Optimizing Contact Sync Between Outlook, PowerApps, and ERP

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Posted on by fmsto

Hi,

I’m looking for a way to streamline the process of managing customer contact data across Outlook, PowerApps, and our ERP system. Currently, phone numbers and postal addresses sync through the Outlook mobile app, but we’re still manually updating information in three different places.

Our goal is to have a single, centralized source of truth for customer data, including business-specific fields like customer numbers from our ERP system or serial numbers, and eliminate the need for duplicate data entry.

Does anyone have suggestions for integrating these systems to keep everything in sync automatically?

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Building Power Apps

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Daniel Bocklandt 5,114 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hey,

Quick question which CRM are you using?

What of those 3 Datasource would you want to be the truth?

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fmsto 2 on at

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We’re working with a lesser-known ERP system that doesn’t have an API or connectors. The only way to sync data with it is through import/export using CSV files, which I can configure in the ERP software. Unfortunately, this means we can’t automate communication with the ERP.

Ideally, I’d like to set up a system where contact information can be edited in both Outlook and PowerApps, with changes syncing automatically between them. After that, I plan to use a Power Automate flow to export the updated data into a CSV for manual import into the ERP.

Absolutely amazing would be a final step where the exported CSV could be compared for changes in both directions (ERP ↔ PowerApps/Outlook). But that’s more of a dream at this point, I fear.

Does this approach make sense? Any suggestions on how to achieve this?

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Daniel Bocklandt 5,114 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hey sorry for my late response.

So if I understand correctly you do not plan on having one Datasource to be the absolut truth.

What Datasource is Power apps connected to if you can eddit the contacts in there?

Wouldn't it make sense to use Outlook directly? You can create and update Contacts there directly Office 365 Outlook - Connectors | Microsoft Learn

As soon as you use the Action get Contacts (V2) you basically already have a table that you just need to export at the end of all changes.

So basically from there you could save it into an Excel table or SharePoint or something like this and make the import.

Like this you wouldn't need to make the extra step of sincing Power apps and Outlook before sincing it with your CRM.

However you need to think about what happens if somebody made Changes into the CRM. They will not be displayed in Outlook. As soon as changes in Outlook are made and you sync them to your CRM the changes made there will be overwritten.

Even if everybody will always make sure to sync directly.... what happens if two persones are working at the same time on the contatcts one in Power apps and one in the CRM.

You would need to create a Rule that no one can change contacts in the CRM to avoid those things.

If this Answer resolved your porblem please accept it as solution so others can find it as well.

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