Importing Contacts from Exchange

Create contacts in your Exchange address book, and then import into Accelo and have the benefits of things like central access across your team, address book sync with colleagues and automatic email capture.

The Exchange Contact Import tool allows Accelo to automatically detect contacts in your Exchange address book to import them into Accelo.

Your Accelo user account must be connected to your Office 365/Exchange account for this import to function.

Using this guide, you can:

Initiate Contact Import from Exchange

Getting your contacts in sync between Office 365/Exchange and Accelo is really easy. It's done by using our Exchange Import Wizard which intelligently sorts your Office 365/Exchange Contacts and matches them up with existing companies, or simply creates another one where needed. Accelo will automatically notify you with a little number badge on the integration notifications icon when contacts are available for import.

If you choose to dismiss this notification, you can still continue to the import wizard by clicking your Modules Button> Configurations and then clicking the Exchange Contacts tile under the Import Data section.
The next screen will show you any groups that were detected with new contacts to import. Select the groups you want to include.
Click the Confirm contacts to import button. Note that this will not import the contacts straight away - you will get a chance to review them first! The review process is paginated which means you don't have to process them all at once - you can just import a few companies at a time. You can even open Accelo in another browser window and check that the import is working as expected.

Once the contacts are successfully imported to Accelo, there are two ways of syncing the details.

Allow Accelo to work it's magic and automatically keep the two contacts in sync
Manually force the sync by pressing the 'Send Contact to Address Book' button under the contact.

Either of these methods will work just fine, but if you need some updated details in Office 365/Exchange and time is sensitive, we recommend using the manual sync button.

Import Contacts

The wizard (shown above) is not the only way to import contacts. If a new, prospective client emails you, adding that new client into your Accelo account is simple - just forward the email onto add@[your-domain].accelo.com - read more here.

You can also turn on a feature which will add a new contact, based on the domain of the email address. If geoff.mcqueen@accelo.com emails you when info@accelo.com is already saved against a contact record, then geoff.mcqueen will be created against the same company.

Duplicate records

We work hard to cut out duplicates, but we also would rather leave your data a bit messy and untouched than make changes that surprise you.

If you do end up with duplicate information, you can easily merge companies and contacts together; our synchronizing processes are smart enough to track this change to Office 365/Exchange, too (but we won't delete your contacts from Office 365/Exchange).

Contacts are grouped under companies; the company is selected based on the "company" field from the Office 365/Exchange Contact. We can also guess the company by comparing the contact's email address with other contacts.
You can edit the company name, the contact names, and email address; these changes will then sync back to Office 365/Exchange after the import process is completed.
To remove a company or contact, choose the Ignore: Do not import this contact option from the dropdown.
To import a contact under a different company, click the "Unlink" option.

Note: you may be importing contacts where the company already exists in Accelo. In this case, we will link the new contacts to the existing company.

Best Practices...

If you have notes against a contact, these will be converted to an activity in Accelo against that contact.
Duplicate contacts will be ignored. That is, the first contact will be imported and the second will be ignored.
All contacts that are imported will automatically be kept in sync with your Office 365/Exchange Contacts.
Once contacts are added to Accelo, they will be visible by any users that have permission to view contacts.