Offline SharePoint

Ed Kaczor (left) and Trevor Dyck at the Colligo pod at ILTA.

The Colligo team participated at another interesting conference last week, this time the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) Conference in Las Vegas. We were invited to participate by Microsoft who graciously shared their booth space with us. The legal industry is very important to Microsoft as law firms and legal departments of all sizes are deploying SharePoint for matter management faster than ever before. In fact, we spoke with many law firm CIOs and CTOs, and were told empathically that it’s not a matter of “if” they’ll deploy SharePoint but “when” they’ll deploy SharePoint.

Colligo’s integration of Outlook to SharePoint is a critical piece of the puzzle for any law firm or legal department looking at SharePoint for matter management. The reason is simple: the vast majority of client communications (up to 90% by some research) occur via email. By making it easy for lawyers and administrative staff to move emails into client and matter folders while capturing accurate metadata, Colligo Contributor is essential for the success of any SharePoint project in the legal space.

Many thanks to all the folks at Microsoft for their support and for walking over so many of their clients to our “pod” for a demonstration of Colligo Contributor. It was also extremely gratifying to have Microsoft highlighting the role of Colligo Contributor in their own Legal and Corporate Affairs Department’s deployment of SharePoint. A special thanks to Norm Thomas, Mark Beckman, Julie Kremer, Tanice Myers, and Karin Breedis for their help and hospitality.

Colligo already has some great clients in the legal space and you can read their individual case studies that detail how they are using Colligo Contributor for matter management:

• Fernald Law Group Creates Competitive Advantage with Microsoft Hosted SharePoint & Colligo Contributor Pro (Click here to download the Case Study)
• National Grid Legal Department Improves Collaboration & SharePoint Adoption with Contributor Add-In for Outlook (Click here to download the Case Study)
• Fischer Behar Chen Well Orion & Co. Drives Adoption of SharePoint for Email & Document Management. (Click here to download the Case Study)

We’ve also produced a new white paper that explains how Colligo Contributor helps law firms and legal departments manage their matter content including emails in SharePoint. Click here to download the White Paper.

Continuing the series based on the recent webinar that I participated with Colligo on email management in SharePoint 2010, in this fourth blog entry I’ll outline the new features designed to extend the Records Management capability of SharePoint 2010.

In Place Records Management

Historically, most records management systems operate around what’s called a file plan or a business classification schema, which is essentially a hierarchical folder structure for classifying and storing content (including emails). Within the file plan hierarchy, you define your metadata capture and your retention policies. In SharePoint 2010, we have created a new way of managing records called In Place Records Management. The idea here is that records can exist anywhere within the SharePoint platform. You may chose to take that record and move it to a separate records archive but a lot of people in the collaborative world want to the ability to declare a content item as a record, and to leave that content where it is, in the context it was created.

Hierarchical File Plan

In addition to In Place Records Management, SharePoint 2010 also supports the Hierarchical File Plan, which is the location based approach to managing records (the records archive) that people are comfortable and familiar. This support allows people to decide whether they want to use In Place Records Management, the records archive, or some combination of the two. The Hierarchical File Plan allows users to create deeply nest folder structures for managing information. Combined with the Content Organizer, inbound content including emails can be automatically classified and driven into the appropriate part of the hierarchy where it picks up a location based disposition policies, security constructs, and default metadata values.

Multi Stage Policy

Multi stage policy is another new capability of SharePoint 2010. Multi stage policy is the idea that any piece of content, whether traditional documents or email, is going to go through different phases from creation through to disposition. This new capability allows for the user to create multiple policy stages for any piece of content that has been declared as a record.

Enhanced Reporting and Auditing

Another area where Microsoft has made significant improvements in SharePoint 2010 is in the area of reporting and auditing. The new capabilities make it easy for users to find out what exactly is going on with a specific piece of content by querying a content item and finding out the policy as well as the audit history that applies to it. Additional record information such as retention policy, content type and folder location as well as individual item auditing is also available.

E-Discovery and Litigation Support

SharePoint 2010 provides the ability to search for content across an entire SharePoint repository including any collaborative site, any project site, any team site, as well as records archives for content and place it on legal hold. In the same way that SharePoint 2010 offers In Place Records Management, it also provides In Place Records Holds. When a user comes up with a result set that matches the criteria given by external counsel, they have the option of taking that content out of the collaborative environment and placing it in a separate archive for litigation purposes or to leave the content where it is, so that the business still has access to it, but place that content on hold so that it can’t be tampered, deleted or altered.

For more information on these new records management features, please listen to the audio file below and review the slides.

Download the slides here (PDF, Right-Click & Save As)
Download the audio

In my second blog entry, I discussed how SharePoint is bringing together the traditional world of content management and the world of social networking and collaboration. In this third entry, I’ll look more closely at Project and Case Management in terms of the new features and functionality that Microsoft launched in SharePoint 2010 that will help in email management.

The Content Organizer

The Content Organizer is an underpinning piece of the SharePoint 2010 platform. The Content Organizer is a way to automatically classify and route information based on specific properties of that information. This capability makes it easy for users to take large volumes of emails and move them into the SharePoint environment for better project and case management.

Metadata Driven Navigation

SharePoint is all about capturing content along with rich metadata to describe that content. Metadata driven navigation provides a set of Navigators that are bound to specific metadata properties within the organization and allow you to filter information in the document library down to just the information that matches the specific metadata query. User defined filters can also be used to narrow down large volumes of information to a specific set of content that is relevant to what it is that I’m trying to achieve.

Shared Taxonomy

A shared taxonomy is a central metadata repository within the organization that powers the metadata driven navigation. A shared taxonomy is something that everyone can refer and ensures that users are applying consistently terms to content. In SharePoint 2010 this is called the Managed Metadata Service and is essentially a central service that provisions taxonomies. These managed metadata terms can be used to tag emails in SharePoint for better organization and findability.

Document Sets

Document sets provide a way to manage related content as a single entity and are of particular interest to project and case management. Documents sets can contain a variety of document types including emails and enable users to apply, for example, workflow, policy, and specific shared metadata properties to all of the items in that set of documents.

Unique Document IDs

An often requested new feature of SharePoint 2010 is the unique document ID. Every piece of content, whether it’s a traditional document or an email within the SharePoint environment can have a unique document identifier assigned to it. This document identifier lets you find that piece of content at any time through its lifecycle even if it no longer exists in the location that it was originally created or stored. The document ID follows the content through the SharePoint environment and if you search on the document ID, you’ll always find the document regardless of where it is.

For more information on these new project and case management features, please listen to the audio file below and review the slides.

Download the slides here (PDF, Right-Click & Save As)
Download the audio

In my first blog entry, I looked at the 4 key scenarios for email management in an organization and identified the key outcomes and supporting platforms and software for each scenario. In this next section, I would like to talk about content management from a Microsoft perspective, our notion of ECM for the masses, and how we think of delivering it from Microsoft.

When we look at the ECM space, we see two worlds, the world of traditional content management and the world of social networking and collaboration. From a Microsoft perspective and with SharePoint, we are looking at bringing these two worlds together and saying that this is all just content, no matter how it is created, no matter how it is rendered to the end user, or on what device it’s consumed over. It’s all simply content that needs to be supported with security, metadata, workflow processes, and with policy in place to make sure we keep the content we should be keeping and we dispose of content once it is no longer useful to the organization and in line with corporate guidelines, industry or government regulations.

SharePoint 2010 brings these two worlds together so that we can store and manage all types of content, including email, in a single platform while providing a consistent user experience regardless of the device or application. Underlying this is a comprehensive enterprise search capability to make it easy to find the information we need to do our jobs effectively on a day to day basis. The three key drivers for SharePoint 2010 from an enterprise content management perspective and that Microsoft used as a basis in terms of new features and functionality is ease of use, flexible compliance and cost effectiveness.

For more information on how Microsoft thinks about ECM for the masses, please listen to the audio file below and review the slides.

Download the slides here (PDF, Right-Click & Save As)
Download the audio

As Barry mentioned, I’m going to do a series of posts over the new few weeks based on the information that I presented at the webinar on Email Management in SharePoint 2010. These posts and the associated audio files and presentation slides break down the webinar into smaller sections and enable people to download the audio and slides and listen/view at their convenience.

In this first section, I’ll discuss how Microsoft is thinking about ECM and in particular email management in terms of how an organization can get it under control. Their are 4 key scenarios that we consider when we think about how to manage emails in an organization. These 4 key scenarios I like to call the continuum, starting on the left hand side with Personal Email Management, then moving right to Project and Case Management, then to Email Archiving and finally to Records Management.

Each of these scenarios has key outcomes and supporting software that Microsoft believes a company needs to manage emails within an organization.

Personal Email Management:
This is essentially driven by the individual and it’s characterized by how I think about email for my own personal purposes. How I consume what comes into my Inbox, how I manage my Inbox and how I act on the content in my Inbox. Personal email management is all about making my day simpler using many of the great new features of Outlook 2010 designed to make managing information easier as well as easier to tag or classify email to help me get my job done.

Key Outcomes:

• Well, managed and organized Inbox
• Information is easy to find
• Email is safe, secure and easy to recover
• Easy to elevate email to a higher purpose
• Easy to age email gracefully

Supporting Platforms and Software:

• Outlook 2010
• Exchange 2010

Project and Case Management:
This is all about dealing with teams, groups, projects, and specific issues within an organization. What’s important to note is that in this scenario, we treat email the same as any other content item such as a Word file, an Excel file, or a PowerPoint presentation. It’s all part of a single entity, whether that’s a single project or single case. I want to manage email in the same way as any other file related to a project. What’s required in this scenario is a consistent approach to managing all those different types of content, a consistent metadata capture requirement across all the content, and a consistent way to apply search and policy to the document or item. Email gets shared along with all the other content to the group.

Key Outcomes:

• Treat email the same as all other artifacts
• Share email broadly without replication
• Capture rich metadata
• Leverage workflow
• Apply rich policy

Supporting platforms and software:

• Outlook 2010
• SharePoint 2010
• Colligo Contributor

Email Archiving:
This is something that is more driven by IT and the business as well as by compliance and the regulations placed on the business around how you manage electronic communication. From an IT perspective, it’s about how to manage large volumes of emails coming into a business.

Key Outcomes:

• Simplify application of policy
• Broad brush, time based disposition
• Support larger archives with cheaper disk
• Support e-discovery requests

Supporting platforms and software:

• Outlook 2010
• Exchange 2010

Records Management:
This goes beyond the “broad brush” approach of email archiving to records management where it is more about identifying business critical content. This content must have specific metadata capture requirements, specific multi-stage policy applied in order to manage the entire lifecycle, and a set rules and regulations that are adhered to very closely. This also requires that a specific individual in the organization is taking care of this content, monitoring it over its lifecycle, and making sure that the right content is kept for the right period of time and then disposed of in an effective fashion.

Key Outcomes:

• Manage email as a business record
• Leverage file plans for classification
• Capture rich metadata
• Leverage workflow
• Apply rich policy
• Support e-discovery requests

Supporting platforms and software:

• Outlook 2010
• SharePoint 2010
• Colligo Contributor

For more information on these scenarios, please listen to the audio file below and review the slides. In the next posting, I’ll discuss what “ECM for the Masses” means for Microsoft.

Download the slides here (PDF, Right-Click & Save As)
Download the audio

The Colligo team is in New Orleans for Microsoft Tech-Ed this week and the only thing hotter than the weather is all the buzz about Office and SharePoint 2010. Conference attendance is definitely up from last year, with most of the sessions packed to the rafters and the exhibit hall a frenzy of activity, especially the first night with the vendor reception driving 10,000 attendees into Hall D.

Traffic to the Colligo booth has been excellent and the team has had some great conversations with people stopping by to learn more about our SharePoint solutions and how they can deploy them in their organizations. The vast majority are interested in Office and SharePoint 2010 support and we definitely have a good story to tell about Colligo products here. Email management in SharePoint is high on the list of companies either deploying SharePoint or looking to expand their use of it. Without exception, everyone loves our Contributor Add-In for Outlook!

The post conference festivities have been excellent too, as expected in a city as vibrant as New Orleans, which has definitely bounced back with a passion since Katrina. Last night’s AvePoint sponsored party at the famous Maison Dupay Hotel in the French Quarter was excellent, featuring great food and a very talented fire dancer. Later in the night, the party moved to Bourbon Street in style, with a jazz band and full police escort leading a parade of about 200 people through the streets of the French Quarter. It was quite the spectacle!

Look for more from the Colligo team when they return.

At the Office and SharePoint 2010 launch last week in New York, Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division and the keynote speaker, pulled a few interesting facts and figures regarding return on investment on SharePoint 2010 from a recently commissioned Forrester Consulting report. The report is called “The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010” and is very thorough in its analysis. Forrester interviewed 11 organizations that were early adopters of SharePoint 2010, or I suspect were part of the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 TAP program, and from their interviews, created a “composite” company and associated ROI framework to reflect the investment in an on-premise SharePoint 2010 implementation. For the record, the composite organization they created was a 7000 worker professional services firm with $1 Billion in revenue and 25 offices in the US and 15 in Europe. (Sound like anyone you know?)

Regardless of who the mystery composite company could be, some of their conclusions on ROI were quite interesting! The risk adjusted ROI figure (otherwise known as the conservative figure) was 104% with a payback period of just over 10 months. The total cost of implementation was around $1.5 million with the total benefits of $3.1 million in the same time period. That’s a pretty rapid pay back period and I’d say very good ammunition for any CTO or IT director to pry some budget from Finance to do the upgrade! The report is still on the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 home page, and the link is listed below. If it disappears, let me know and I’ll send you a pdf copy.

Download the report here.

I found a very interesting interview that Don Lueders conducted with Adam Harmetz from Microsoft for the SharePoint Records Management blog. Adam is Microsoft’s Lead Program Manager for the SharePoint document and records management engineering team. He’s also one of our excellent contacts at Microsoft who’s ideas and opinions are highly valued by both our management and engineering team. In this interview, he lays out where Microsoft sees Exchange and SharePoint intersecting for email and records management and discusses some of the important new capabilities for Exchange and SharePoint 2010. It makes for a very interesting read. Thanks Adam for the Colligo plug regarding email management in SharePoint!

Check it out here.

I’m in New York for the worldwide launch of SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. Colligo was invited by Microsoft to participate in the launch today, so I’m heading over to NBC Studios in a half hour to see Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division and others take the covers off “Wave 14″..

Last night, Microsoft hosted a party at the NBC Experience store. A bunch of customers, partners and, of course, Microsoft-ies, were there. I had the company “Flip” with me, and made a short video of the event.

On the video you can see:

• Gideon Bibliowicz, who heads up SharePoint products at Microsoft
• Paj and Ruth (who organized the event), both from Microsoft
• Rasool Rayani from Metalogix
• Tony Lanni, and Tiani Jiang from AvePoint
• Marsha from Mercer Consulting
• Nic Betts from Pfizer
• Chris Johnson from Microsoft (he put the on stage demos together)
• Dan Pontefract from Telus