A Large Israeli Government Agency Turns to harmon.ie for Secure, Efficient SharePoint-Outlook Integration

A large Israeli government agency with thousands of staff members, was suffering from the classic IM dilemma – retention or disposition?

Millions of documents, many of which are highly sensitive, were stored in users’ email inboxes, preventing knowledge sharing and placing a burden on system storage.

The organization faced significant challenges in efficiently managing and sharing documents from Outlook. Utilizing their existing SharePoint-based system, which connects with ERP and CRM applications, they recognized the potential of a SharePoint-Outlook integration. This would allow for sharing document links instead of bulky attachments, streamlining the process. Moreover, SharePoint's inherent user access control ensures that shared links meet the necessary security guidelines, granting access only to those with the appropriate permissions.

The agency’s in-house IT team had already built an Outlook plugin for archiving emails to SharePoint, investing heavily in its development and maintenance. Over time, however, the demands for changes and new functionality continually increased, eventually outstripping the capabilities of the internal team. The agency decided to turn to a commercially-available solution to get a richer set of functionality and reduce internal development costs.

The large and experienced IT team first examined the needs and gaps in their Information Management processes and performed a rigorous review of all available third-party solutions. The requirements included high fidelity and being able to perform specific adjustments in a a regulated and centrally managed on-premises environment. harmon.ie, the world’s leading Information Management platform and an official Microsoft partner, was finally chosen out of all candidates.

Alongside with being fully compatible with Sharepoint's security & permissions features, on the user side - harmon.ie not only allows filing documents to SharePoint, but also lets users do it directly from Outlook, where staff spend the bulk of their worktime. This was a perfect solution to the Outlook (exchange) overflow issue, and a good way to extract important information from personal inboxes.

harmon.ie operated a POC for a pilot group, and the results were clear: compared to the internally built plugin, harmon.ie provided 300% increase in functionality. The decision was made to go ahead and implement harmon.ie agency wide.

After a successful Proof of Concept, the department began rolling out harmon.ie. The agency made use of the various customization features offered by harmon.ie to tailor the application to their unique requirements. For instance, this process involved updating harmon.ie's branding to display the government agency’s official insignia and terminology within Outlook.

Using harmon.ie's setup capabilities, the agency pre-established configurations for every user, eliminating the need for initial individual setups. This meant pre-setting a default Site collection, designating a default social server, presenting SharePoint favorites directly as harmon.ie favorites, and more. One notable feature of harmon.ie allowed for the Hebrew names of email senders to be auto-mapped to a SharePoint email column, streamlining the process of locating files via usernames.

Furthermore, the agency employed harmon.ie’s SDK to refine the method of uploading documents and emails to SharePoint. With a bit of developmental tweaking, they enabled harmon.ie to recognize specific information from a document's title and then autonomously catalog it as metadata in SharePoint, streamlining file retrieval.

Staff were educated on the criteria for saving emails: which to store in SharePoint, which to retain in Outlook, and which to discard altogether. Training was also provided on sending SharePoint document links in lieu of attachments.

With the integration of harmon.ie, this prominent government agency has notably enhanced its information management approach on all fronts. All goals of the project were achieved, and more.

• Email inboxes are no longer inundated with massive amounts of unnecessary files, saving significant volume and allowing for far smaller size limits.
• Sharing documents via SharePoint links is far more efficient, with users always working on the latest version.
• Recipients do not need to re-save as new documents, minimizing the creation of duplicate files and eliminating document chaos.

harmon.ie has also significantly improved the user experience. Employees at the government agency now play a keen role in preserving and sharing information within the organization, via the user-friendly, intuitive harmon.ie platform at their fingertips.

By making the decision to move from an internal solution to harmon.ie, the agency now enjoys better functionality and a far more efficient approach to IM, while saving on manpower, resources, and budget.

This prominent Israeli government agency remains in close collaboration with harmon.ie, regularly benefiting from updated versions that enrich the platform's capabilities and offerings. Customization is a continuous process, guaranteeing that harmon.ie's solutions consistently align with the organization's evolving needs.

The agency receives exemplary service and support from the harmon.ie team, with deployment procedures conducted either on-location or remotely, contingent on project requirements. Through consistent cooperation and clear communication, harmon.ie is eager to support the agency in their journey to elevate significant Information Management to unparalleled heights of proficiency.