Offline SharePoint

On Wednesday, November 18, 2009, Colligo and Quest Software partnered on a webinar entitled “The Secrets to Successfully Migrating Exchange Public Folders to SharePoint”. Over 1,400 SharePoint and Exchange professionals signed up for the webinar. Attendees submitted questions during the live broadcast. While we answered several of them live, many more were answered by email afterwards. Below are the answers to the questions that were submitted to Colligo.

If you are interested in learning more about this important topic, you can get a replay of the webinar and download a copy of the associated whitepaper here.

Now for the Q&A:

how much is Colligo?

Colligo Contributor is sold on a “per seat” basis. Pricing depends on product and quantity. For single quantities and low volume pricing, please visit the Colligo webstore at www.colligo.com/store. For volume pricing requests, please email sales@colligo.com.

What about Sharepoint 2010? Will this drag & drop not be supported native?

SharePoint 2010 will not support drag and drop through the browser, nor will it support automatic extraction of email properties. Outlook 2010 only provides download of emails, not upload.

does this work in outlook 2003

Yes, Contributor works with Outlook 2003, 2007 and (as soon as it’s released) Outlook 2010.

Is the Colligo Outlook add-in compatible with the Dynamics CRM Outlook Client?

As far as we know, there are no conflicts with the Dynamics CRM client.

Will the Colligo add-in work with the Outlook 2003 client? Does access with Colligo contributor work with audience targeting?

Contributor works with Outlook 2003, 2007 and (as soon as it’s released) Outlook 2010. Unfortunately, Colligo Contributor does not cache data which is rendered through the Content Query Web Part, which controls what different audiences can see. That being said, lists and libraries that are cached in Contributor are security trimmed, so users must have at least read permissions to view content offline.

Regarding Metadata, is there a way to utilize properties like Outlook categories to organize contacts?

Yes. “Categories” is one of the properties that Contributor automatically extracts from emails and populates in SharePoint as metadata. Views can then be used to sort and filter by the values in that column.

How about Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010? Will your products be replaced by functionality in those products in the 2010 and beyond?

Contributor has no dependency on Exchange direclty, but will support Outlook 2010 when it’s released. We’ve announced support for SharePoin 2010 when it’s released as well. We are already working with some beta customers. Office 2010 has some increased functionality for offline SharePoint scenarios, but the support for SharePoint in Outlook 2010 has not changed much from 2007. For example, you will not be able to drag and drop emails into SharePoint from within Outlook 2010, a critical requirement for Public Folder replacement.

How are the emails viewed in Sharepoint outside of Outlook?

Emails are saved to SharePoint as .msg files and can be opened and viewed from the site, and from Colligo Contributor, through Outlook. They are just a standard emails.

Does Colligo’s solution integrate/work directly with BPOS?

Yes, Colligo Contributor works today with BPOS and will work with the 2010 version as well.

Does colligo support Outlook 2010? Does colligo support SharePoint on BPOS? do you support configuration via group policy? how does colligo work with products like matchpoint?

Colligo Contributor will be certified to be fully compatible with Outlook 2010 and the other Office 2010 clients when they are released next year. Yes, Colligo Contributor works today with BPOS and will work with the 2010 version as well. Contributor can be configured using login scripts, an admin shell, or modified through registry settings. I’m not familiar with Matchpoint, but as long as the application stores content on SharePoint in standard lists and libraries, so they are accessible using SharePoint web services.

is this meant for each client computer to purchase and use, or is there a server application?

Colligo Contributor is 100% client code, nothing is installed on the server.

How to work around SharePoint limits for >2000 elements in lists when using Colligo? Any recommendation on folder structure/separation into different libraries?

I think the limit is related to the rendering time required for large lists on SharePoint 2007. These limits have been raised significantly in SharePoint 2010. As a client application, Contributor does not actually have such a limit, but there is a practical limitation to how much content you will want to cache on the client. As far as recommendations go, I’d suggest you partition into folders on SharePoint 2007 as much as possible, or move to SharePoint 2010 as quickly as possible.

Does Outlook Search look into the SharePoint folders?

Not at the present moment, but we are looking at this for a future release.

Is this supported on the Mac (Entourage)?

Contributor does not run in Entourage. You could, however, run Contributor on a Mac using Boot Camp on OSX.

How does Colligo handle multiple users accessing the same document/file?

Multiple users can edit content offline. A sophisticated conflict resolution engine notifies users if conflicting edits have been made by multiple users while offline and provides ways for them to correct the conflicts.

Does Colligo Contributor require Outlook 2007?

Contributor works with Outlook 2003, 2007 and (as soon as it’s released) Outlook 2010.

Does a person have the ability to still reply to a message that has been migrated from a public folder into SharePoint? What are the pros and cons to integrating email communication to a document library, such as Colligo Contributor, versus a discussion board list. If a document library is the best solution, then what do you see as the role of a discussion board within SharePoint?

Yes, emails are saved to SharePoint as .msg files so they can be opened directly in Outlook. If the original recipient opens a .msg in Outlook which contains an email that was sent to them, they can reply to it. Outlook 2007 allows users to drag and drop emails to discussion lists, however, the “Subject” and “Body” properties are captured, but the majority of email metadata (e.g. To, From, Cc, Received, etc.) is lost or changed in this process. For example, Outlook changes “From” to the person who added the email to the Discussion list, not the original author of the email. The discussion board is used to enable a group of users to send messages to a distribution list – much like email. On SharePoint this distribution list can be limited to those with credentials on SharePoint.

SharePoint storage (any database storage) is also expensive – is SharePoint the best location for the Exchange data?

Microsoft does not recommend all Exchange data be moved to SharePoint. It`s not recommended for email archival. They do, however, recommend SharePoint for a number of scenarios when replacing Exchange Public Folders, such as document and email collaboration, since SharePoint is a very effective platform for that application.

Many of my PF’s are email enabled. How is this done in SharePoint?

SharePoint document libraries can be configured to enable users to send emails (and attachments) to them. However, this has a few limitations. Attachments are stripped off and stored separately while the body of the email is stored as a .eml file that cannot be opened by Outlook.

Does Colligo make the Exchange to Sharepoint connection two way?

Yes, Colligo Contributor sync in bi-directional. It enables users to save content from their PC (emails, files) to SharePoint. Conversely, SharePoint content can be cached to their PC.

Do you have any best practice regarding number of e-mails in a document library before we will get serious performance issues?

SharePoint 2007 has a recommended limit of 2000 items per list or folder. This limit has been raised significantly in SharePoint 2010. I believe it’s now 10,000 items or more.

what kind of contact & distribution list sync (if any) does contributor have?

Contributor can sync most types of custom lists in SharePoint, including contact lists and distribution lists. The actual format of these in SharePoint depends on the migration tools you choose.