We've recently had a few questions from power administrators about how to enable Salesforce for Outlook for their organizations. There are two basic steps:

- First, the administrator needs to create at least one Outlook Configuration by going to Setup > Administration Setup > Desktop Administration > Outlook Configurations. Additional configurations can also be setup, if groups of users within the organization should have different settings. 

- Users can then download Salesforce for Outlook by going to Setup > Personal Setup > Desktop Integration > Salesforce for Outlook.

Salesforce for Outlook is significantly different than the previous product (Connect for Outlook), so there are a few important things to keep in mind:

For full instructions on using Salesforce for Outlook, go to the Help & Training section in Salesforce. HOWEVER: if you simply enter Salesforce for Outlook as your search terms, you'll get a confusing mess of articles about Salesforce for Outlook AND Connect for Outlook .. so, be sure to place quotes around the search terms to limit your results to only what is applicable.
Once the Spring '11 release hits your org, you'll be able to have email attachments saved along with the email activity record in Salesforce. When Salesforce for Outlook was first released, this missing feature kept many users from making the leap from Connect for Outlook - but, thankfully, Salesforce listened to the outcries and has made this feature available. It does, however, need to be enabled on an individual basis by having each user do the following: Go to Setup > Email > My Email to Salesforce and select "Always save email attachments"
Salesforce for Outlook does a great, almost seamless job of syncing emails, contacts, and events - however, it still does not sync tasks between Outlook and Salesforce. Hopefully we'll see this feature in a future release. If users manage their tasks in Salesforce, they can access their task list from a Blackberry, iPhone, or Windows Mobile device using Mobile Lite - which is free for all editions of Salesforce.
Rather than choosing which records you want to sync, Salesforce for Outlook uses folder-based syncing. This feature makes setting up your sync preferences fairly simple (i.e., just put your personal contacts in a separate Outlook folder and don't sync that folder). But there are some important implications: if you are using two-way sync or if you are syncing Outlook to Salesforce, and you move a contact out of the synced folder in Outlook - then that contact will be deleted from Salesforce. Be sure to thoroughly think through your configuration to ensure that the correct information is synced and nothing is lost.