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.