Vertec Outlook App: operation and use

Overview

• Managing incoming emails
• Creating emails
• Services and activities based on calendar entries
• The activity history
• Managing emails in Vertec
• Technical information

Managing incoming emails

Once the Vertec Outlook App has been successfully installed , it can be called up as a sidebar.

In the Windows edition, open the Outlook App via Vertec > Show:

The size of the display can be adjusted manually via the arrow.

In the Web edition, the Outlook App can be accessed in an email via Apps. To do this, select any email from your Outlook. It can be in a personal or a shared inbox (from version 6.6.0.8):

The Outlook App can then be pinned with the following icon:

Save address

If you select an incoming email from an address that is not yet entered in Vertec, the options are Save address and Save activity These can be operated independently of each other, so that activities from unknown addresses can also be saved.

By clicking the checkbox Save address the following fields open:

You can save the address as person or as contact. If contact is selected, a company must be indicated:

When you click Save, the contact is created directly in your Vertec. In the Outlook App it is displayed by the contact icon and a link with company and name (see screenshot below), which, when clicked, directly opens the contact in Vertec.

Save activity

Activating the checkbox Save activity opens the following fields:

You can assign the following items to an activity:

• an activity type
• a project (display depends on system settings ). The projects, for which a new activity was recently created, are shown. If no contact is assigned, if no projects are assigned to the contact, or as soon as a search term is entered, the normal project search takes effect.
• a phase (if the system setting Phase assignment in Outlook App is activated and the module Budget & Phases is licensed).
• an opportunity (from version 6.5.0.7 and if the system setting Use opportunities in Outlook App is activated). The active opportunities of the address are available for selection. However, you can also type in a new opportunity and create it. If an email has more than one recipient, the opportunities of all recipients are offered for selection.

After saving the email as an activity, it is created in your Vertec as an activity and appears in the contact history. Any attachments are also saved on the activity and can be opened or saved individually or as a ZIP file, see section Managing emails in Vertec .

The history also lists the activities of other users with the same contact person, such as the phone call between Anna Albisser and Lars Sorenson.

Forwarded emails

When saving internally forwarded emails in Vertec, the contact who forwarded the email is assigned as the contact. To avoid this and to assign the original email sender as the contact, you can use the Outlook function Forward as attachment  instead of Forward :

Multiple recipients

If you email multiple recipients or receive an email with other recipients, you can use the following arrows to scroll through the various recipients:

If a recipient has not yet been created in Vertec, the checkbox Save address appears instead of the contact.

Unsupported objects

If an object is selected in Outlook that cannot be processed by Vertec (e.g. an out-of-office message), the notification appears in the Outlook App This item in Outlook cannot be processed with the Vertec Outlook App.

Creating emails

You can also call up the Outlook App when creating a new email. You can search for addresses saved in your Vertec in the To... or Cc... search. Once the required contact has been found, you can select it by clicking on it or using the Enter key. The address is entered directly in the To or Cc field:

The addresses entered in the To field are shown in the Outlook App. For addresses stored in Vertec, the checkboxes Save activity on send and Select template are shown, along with the associated activity history. For addresses that are not stored in Vertec, the checkboxes Save address and Save activity on send are shown.

If the checkbox Save activity on send is activated, the email is automatically created as an activity in Vertec after sending. It is linked to the address as well as to the entries in the activity type, project, phase and opportunity fields.

Under Select template, you can select a template from a list. By then clicking on the button Apply, the subject and content of the new email is filled in or replaced according to the template. Templates can be loaded several times, with the content being overwritten according to the currently selected template. For more detailed information on this, see Email templates for Vertec Outlook App .

The checkbox Save activity on send is by default deactivated. This can be adjusted in the system settings via the option Default value for "Save on send" (Outlook App) . Note: If the Outlook App is not shown when creating a new email, no activity is created in Vertec.

Services and activities based on calendar entries

In addition to emails, calendar entries created in Outlook can also be saved directly in Vertec as a service and/or activity using the Outlook App. To call up the Outlook App in the Web edition via the icon, see the section below . All participants invited to the event are shown, including their activity history. Arrows can be used to navigate between participants.

By selecting the checkbox Create service, you can assign:

• a project
• a phase
• a service type
• a duration (from version 6.7, its display and entry depends on the system setting Show minutes )
• a text (from version 6.7)

After selecting the project, the standard phase is automatically suggested if, in the system settings, the option Assign default phase is activated.

To enter the service in Vertec, click on the button Save.

Once saved, the service is displayed in the sidebar as a link that opens it in Vertec. Below the service, all participants invited to the event are shown, including their activity history. Arrows can be used to navigate between participants.

Note: This is an entry aid only. Any data entered is not synchronized, should something change later.

Pre-selection by keywords in the subject

From Vertec 6.6, the project and, optionally, the phase can be noted within the subject of calendar entries. These are then automatically pre-selected in services created on them.

• Project: With the keyword Project: and the relevant project code, the specified project is pre-selected. If phases have been saved on it and the system setting Assign default phase is activated, the default phase is preselected.
• Phase: In addition to the project, you can use the keyword Phase: and the relevant phase code to preselect a specific phase on the project. To do this, the system setting Phase assignment in Outlook App  must be activated.

Example:

Meeting Project: COM-SSUP Phase: Kick-off

When specifying the codes, the following rules must be observed:

• If project or phase codes contain any of the following characters: . , , , : , ; , () , [] , " , „ , “ , ” , « , » or a space, they must be enclosed in brackets or in quotation marks, which must not be the same as in the code (e.g. if a quotation mark is used in the code, the information must be enclosed in brackets).
• This also applies if a punctuation mark is used instead of a blank space.
  • Works: Project: "COM-SSUP", regarding Phase: Kick-off.
  • Doesn't work: Project: COM-SSUP, regarding Phase: Kick-off.
• The keywords Project: and Phase: must be uppercase. The project code and phase code are case-insensitive.

As an alternative or supplement to services, activities can also be saved from version 6.7. By selecting the checkbox Save activity, you can assign (see above )

• an activity type
• a project
• a phase
• an opportunity

The activity created in Vertec receives by default the contact type On site.

Calling up the Outlook App web edition in calendar

To call up the Outlook App in the calendar view, go to Settings > Calendar > Customize actions and activate the checkbox Vertec Outlook App:

This allows you to access the Outlook App as follows:

The activity history

In the activity history, 20 activities are loaded at a time. If the scroll bar reaches the bottom of the loaded list, another 20 activities are loaded. The individual entries in the activity history can be selected, with the selected activity highlighted by a blue background and any details such as project and opportunity are displayed.

You can use the up/down arrow keys to navigate between activities. Tab navigation is blocked. If the currently selected email is not in the top 20, all activities are loaded up to the selected email.

Assigned objects such as contacts, companies or projects are shown as links, and open the objects directly in Vertec. Based on the system setting Handling of Vertec links (Outlook App Web) , links open in the Desktop App, Cloud App or Web App.

The following activities are shown in the history:

“Address” is the address found in Vertec that belongs to the email address currently selected in the Outlook App.

• For all address types (company, contact, person):
  • adressAktivitaeten : Activities where the address is assigned as a contact.
  • aktivitaeten : Activities where the address is assigned as another entry.
  • projekte.projektAktivitaeten : Activities where the project assigned as a project belongs to this address (customer).
• In addition, for companies:
  • kontakte.adressAktivitaeten : Activities where one of the contacts assigned to the company is registered as a contact.

Limit the quantity of days in the history (alternative loading mechanism)

With a very, very large number of activities at one address, the performance of the Outlook App can become slow, since all linked activities are always loaded for a meaningful presentation of the history. From Vertec 6.7.0.8, you can limit the quantity of days of loaded history via the system setting CRM >  Ignore history prior to the last x days (Outlook app) . This leads to a better loading performance, but changes the behavior in some respects.

If the system setting is set to a value greater than 0, the following behavior applies:

• Activities are loaded via SQL (instead of OCL) and filtered by date. The filter value is “Today – x days,” where x is the value of the system setting.
• Only activities are loaded where the address is entered as a contact (the equivalent of the OCL expression adressAktivitaeten)
  This means: If the address in Vertec, with the currently selected email address for an activity, is not entered directly as a contact, but is assigned as another entry (e.g. emails with several recipients), the activity no longer appears in the history.
• If the message with the same messageId is not included in the activities found (for example, because it is older than x days), it is reloaded individually and attached to the end of the list.
• If no address is found in Vertec for the given email address, only the activity identified by the messageId is shown.
• If the user does not have read permissions on the member adressAktivitaeten of the given address, an empty list is shown, or only the one activity found based on its messageId.

Activity history in Vertec

In Vertec, the activity history is shown in a list with the relevant icons:

The contact type icons:

Icon	Contact type
	Phone
	Incoming email
	Outgoing email
	Written
	Note
	Meeting in-house, onsite or web meeting / video call

The corresponding icons are shown both in the tree and in the detail view of an activity. If you customize the icon via the activity class setting, this overrides the built-in icon logic.

Located next to the icons is the column Date and Time, by which the list is sorted by default. The activities receive the date and time at which the respective emails were created or received.

Managing emails in Vertec

By clicking on a E-Mail link in the activity history of your Outlook App, the activity opens directly in Vertec.

Many fields are filled in automatically, the rest can be edited manually. The Title field contains the email subject, and the Text field displays the content of the email as plain text.

Note: If you use the CMS format (Cryptographic Message Syntax) for the content of your emails, the email is saved in Vertec, but it cannot (currently) be shown. The format can be recognized by the MIME content type application/pkcs7-mime. However, the emails can still be opened  in Outlook.

For the E-Mail contact type, the email page is created on the activity. Here, subject, from and to are automatically filled in, and the email attachments as well as the email body are shown exactly like the original. This means that images and non-BMP symbols and characters (emojis) are shown in addition to the text.

If required, the attachments can be downloaded directly via the three dots. The dialog Save attachments opens with a list of all attachments. By double-clicking on an attachment, it can either be opened in the Web App, downloaded in the browser, or saved in the download folder. In the Desktop App and Cloud App, the attachment can be opened or saved. The default save path is C:\Users\name\AppData\Local\Temp.

• From version 6.6.0.10, all attachments can be downloaded and saved as a ZIP file with the button Save all.
• From version 6.7.0.6, a new button exists for internal document storage  called Save as activity. This creates a new activity that applies the date, project, phase and contact to the document saved .

Opening emails

You can open the email directly in Outlook using the button Actions > Open E-Mail.... In the Web App, a .eml file is downloaded, which can also be opened in Outlook.

If required, an email button can be created using the following Python method:

# Send email content as file with extension .eml to the client
vtcapp.sendfile(argobject.content, “email.eml”)

Technical information

Authentication

In the Outlook App there is no  Remember me  checkbox. After successful authentication, the user remains logged in until they actively log out.

Settings for opening linked objects

In the Outlook App Windows edition, you can select via Vertec > Settings whether you want the linked objects to be opened in the Web App or in the Cloud/Desktop App.

For the Outlook App web edition, from version 6.5.0.22, a setting exists under System Settings > CRM/Activities called Handling of Vertec links (Outlook App Web) , which enables users to choose between the same options.

CSRF token for web API

The Outlook App uses a server-side web API, which allows changes to the Vertec database via POST requests, e.g. when entering activities or services. Since client authentication is ensured via a session cookie, there is the possibility of cross site request forgery (CSRF) attacks. To prevent this, a CSRF Token is generated in addition to the session cookie.

Session type identification

The OCL operator appType (TimSession.allInstances->first.appType) returns the Outlook client type.

Automatic update

Each time the Outlook App starts, it checks whether the cloud server has a new version ready. If it does, it prompts you to install the update, which requires you to exit Outlook.

From version 6.5.0.11, the Windows edition of Outlook automatically notifies you of updates, even if Outlook is not closed.

Fields on activities for email support

The Outlook App is based on the principle that, for every email message, one activity is created in Vertec. It is possible to display activities in a list sorted by date and time to show emails from the same day in the correct order.

There are the following members on the activity:

• On the page Further info, under Details, you will find the fields Date and Time, MessageId and ConversationId .
• Content field of type Blob.

Deactivating the Outlook App

In Vertec.ini – File the Outlook App can be deactivated by [cloudserver] section Outlook App Server=False is set. It looks like this:

Shifted / distorted view of Outlook App

It might happen that Microsoft Webview2 displays the Outlook App incorrectly or moves /shifts it. For more information, see the following Microsoft article: Handle high DPI and DPI scaling in your Office solution .

In this case, there is an option to enable “Compatibility mode” for High DPI shows, which should fix the problem. For instructions on how to do this, see the Microsoft article
Office support for high-resolution displays  under “Using Office Compatibility Mode”.