Offline SharePoint

Bob Mixon, all around SharePoint guru, who I mentioned in a previous post about our upcoming Webinar, has put some very flattering comments about our new 2.1 version of Colligo Contributor on his home page at bobmixon.com. Here are a couple of quotes:

I just received a demonstration of their new Outlook 2007 integration and my response is ~ wow ~…

and

This Outlook Add-in is inexpensive and fills all the gaps you would have expected from the Microsoft Outlook development group.

Thanks Bob!

By the way, if you haven’t already done so, do yourself a favor and have a look at Bob’s blog. It’s packed with amazing tips and insights on SharePoint.

Barry

Forgot to mention this piece in CMS Wire on our release of version 2.1:

“Taking advantage of the growing SharePoint market, along with the ubiquitous usage of Outlook for email management, Colligo Networks announced Colligo Contributor for SharePoint Version 2.1.”

Barry.

We’re really pleased to be working with SharePoint MVP, Bob Mixon, on our upcoming webinar entitled “10 Things to Consider when Integrating Outlook and SharePoint”. Bob has such a wealth of knowledge in the SharePoint space. For example, he has a great blog: “Bob Mixon’s Blog – Ramblings about SharePoint, Knowledge Management, BPM and…”

The webinar will be held on Thursday, May 31 at 8am PST. Bob will cover a number of topics, including:

• How to take advantage of SharePoint for managing email
• Client-side requirements for ensuring user adoption
• Tips for using content types for classification & retention
• Ins & outs of email metadata extraction & customization
• Caching SharePoint content for offline access

It’s free. If you’re interested in attending, you can register now at MSD2D.

Barry.

Michael Sampson, of Collaboration Success Advisors, who I’ve discussed before kindly mentioned the release of version 2.1 on his “Michael’s Thoughts” blog.

Even more interesting is the report he published yesterday entitled “SharePoint for Business: A Six Step Strategy for Achieving Collaboration Success and Improving Business with SharePoint”. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but it looks like a very interesting report. I’m going to purchase a copy in the next couple of days and will report back.

Barry.

The Colligo Contributor V2.1 Outlook Add-in provides access to SharePoint libraries through folders in Outlook 2003 or 2007. It allows users to upload email and other documents (including attachments to email) to SharePoint by simply dragging and dropping within outlook, and overall provides a user experience very similar to Exchange Public Folders. In addition, the setting of SharePoint content types and metadata at the time of drag/drop is fully supported.

To sync content to Outlook, navigate to the SharePoint Document Library or Folder and select “Connect to Outlook” from the “Actions” menu.

Users have the option to “Make this document library available offline”. This caches the contents of the library or folder locally for offline viewing and editing. The Contributor client works online or offline, and in addition to providing offline access, it also provides user with enhanced viewing and editing options (e.g. fast opening of files, change metadata on multiple items at once, drag-drop between libraries by opening two Outlook windows, etc.)

Otherwise, the library view is online only. Outlook’s IE browser displays the SharePoint web interface. If the user is offline, they will not be able to access any contents of the library, however, they are still able to add items to the SharePoint folders in Outlook. These items will be queued and then synced when the user comes back online.

Syncing to Outlook causes a new folder to be created in Outlook under the “Colligo for SharePoint” folder as shown below:

Because these are ordinary Outlook folders, in addition to drag-and-drop, users can configure Outlook rules to move or copy content into SharePoint automatically. These folders are also available through the Outlook web interface and through mobile devices like BlackBerries etc. When users move content to SharePoint through one of those interfaces, it is queued up and synced through the Add-in when the user’s PC comes back online.

So as you can see, it’s quite easy to get content in and out of SharePoint from within Outlook. One final thing that’s worth mentioning is that when emails are moved into SharePoint, standard message properties (i.e. To:, From: Subject:, Date:) are captured by an event handler in Contributor and automatically mapped to SharePoint metadata. This makes SharePoint a very powerful solution for email content management and collaboration.

Barry.

Well, It’s finally out… Version 2.1 of Colligo Contributor and Colligo Reader. The press release explains the features in this new version pretty well. The big news is the extensive integration of SharePoint with Microsoft Outlook. Customers have been asking us for this for awhile and the response to the beta has been great!

We were speaking with Burton Group Analyst, Karen Hobert, last week and she agreed to put a quote into our press release that pretty well sums up the reason we did this:

“The 2007 release of Microsoft SharePoint is rapidly gaining market momentum,” noted Karen Hobert, Analyst with Burton Group’s Collaboration and Content Strategies service. “Along with it, there’s a significant and growing need for solutions to help information workers to robustly work with SharePoint-managed content while offline and to move Outlook-based content into SharePoint repositories.”

We also had a great chat with Gayle Rodcay at Windows IT Pro and she wrote a nice piece about the new version as well. She said:

Colligo Networks is helping to push the adoption of SharePoint technologies by providing in its Colligo Contributor for SharePoint product not only a way to access SharePoint in an offline environment, but also an alternative to the traditional browser-based SharePoint interface.

Thanks Gayle!

If you’re interested in trying out the new version, you can sign up for a trial here. I’ll provide a bit more about version 2.1 in the next post.

Barry.