFS Cloud. IFS Customer and Supplier Relationship Management Panel is used to create and link business activities in CRM/SRM to appointments and meetings in Outlook. Updates and deletions in Outlook will be synchronized to linked Business Activities. It is possible to transfer new Business Activities to Outlook, but updates can be done only from Outlook side related to sync fields. For more information, see here.

Requirements¶

Refer the IFS Supported Platform page to check the supported platforms/versions of outlook to run IFS Customer and Supplier Relationship Management Panel.

Note: Even if the Microsoft document states that a platform/version of Outlook supports the add-in, the said platform/version is only supported if it is mentioned in the supported in IFS Supported Platform page mentioned above as well.

You can refer to the following sections for more information on requirements from the Outlook side.

Manifest File¶

An Outlook add-in consists of two components: the XML add-in manifest and a web page. The manifest file describes how the add-in integrates across Outlook clients and it should contain your application sever URL. A manifest file can be created on the Generate Manifest File page in IFS Cloud Web. When generating a manifest file, you can select if it should be used for CRM- or SRM-panel, and for Online or On-Premise.

Installation¶

The following steps should be followed after the RMPANL component is installed.

By uploading the above manifest file to Exchange or Office 365, you can start using IFS Customer and Supplier Relationship Management Panel in your Outlook. To upload the manifest file to Exchange or Office 365, refer to the following options.

Using Exchange Admin center (Admin can push the installation to on-premise Exchange users).
Using Office 365 Admin center (Admin can push the installation to Office 365 users).
Using individual way (Individual user can upload the manifest file directly without involving an admin).

After uploading the manifest file, you will see IFS Customer and Supplier Relationship Management Panel command buttons in your Outlook. If you don’t see the panel buttons, check whether the manifest file is installed properly, and IFS Customer and Supplier Relationship Management Panel is activated to use in your Outlook. If you see the command buttons, then click on the IFS Customer and Supplier Relationship Management Panel command button and check whether the panel loads properly.

If you get errors, check the troubleshooting section below.

Note: Client files related to IFS Customer and Supplier Relationship Management Panel will be published in your application server automatically.

Configuration¶

The layout of the CRM/SRM panel can be changed using the IFS Cloud Web Page Designer and the CRM/SRM-Panel Field Configuration page in IFS Cloud Web. The following configurations are available for IFS CRM/SRM-panel:

Change the layout of details pages
Change the layout of dialogs
Add a custom attribute

Change the layout of detail pages¶

The page designer lets you decide how activities, mails and other records appear on the details page for Lead/Account contacts and representatives in the CRM-Panel and for Supplier Contacts and representatives in the SRM-Panel. Steps to follow for configuration of details pages.

Go to the details page. Relationship Management > CRM and SRM Panel > CRM/SRM Panel Configuration > Details Pages > [Select the page to update].
Open the page designer.
The CRM/SRM-panel sections appear as tabs in the page designer. Remove a tab in page designer if you don’t want that section to be shown in the details page.
Select which fields to display in the section and place the fields in the desired order. The first three lines are always displayed while the fields placed under Record Details appear when that section is expanded.
Save and publish page designer changes.

Note: Not all configuration options in page designer are available for the CRM/SRM-panel. Page designer is used to configure which fields and sections should be displayed and in which order they should be placed.

Change the layout of dialogs¶

On the Field Configuration page in IFS Cloud Web, you can decide how fields should be shown in the dialogs used to create activities, contacts and other records in the CRM/SRM-panel. Following are the steps to follow to configure the dialogs.

Go to the Field Configuration page. Relationship Management > CRM and SRM Panel > CRM/SRM Panel Configuration > Field Configuration.
Select the dialog to be updated.
Select the Visible option for a field if it should be displayed in the dialog.
Select the Mandatory option to set a field to mandatory.
Select Show More if a field is to be placed within the collapsible/expandable Show More section of the panel.
Change the position of the fields.

Adding a Custom Attribute¶

Custom attributes can be added to the details page and the dialogs in the CRM/SRM-panel.

Follow the instructions to setup Custom Attribute for Entity.
Ensure that the Entity is Approved, Published and Synchronized and that the Attribute also is Approved and Published.
To configure the panel to display this new custom attribute on a details page, use Page Designer to update the panel.
Navigate to Relationship Management > CRM and SRM Panel > CRM/SRM Panel Configuration > Details Pages > [Select the page to update].
Open the view in page designer and update the view to include the new field.
Save and publish the page designer changes.
To configure the panel to display the new custom attribute in a dialog, select the dialog to update in the Field Configuration page.
Click New Custom Field to include the field in the layout.

Troubleshooting¶

After installation is done, please check whether the add-in works. In order to troubleshoot some of the add-in errors, please refer this.

Limitations¶

Following are some of the limitations of Microsoft in relation to Outlook add-ins. Add-ins will work on mail and appointments in read and compose mode. For more information, see this. In Mobile, only read mode will work. For On-Premise installation we need to use Exchange Web Service(EWS). EWS will not work in mobile. EWS is used for operations such as fetching attachments and sending mail.