We recently had the opportunity to sponsor the European Collaboration Summit, a conference that brought together thousands of IT professionals and business leaders to Düsseldorf, Germany. As Microsoft Gold Partners, we got to present harmon.ie and meet customers, partners, and prospects from all around Europe, and it was fascinating!

A common theme was that Information Management must now factor in a wide offering of powerful internal and external collaboration systems that present new challenges to records management. We were excited to demonstrate how harmon.ie is partnering with Microsoft to revolutionize how enterprises and SMBs collaborate, emphasizing some game-changing new paradigms for Microsoft Teams users. We wanted to call out a specific challenge users face when sharing files on Teams and how harmon.ie is taking it on in our upcoming releases.

Classification vs. collaboration… how about both at once?

When end users add files to Microsoft Teams today, which location they select has major repercussions.

When users add a file to the Posts tab, their goal is to share it. They can’t classify it or tag it with metadata from there, so that becomes a subsequent secondary task that—unsurprisingly—doesn’t happen in a particularly consistent or timely fashion. Even those with the best intentions might forget or never get to that second classification step, resulting in some files never getting properly organized.

Meanwhile, when a file gets added to the Files tab, the very first steps are around classification and categorization, as the user must select a folder location to save the file and can add metadata as well at that time. Sharing must then occur as a follow-on action, creating a more onerous user experience.

The upcoming harmon.ie releases will turn IM into a seamless collaboration action - right where and when the worker prefers to work, creating a unified workflow that tackles both classification and collaboration for a given in one fell swoop. Now, users can drag and drop any file from Outlook to a Teams channel, at which point they’ll be prompted to classify the file with metadata. Then the user can add a message and have the file and accompanying message posted to the channel’s Posts tab.

By merging these two distinct actions into a single, streamlined process, organizations will get the best of both worlds, making compliance and collaboration part of their daily routines. Users can quickly share important files while still ensuring they’re properly categorized for easier discovery and compliance action such as retention and/or destruction right from their inbox. This is just one of the new advancements available to harmon.ie customers when Microsoft’s new unified Outlook app is released.

Adding local, native-language support and services for the harmon.ie experience

Our trip to Düsseldorf was also an opportunity to highlight our local partner dc AG. This Bavarian consulting firm and agency has a long track record of helping businesses build content management and e-commerce solutions with Microsoft Dynamics 365. Leveraging their deep expertise integrating with various parts of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, they’ve now added harmon.ie to their menu of offerings.

In this role, dc AG provides a full-service harmon.ie experience for organizations in Germany and Austria, including consulting and support services to ensure customers maximize their return on investment. By providing content, training, and support from a local partner with German-speaking staff, dc AG and harmon.ie can provide a superior customer experience that combines our innovative solution with the localized, tailored support those organizations deserve.

harmon.ie is excited about this local partner model and is actively pursuing similar relationships in other key target markets where nearby support from native speakers can expedite adoption and increase the ROI for our customers.

Collaboration isn’t slowing down

The big takeaway from the European Collaboration Summit was the sheer scale and importance of file sharing, management, and security for how organizations now get things done. What was once an idealized vision of how people work together in the future is already a powerful-yet-messy reality today.

Organizations are actively grappling with how to organize and manage files within these collaborative environments as usage skyrockets. They’re seeking solutions that work within the Microsoft ecosystem and help them accomplish their IT and compliance goals without creating obstacles and bottlenecks for staff focused on innovation, operations, and execution.

As we took in keynotes from visionaries and deep dives from experts in Microsoft Teams, we were energized to see that our solution addresses many common pain points for so many organizations across Europe and the rest of the world. We can’t wait to help these businesses on their journey.

If you think harmon.ie might be a good fit for your organization, learn more now or begin a free trial to see it in action.