Best available integration of Outlook and SharePoint

These days so much business communication is via email and a lot of organizations are looking to improve the way key emails are managed. Many people are interested in using Microsoft SharePoint as their email management platform, only to find that the out-of-the-box integration between Outlook and SharePoint leaves a lot to be desired, so that even saving an email to SharePoint with metadata is frustratingly difficult.

MacroView is about to release a new version of its WISDOM DMF and WISDOM Message addons, both of which have very impressive integration of Outlook and SharePoint - we believe the best available in the market today. WISDOM enables SharePoint-based email management solutions that are intuitive and that match the functionality that you otherwise get by buying a 'big-name' DM system.

Relevant features in WISDOM Outlook / SharePoint integration include:

Tree-view display of your available SharePoint document store available within a new WISDOM pane in Outlook. The WISDOM tree-view fully respects SharePoint security, so you see all areas for which you have permission, but cannot access any content that you would not be able to access using the native SharePoint browser UI (with a lot more keyatrokes!).

Drag and drop to save emails to ANY library or folder. You do not previously need to declare the library or folder as a Favorite, or register individual sites. You can also drag and drop to save one or multiple attachments.

SharePoint Favorites enable one–click navigation to frequently-used document libraries or folders. Each user can have their own Favorites. You can roll out Favorites to groups of users by using Group Policy.

Email-related attributes captured automatically as a message is saved (e.g. To, From, Subject, SentOn date/time, etc).

Immediate capture of any other custom meta-data defined in the destination library (with support for all out-of-the-box SharePoint column types including Business Data).

Prevention of duplicate copies of an email message in any one document library. If a second recipient attempts to save the same email, they will be advised that the email already exists in the library.

Clicking a library or folder node in the WISDOM tree-view displays all files in all views of that library / folder in the right pane of Outlook. The 2,000 item limit does not apply, because WISDOM uses a custom web service to handle the retrieval and display of files in the SharePoint library.



Previews of MSG, DOC, XLS and PDF files stored in SharePoint, displayed in right pane of Outlook. This can save time because you do not need to open a file from SharePoint to see what it contains.

Keyword and meta-data based searching for files and email messages stored in SharePoint, direct from Outlook. WISDOM makes it convenient and intuitive to access the power of the MOSS search engine. You can also save your searches and re-run your saved searches.



Background saving of emails and attachments, so that you can continue to use Outlook while a save of a large number of emails or files is progressing.

High performance saving of emails and other files to SharePoint. WISDOM imposes very low additional overhead compared to standard browser upload, but does prompt on an individual file basis to replace existing files - you do not need to pre-approve replacement of all existing files.

Support for Outlook Rules, Offline operation and Outlook Web Access.

Remembering Recent Selections in SharePoint Lookup Columns

Lookup columns in Microsoft SharePoint allow you to select a values (or values) for metadata attributes as you save or edit files in SharePoint. You choose from a drop down that displays entries retrieved from a List in SharePoint. As a Business User you often find yourself choosing the same old values - e.g. the name or ID of a project that you are working on, a classification that is common to your line of work, etc.

It would be nice if your most recent selections were displayed at the top of the list of valid values. In many cases that would significantly reduce the effort associated with cursoring down a long list of valid values to find the one(s) that you want. This is a personal thing, in the sense that the recent selections will most likely be different for each user.

This functionality is now available in the WISDOM Document Management Framework from MacroView. MacroView is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that specialises in solutions based on Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office, particularly solutions for document management and document automation. The WISDOM DMF add-on extends and enhances the native document management capabilities of SharePoint.

You can configure WISDOM DMF so that it only displays each user's recent selections for Lookups that contain more than a threshold number of entries (you really don't need help when dealing with short lists of valid values). You can also configure how many entries are displayed. Your most recent selection is displayed at the top of the list and also as the default value for the Lookup.

Cascading Lookups in SharePoint

One of the things that makes Microsoft SharePoint potentially useful for Document management is its support for capturing additional metadata for documents, email messages and other files as you save them, together with its support for searching based on metadata. When it comes to capturing metadata, a requirement that occurs quite often is to have 'Cascading' Lookup columns - i.e. the valid values that are displayed for one Lookup column in a document library being dependent on the value you choose for another Lookup column in that same library.

A classic example would be values for a Lookup column called 'Project' being dependent on the choice that you make in a 'Client' Lookup column. In general this Cascading lookup is a way of implementing a hierarchical taxonomy in your SharePoint metadata.

Another name that you sometimes see for a Cascading Lookup is 'Dual Lookup' - which reflects the way values from two Lookup columns need to be linked together.

MacroView has developed a world-class Cascading Lookup for SharePoint, which we have licensed to a number of organizations. This Cascading Lookup ships as a custom field type, which will work both in the SharePoint web browser UI and also in MacroView's WISDOM DMF add-on for enhanced document management in SharePoint. The screen shot on the left shows WISDOM's Profiling dialog being used to capture entries for a COUNTRY column, which is cascading from a REGION column.

The MacroView Cascading Lookup has a number of nice features:

1) The valid values for both Lookups are retrieved from standard Lists in SharePoint, which makes maintenance really easy to manage (See sample List on the right);

2) Valid values in the 'top' lookup can be filtered so that only those with an Active flag set to 'Yes' are displayed (this allows you to block access to values that are no longer relevant without causing errors in already saved files);

3) Valid values can be further filtered by an optional CAML query;

4) The 'bottom' or dependent lookup can be multi-select;

5) Cascading Lookup can be configured at Site Collection level;

6) Cascading Lookup columns can be included in library templates;

7) The user's recent selections are displayed at the top of the list of valid values (This Recent Selections feature is common to all Lookup columns in WISDOM DMF, and can really reduce the effort associated with re-selecting a value in a Lookup column that has a large number of valid values).

Moving Files in SharePoint - maintaining Version History

If you are using out-of-the-box Microsoft SharePoint you can move and copy files from one document library to another by cutting and pasting in the Explorer View or by opening in Windows Explorer. Trouble is that this does not preserve any Version History on the files and neither does it prompt for any meta-data required in the destination library.

As part of our WISDOM Document Management Framework add-on for Microsoft SharePoint 2007 MacroView provides WISDOM Explorer, which does a great job on moving and copying files around in SharePoint.

WISDOM Explorer displays an intuitive tree-view of your SharePoint environment so that you can visualise all the document libraries that you have permission to access. WISDOM Explorer let's you drag-and-drop to move (or copy) files from one document library to another. As it does the move or copy WISDOM can re-use any meta-data that it already recorded for the file(s) and will prompt for any new meta-data columns that are defined in the destination document library. WISDOM supports all the meta-data column types that are available in SharePoint, including Business Data columns (if you have the MOSS Enterprise CAL).

WISDOM will also preserve any Version History that is available on the file(s) that you move between document libraries (provided of course that Version History is configured for the destination library).

WISDOM makes moving and copying documents and files in SharePoint easy for users and generally maximises the effectiveness of SharePoint as a document management environment.