The Marketers’ Senate

Sounds like a good idea – Outlook messages often hold vital information about a project or client relationship and SharePoint is Microsoft’s strategic platform for sharing and collaboration. You could share an email message by storing it in an Exchange Public Folder, but looking further forward, Microsoft has announced that they are phasing out Public Folders in favour of using SharePoint.

Trouble is, it’s not that easy to save an email message to SharePoint when using Microsoft Outlook out-of-the-box – even Outlook 2003. In fact it’s downright difficult! This article describes the steps required and highlights a better way using a smart SharePoint Add-On called WISDOM Message.

First Step – Choose Your Document Library
When using Outlook and SharePoint natively, the first step in saving a message is to select the document library where you want the message to be saved. You can use My Network Places, but if your SharePoint has more than a few sites, this is very clumsy. By default the Network Places have names of the form < Library Name > on < Server Name >, so while they might be unique, you cannot distinguish a library on one site from a library of the same name on another site. Not to mention that the list of My Network Places is flat and long and can take a while to load. If you are technically minded it is often easier to type the url of the server and site / sub-site and then choose the library from the list that is then displayed. However many end-users are not comfortable with that approach.

Set any custom Meta-data columns
When you have selected the desired library you click Save – the message is uploaded to SharePoint but you are not prompted for values for any custom columns that are contained in that library (as you would be if you saved from Word 2003) . That’s a problem because the whole idea of having the custom columns is that they allow you to set meta-data for each file in the document library so that you can organise and search for them more effectively. If the meta-data is important you need to save the message temporarily to your desktop or similar and then go to the browser, upload into SharePoint and then delete the temporary copy.

Remember to save in .MSG format
Whatever way you get the message into your SharePoint document library it is important to remember to save it in .MSG format. This is not the default save format but if you don’t use it you will lose any attachments to the message once it is saved.

A Better Way - WISDOM from MacroView
Fortunately there is a much better way – which is a SharePoint / Office AddOn called WISDOM Document Management Framework from MacroView, a Microsoft Gold Partner. MacroView sell and support their WISDOM software range around the world from their offices in Sydney, Australia.
Once WISDOM is installed in your Microsoft Office environment you click a SharePoint Save button when you want to save an email message. WISDOM displays a tree-view of your SharePoint environment – in much the same way that Windows Explorer displays your File Shares and their folders. The WISDOM tree-view shows all the SharePoint servers, sites, libraries and folders in which you have permission to save. It even shows the Personal and Topic Hierarchy areas in your SharePoint Portal Servers. You can click to expand or collapse nested sites and folders and use Favorites to quickly select a site or library. As you click on a document library or folder WISDOM shows all the message files that have already been saved to SharePoint.

http://www.macroview.com.au/images/WISDOMDMF_TreeView_for_Article_001.jpg
WISDOM tree-view of user’s available SharePoint environment

Smart Prompting for Custom Meta-Data Columns
When you choose Save, WISDOM automatically saves the current Outlook message in MSG format (no more problems with discarded attachments), stores it in SharePoint and prompts for values for any custom columns in the selected document library. This is basically similar to the way Word 2003 prompts for custom meta-data columns, but much smarter because WISDOM allows you to select valid values from searchable drop-down lists, which can be populated from a list on a central SharePoint site or from an existing database. This overcomes a key limitation of SharePoint, which is that Lookup type columns can only reference values in a list that is stored in the same site. WISDOM removes the need to maintain separate lookup lists in multiple sites, because the central list or database can be referenced from as many sites as you wish.

WISDOM will automatically use the attributes of the Outlook message to set values of custom columns such as To, From, SentOn, ReceivedTime, etc. As part of the WISDOM installation MacroView supplies document library templates that contain these special Outlook meta-data columns.

Automatic Naming of Saved Messages
WISDOM also helps out with naming of the MSG files that it creates when saving an Outlook message. These file names can be automatically created based on a pattern chosen by your organisation – e.g. Sender-SentOn-Subject.MSG.

The end result is that Outlook messages saved with WISDOM are displayed in SharePoint much as they would be in an Exchange Public Folder, InBox or Sent box.

“Outlook messages are a key part of the documentation trail for our projects, and it is essential that we store them so that their integrity is maintained. The automatic naming of message files is one of the reasons we are interested in WISDOM. By streamlining the save process, WISDOM makes SharePoint a viable alternative to Exchange Public Folders as an email message store.”
WISDOM Evaluator, Canada.

Saving Attached Files
Sometimes you don’t want to save a message to SharePoint – just the files that are attached to that message. A good example of this is when your smart copier sends you an email with a PDF attachment that contains the scanned image of a paper document. The ‘SharePoint Save Attachments’ feature of WISDOM allows you to choose a destination library for some or all attached files using the intuitive tree-view of your SharePoint environment and then smart prompts for values for any custom meta-data columns in the selected library.

Retrieving Files from SharePoint as Attachments
Speaking of Attachments, anyone who has tried to retrieve a file from SharePoint to be used as an Attachment to a new Outlook message will appreciate the ‘SharePoint Attach’ button that WISDOM adds into your Outlook environment. Again you get to browse your available SharePoint environment and select a file using the WISDOM intuitive tree-view display. WISDOM provides the option of inserting a link to the selected file into the current Outlook message, rather than inserting a copy of the file into the message. Either way WISDOM dramatically simplifies the task, compared to out-of-the-box Microsoft Outlook.

Other Documents and Files
WISDOM does not only work in Outlook. It also runs in other parts of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) and in Windows. WISDOM makes it easier to save Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents to SharePoint and to open these documents from SharePoint. WISDOM handles the upload to SharePoint of multiple files from your Desktop or any Windows Explorer folder. It also facilitates moving files from one SharePoint library to another and the deletion, renaming, opening or downloading of files already in SharePoint – all via an intuitive tree-view display and action menu similar to Windows Explorer.

WISDOM makes Microsoft SharePoint much more effective for managing and sharing all your documents, messages and files.

“We were looking to really improve the way we managed all our files and particularly our Outlook messages. The combination of WISDOM and Microsoft SharePoint has enabled that. Now messages and all other types of correspondence, presentations, spreadsheets and documentation are all stored in a consistent manner and able to be searched for and retrieved efficiently.”
Michael Monaghan, Chief Executive Officer, Intech Investment Consultants, Sydney Australia.

More Information
For more information on WISDOM and how it can enhance your handling of Outlook messages (and other documents and files) in SharePoint contact MacroView via email or phone.
http://www.macroview.com.au/contactus.htm

Noel Williams is the Managing Director of a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner called MacroView Business Technology who specialises in solutions that make good use of Microsoft Office and SharePoint.
MacroView can help you with

a) a Document Management framework which integrates Microsoft Office with SharePoint, including Outlook messages,

b) Integration and Automation of Microsoft Office with SharePoint and

c) Customisation and Training on Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server.
http://www.macroview.com.au