SharePoint 2007 - Better For Managing Outlook Messages?

Having heard that SharePoint 2007 provides some significant new functionality in the area of document management, many organizations are asking whether they can use SharePoint 2007 to manage their Microsoft Outlook messages.

Do the new document management features of SharePoint 2007 help with managing Outlook messages? Is the integration between Outlook and SharePoint 2007 better than with previous versions of SharePoint? Can SharePoint 2007 be the email message repository for my organization?

The short answer is that SharePoint 2007 is definitely better for managing Outlook messages than previous versions of SharePoint. This article describes how the out-of-the-box features of SharePoint 2007 can be used with Outlook messages and discusses how by using a smart SharePoint add-on called WISDOM Message in conjunction with SharePoint 2007 you can create really great email message management solutions.

Content Types and Meta-Data Columns

Content Types are a key new document management feature in SharePoint 2007. A Content Type is effectively a collection of meta-data columns, which can be defined at the Site Collection level and then used in multiple document libraries. This approach allows much tighter control over the meta-data that is captured and stored for documents as they are saved to SharePoint. At the same time it reduces the maintenance effort that was associated with having meta-data columns defined separately for each Site within previous versions of SharePoint. The advantages of better meta-data are obvious when you need to filter and search for particular files in the SharePoint repository. A meta-data column such as ‘Client Name’ makes it possible to search across a SharePoint environment for all documents and messages that relate to a particular Client.

Email-Enabling Your Document Libraries

SharePoint 2007 allows you to create an email address for each document library. You can then include that address in the ‘To’, ‘CC’ or ‘BCC’ of an Outlook message, and have that message sent directly to the document library where it will be stored.

The problem with this approach is that SharePoint does not prompt for any meta-data columns that might be present in the document library. This in turn means that messages stored into SharePoint in this way will not be found if you search your SharePoint repository on the basis of a meta-data column – e.g. to find all documents related to a particular Client.

A further problem is that any attachments are saved separately from the body of the message, which is saved in an .EML file whose name may not be unique.

Uploading Messages via Your Web Browser

If you browse to a SharePoint 2007 document library with Internet Explorer you can upload an email message to the library and SharePoint will prompt you for values of any meta-data columns that are present in that library. That makes for a better result when you are searching, but the key problem is that you first have to save your email message from Outlook to a file – e.g. on your Desktop or in your My Documents folder. If your message has attachments then you must remember to save the message in .MSG format (so that attachments are included with the body of the message) or save and upload those attachments separately.

It’s not surprising that most users strongly dislike this approach. They are already working in Outlook and much prefer to save messages directly from Outlook to SharePoint, without needing to take any special extra steps related to attachments.

Save Message to SharePoint Directly from Outlook

So why not save the message to SharePoint 2007 directly from Outlook? Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 all provide a ‘Share, Document Management Server’ capability that makes it relatively easy to save the current document, workbook or presentation to SharePoint 2007. SharePoint will prompt you to choose a Content Type that is valid for your selected document library and for values for the meta-data columns related to that Content Type.

Unfortunately this mechanism is not available in Outlook 2007.

As an Outlook user, to save a message to SharePoint, you must first choose a document library. You can do this via 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 on , so while they might be unique, you cannot easily distinguish a library on one SharePoint site from a library of the same name on another SharePoint site. Not to mention that the list of 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.

Having chosen the destination library you must remember to save in an appropriate format (see the discussion of .MSG format above). SharePoint will not prompt for any custom meta-data columns, even if you are using Outlook 2007. Moreover, if there are any required columns, SharePoint 2007 will leave the newly saved message file in a ‘Checked Out’ state. You need to go to the web browser and Check In each such file, one at a time.

SharePoint 2007 is Good but can be made Even Better

Out-of-the-box SharePoint 2007 is a good repository for documents and files, including email messages. It has stronger management of meta-data which combines well with its improved search capability. The new inbuilt workflow mechanism of SharePoint 2007 is also useful for managing an email message repository. However the integration of Outlook and SharePoint still falls short of what organizations need for a fully effective, easy-to use overall solution for managing their email messages.

Improving Outlook and SharePoint Integration with WISDOM

A popular third-party add-on for improving the integration of Outlook and SharePoint is called ‘WISDOM Message’ from a Microsoft Gold Partner called MacroView. MacroView sell and support their WISDOM software range around the world from their offices in Sydney, Australia.

Once WISDOM Message is installed you can drag and drop in Outlook to save email messages to your favorite document libraries and folders in SharePoint. You can even do this when your Outlook is Offline or if you are using Outlook Web Access. Next time Outlook is connected, WISDOM will prompt to complete the process of saving any messages in your ‘SharePoint Favorites’ folders.

WISDOM automatically saves messages in .MSG files, assigns unique names to those files and prompts for any custom meta-data columns present in the SharePoint document library where you save. It also Checks In the new files.

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 for which you have permission to access. You can click to expand or collapse nested sites and folders. WISDOM shows all the Views defined for each Document Library, and all the columns in each View.

WISDOM Message lets you define and use Favorites to quickly select a site or library. As you add new Favorites, WISDOM Message automatically creates corresponding ‘SharePoint Favorites’ folders in your Outlook environment.

As you click on a SharePoint document library or folder WISDOM shows all the message files that have already been saved there. You can sort and filter the File List to find a particular message and then simply click that message to open it in Outlook. The message opens exactly as it was saved, with any attachments intact.

Smart Prompting for Custom Meta-Data Columns

As it saves a message to SharePoint, WISDOM Message prompts you to choose a Content Type that is valid for your selected SharePoint 2007 document library. It then prompts you to choose or enter values for all the custom meta-data columns that are defined as belonging to the selected Content Type. This effectively is the same as Word 2007 or Excel 2007 prompting for meta-data, except that WISDOM makes it easier to configure cross-site lookups that are based on external data. WISDOM refers to cross-site lookups as Profile Variables and allows you to choose a value for Profile Variable column from a filtered drop-down list, which can be populated from a list on a central SharePoint site or from an existing database.

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 as part of an ‘Outlook Message’ Content Type.

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 organization – e.g. --.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. With WISDOM Message we can achieve just that – WISDOM makes SharePoint a viable replacement for Exchange Public Folders as an email message store.”
WISDOM Message client, 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 Message allows you to choose a destination library for some or all attached files from an 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. You browse your available SharePoint environment and select a file using the intuitive WISDOM 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 Microsoft 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 2007 and to open these documents from SharePoint. WISDOM handles the upload to SharePoint 2007 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.

More Information

For more information on WISDOM Message and how it can enhance your management of Outlook messages visit http://www.macroview.com.au/.

The full article with a screen shot in pdf format.

WISDOM supports SharePoint environments with servers running Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007), Windows SharePoint Services v3 (v3), SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (SPPS 2003) and WSSv2.
This article is based on Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh.