Show sequence status and next steps on leads and contacts in Salesforce

Introduction

Today, we're excited to announce that we have enhanced our Salesforce sync to push information about active sequences to leads and contacts in Salesforce.

We've spent a lot of time building the gold standard of Salesforce sync, and it has allowed us to ensure a large range of data can make it in both directions between Outreach and Salesforce, on any field.

This particular update users in Salesforce to have visibility into whether a prospect is active in a sequence or not, and what step they are on, what type of step it is, and who is assigned that activity.

We think you'll see how this capability opens up a number of very helpful scenarios that helps organizations run more efficiently and have more visibility into what's happening.

The Demo

The new fields which can be mapped to the Lead or Contact are visible in the Salesforce plugin configuration, at the field level. They include information about the name of the active sequence, what the status of the sequence is, what step of the sequence they are on, when it's due, what type of activity it is, and who is responsible for performing it. Once all setup, it creates a powerful view of how this Contact or Lead is being engaged.

In order to hold this data in Salesforce, admins will want to create some custom fields to hold the information on the Lead or the Contact first. We prefer to put ours in a layout section called Engagement Panel.

Once completed, admins simply need to go to the plugin settings, to the record mapping they would like to configure, and first refresh the view of the fields we can see, using the refresh button.

Then, simply add new rows, and match the newly created Salesforce fields to the Outreach fields with that data, and don't forget to check the update out checkbox. Once complete, be sure to hit save.

Once mapped and set to update out, as a prospect is added to a sequence, and the information changes related to that sequence, whether the sequence state, the step they are on, what type of activity is due for that step, when it's due and who is responsible for that activity, Outreach will push that data to Salesforce.

We have seen users use this information in Contact Views, for roll-up fields at the account level, and to which contacts or leads to engage using the Outreach sidebar on Salesforce.

Additional Information

One thing to remember is that once you have this setup and running, Outreach will push data to the mapped records going forward, as records get updated. If you want the data to go up to Salesforce immediately, you can select any set of records and force push an update back.

Please be aware that mapping these values out to Salesforce will increase the volume of API calls you use to some degree, as posting more data, more frequently as sequence states change, will require more API calls.