Outlook Integration Overview

This section presents an overview of how and where ClayStation integrates with Outlook and what features it provides.

The main areas of integration are:

• The main ClayStation toolbar that appears in the main Outlook window. This provides the same customizable profile, tools, queries, lists, graphs, dashboards, etc. that other Digital-Clay clients provide and is not covered here. This allows a user to run all of Digital-Clay's tools from inside Outlook without having to install and run an external client

• Data integration and synchronization with Outlook Items such as Tasks, Appointments and Contacts.

• The ability to attach and save Outlook e-mails into a Digital-Clay system as well as use a Digital-Clay address book for sending e-mails.

ClayStation for Outlook works with one Outlook folder for each of the Outlook types of Tasks, Appointments and Contacts.

Currently it is not possible to synchronize items in two or more Outlook folders of the same type. However, in most cases, users only need one active folder for sharing, and other folders for personal or archiving purposes. For example, a user may maintain two separate lists of shared and personal Contacts and move Contacts from one folder to the other as necessary.

By default, Digital-Clay starts with the default Outlook folders for each of the three types of items as defined in Outlook. This can be changed in ClayStation's Tools/Options/Outlook tab. When a new folder is set, ClayStation scans the folder for items that are already linked to Digital-Clay and for other information it needs to monitor the folder.

If you do not require Digital-Clay synchronization for one or more of the three types of Outlook items, this functionality can be switched off for each type separately, by deleting the appropriate folder in the Tools/Options/Outlook tab.

There are several ways to add new items:

• While ClayStation for Outlook is running, adding a new item in either Outlook or Digital-Clay will automatically add a corresponding item in Digital-Clay or Outlook.
  • Note that Tasks/Appointments added to Digital-Clay will only be added if they are assigned to the user currently running Outlook, and Contacts will only be added by default if they are created by the same user running Outlook. This behaviour can be changed however, see Outlook Contacts for more details.
  • A Digital-Clay Task will be added by default as an Outlook Task unless you configure the Task Categories in ClayStation's Tools/Options/Tasks to define specific categories that should be added as Outlook Appointments.

• Adding an item to Digital-Clay from a different client such as ClayStudio will be synchronized with Outlook the next time the user logs in, as long as it meets the requirements described above.

• Changing an Outlook item that has not yet been added to Digital-Clay, will cause it to be added automatically as well. This includes cases where the Outlook item is changed by a program such as an Exchange server or another add-in.

• Moving or copying an Outlook item from another folder into the Outlook folder monitored by ClayStation will cause it to be added to Digital-Clay. The exception is when more than 10-15 items are copied all at once due to an Outlook limitation (see Outlook Changes Don't Affect Digital-Clay Items).

• Items that were added to Outlook while ClayStation was not running can be added/exported to Digital-Clay through ClayStation's Tools/Import-Export tool.

• Digital-Clay Items that were not added to Outlook for whatever reason (e.g. the Contact was created by someone else), may be imported into Outlook through the Tools/Import-Export tool.

Note that in addition to the separation of shared and personal Folders, each specific Outlook item may be marked as Private in order to avoid adding it to Digital-Clay in any of the previous scenarios.

When an Outlook item is linked to a Digital-Clay item, any changes made to either of the items are synchronized automatically in the background.

If changes are made to linked items while ClayStation is not running, ClayStation scans for modified items next time it is loaded and synchronizes all linked items that are found. This synchronization of items changed while ClayStation was not running does not include additions and deletions of Outlook items.

When an Outlook item is linked with Digital-Clay, a toolbar will appear in its window that allows the user to open the corresponding Digital-Clay item.

Specific Outlook fields are mapped to their corresponding Digital-Clay fields. For a list of these specific fields and special behaviours per type of Outlook item, see Outlook Tasks & Appointments, Outlook Contacts and Outlook Recurring Appointments.

It is currently not possible to synchronize any other fields except the ones listed, but there is a feature for inserting multiple Digital-Clay field values into the Outlook Notes field (one-way only) so that additional information may be seen in Outlook items even when they are synchronized with handhelds.

See the Known Issues section for issues with broken links, items not getting synchronized, duplicates, etc.

When items are deleted in Outlook, they are typically sent to Deleted Items folders. ClayStation monitors these folders for deleted items in order to synchronize these events with Digital-Clay.

ClayStation also monitors for undetected deletions (for example, if the user deletes an item using shift-delete or deletes multiple items) and scans a folder to find the missing items. This background monitoring of deleted items may be adjusted in the Tools/Options/Outlook tab.

For details on specific behaviour when deleting Contacts/Tasks/Appointments, see Outlook Tasks & Appointments and Outlook Contacts.

ClayStation for Outlook provides an advanced tool for quickly attaching Outlook e-mails to any Digital-Clay record, using search filters, and user-defined settings to quickly find or create the record you need. See: Outlook E-Mail Integration for more details.

If an Outlook e-mail has been attached to Digital-Clay, the e-mail window will have a toolbar button for opening the corresponding Digital-Clay item.

In addition to the above tools, unsent Outlook e-mails will display a button for opening the Digital-Clay Address Book for adding new recipients to the current e-mail.