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.

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

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

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

Would you like to benchmark your organization against hundreds of others with regards to the adoption of SharePoint, enterprise content management (ECM) systems, and cloud storage systems? Colligo is conducting an industry wide survey and if you participate, you’ll not only get a copy of the results but you’ll be entered to win a Nikon D5000 camera (an $800 value).

By participating in this survey, you’ll get answers to questions like:

• How broadly deployed is SharePoint?
• Do organizations struggle with SharePoint user adoption?
• Which departments use SharePoint and for what business activities?
• What are the benefits of client / desktop software?
• How many ECM platforms do organizations typically support?
• How broadly adopted are cloud storage systems within the enterprise?

Our blog readers are close to this fast-evolving market so we’d like to hear your perspectives – and have the chance to share with you the perspectives of your peers. Please complete this survey by Friday, July 30 for your chance to win a Nikon D5000 camera.

Click here for the survey.

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

Read the press release for more information on the V4.2 release.

June continued to be a busy month at Colligo for conferences and events. Colligo’s Braeden Calyniuk, who’s responsible for business development in the Asia Pacific region, recently attended, presented, and exhibited at the New Zealand SharePoint Conference in Wellington and the Australian SharePoint Conference in Sydney. Both events were well attended with over 400 SharePoint professionals in New Zealand and 800 in Australia. Ryan Duguid, who recently co-hosted our extremely successful webinar on email management in SharePoint 2010, provided the keynote address in Wellington.

This was Colligo’s first time exhibiting in New Zealand and Australia and it was great for Braeden to meet face-to-face with the many partners and customers that he’s only talked with on the phone. It was also great to meet with Microsoft representatives in both countries, so a big thanks to Ryan Duguid for introductions to the Microsoft New Zealand people and to Gayan Peiris for introductions to the Microsoft Australia folks.

Colligo was the guest of Information Leadership Consulting at the New Zealand show and the guest of Unique World for the Australian conference. Both groups generously shared their booths with us and played the part of excellent hosts, making many introductions to key companies and important SharePoint contacts in their respective regions. So another big thanks to Grant Margison at Information Leadership and Eddie Geller at Unique World for their support and incredible hospitality. Many thanks also to Debbie Ireland for putting together two great conferences!

Colligo has built a very good profile in New Zealand and Australia with a solid core of customers and excellent partners. We received a lot of good plugs at various “Voice of the Customer” presentations and the knowledge level of Colligo and our SharePoint client solutions with the conference attendees was fantastic.

Here are some photos that were taken at the events. Braeden is sitting in the middle.

Conferences like Tech-Ed are a great way for us to connect with customers, learn about their experiences using our products and the results that their companies are achieving. At Tech-Ed 2010 in New Orleans, we had the good fortune of having Bob Burke from Newfoundland Power stop by the Colligo booth. Bob is an Application Analyst and was heavily involved in deploying Colligo Contributor to their field service staff.

Newfoundland Power operates an integrated generation, transmission and distribution system throughout the island portion of Newfoundland and Labrador. The company identified a problem in the time delay involved in updating and printing manuals for their field staff to take with them in their service vehicles. To solve the problem, the company implemented SharePoint and Colligo Contributor, so that the manuals could be updated electronically, uploaded to SharePoint, and then synched to each of the field service technician’s laptops using Contributor. This process ensured that field staff always had the latest version of the service manuals in their trucks.

As Bob told us at Tech-Ed, Contributor provided fast and easy access to up-to-date field service manuals and helped solve Newfoundland Power’s mobile document management problems.

Albert Jan Schot wrote a cool post on how to set the Colligo config XML file up. It could save a bunch of time if you are trying to set up default sites for users.