I cannot believe I’m writing an old tip from Gus “Niels Bohr” Gonzalez but it’s a suprisingly good one.

When you create a phone call record in CRM, all information is right there, including who to call and what number to dial.

Only one problem – CRM does not pop up reminders, that’s Outlook’s job. But when the record is synchonized to Outlook, it’s represented as a task and neither recipient nor the phone number are there.

Gus’s tip: create a workflow that adds the phone number for whoever you are calling to either the Subject or the Description of a phone call to make it easier for the users to see who they are calling.

So you create a phone call with the Subject: “Call to schedule 6-month appointment” and select “John Doe” on the regarding. A workflow runs and updates the Subject to “Call to schedule 6-month appointment (555-1234)”.

That change syncs to Outlook and now you can dial faster. You can also sync it to the description of the call if you believe the subject changing is too intrusive.

Bonus: If your system is configured so that you can dial the numbers using Skype or Skype for Business, prefix number with tel:

That coveted sales call is now only one click away.