We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. By continuing to our site, you acknowledge your acceptance of our cookie policy.

/solution/intelligent-sharepoint-email-management

/solutions/improve-government-email-and-records-management

/solutions/building-better-construction-information-management

/solutions/centralize-and-streamline-insurance-document-management

/solutions/powering-better-oil-and-gas-records-management

/solutions/account-management-with-sharepoint

/solutions/better-resolutions-in-case-management

/solutions/remote-working-with-teams-solution

There are currently no training videos showing how to "Capture" emails and documents

There are currently no training videos showing how to "Classify" emails and documents

There are currently no training videos showing how to "Discover" emails and documents

There are currently no training videos showing how to manage emails and documents

There are currently no training videos showing how to "Share" emails and documents

There are currently no harmon.ie App training videos

No "Financial Services & Insurance" case studies

No "Healthcare and Life Sciences" case studies.

No "Pharmaceuticals and Chemicals" case studies.

Visit our resources page to get access to all training videos, blog posts, latest articles and much more information about our services.

Resources - From Webinars to Free Trial Access

Two Keys to Productivity in the Post-Pandemic Digital Workplace

Suite of product datasheet 2021.pdf

The Role of Email in the Post-Pandemic Digital Workplace

Engineering and Technology, Manufacturing

The combined SharePoint/harmon.ie solution helps Bosch manage its millions of daily emails, including those business records that need to be accessed by colleagues. 

Like all organizations, Bosch relies heavily on email to conduct its global business. In fact, 9-10 million business emails are exchanged across the company on a daily basis. And like many companies, at Bosch business records and other important information are frequently exchanged via email.

By making it easy to use, harmon.ie has increased the adoption rate of SharePoint. Emails are now saved to SharePoint and are readily available for future audits and e-discovery. The ability to easily locate important emails is an important element of Bosch’s information governance and compliance program. A side benefit of the SharePoint solution is that Bosch sees a reduction in documents sent as email attachments. This not only decreases data volume, it also prevents document versioning chaos.

The Bosch Group is a leading global supplier of technology and services. It employs roughly 400,000 associates worldwide, with 2019 sales of 77.7 Billion euros. Its operations are divided into four business sectors: Mobility Solutions, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods, and Energy and Building Technology. The Bosch Group comprises roughly 440 subsidiary and regional companies in 60 countries. Including sales and service partners, Bosch’s global manufacturing, engineering, and sales network covers nearly every country in the world.

Bosch Case Study.pdf

Bosch Manages Emails and Documents with harmon.ie and SharePoint

Working From Home Using Outlook, SharePoint & Teams

The responsibility of feeding the people of Canada rests squarely on the shoulders of the Canadian Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food (AAFC). The partnership with harmon.ie helped Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) fulfill AACF’s business objectives; namely, coordinating policy and collaborating internally, with local, provincial, and federal agencies, as well as with partners.

AAFC was looking for a solution that would simplify how emails and documents are captured, classified, and accessed. The challenges were multiple: saving emails to SharePoint, bulk upload and tagging content, limited inbox space, and document versioning chaos. 

harmon.ie solves AAFC’s SharePoint challenges by making it easy for knowledge workers to use SharePoint. Workers simply drag and drop emails and documents to a SharePoint sidebar in their Outlook window, and they are prompted for required metadata. Important emails are stored in a centralized location and tagged so they are available to colleagues. There is always one version of the latest document, and mailboxes are not overflowing.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) is the department of the Government of Canada responsible for policies governing the production, processing, and marketing of all farm, food, and agri-based products. The department works closely with provincial and territorial governments in the development and delivery of policies and programs. The department is also responsible for ensuring collaboration with its portfolio partners which are also involved in regulating and supporting Canadian agriculture.

AAFC_Canada_case_study.pdf

AAFC Reaps the Benefits of SharePoint Using harmon.ie

Five Strategies for Finding Information Quickly in SharePoint and Microsoft Teams

Strategies for Working from Home with Microsoft Teams

Adding Emails to Microsoft Teams Conversations 

By using harmon.ie for Outlook, DRASS obtains maximum value from SharePoint and Microsoft Teams to make the latest versions of important emails and documents accessible to workers, especially to those delivering critical care solutions for COVID-19 patients.

DRASS turned to harmon.ie to make it easy for business and IT workers to capture and classify emails and documents in SharePoint. In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, harmon.ie will enable employees, including those working from home, to capture, classify, and find important emails and documents in Microsoft Teams conversations.

“Adoption was smooth. We didn’t do any training, we simply post training videos on our Streams site in Teams and our workers self-educate,” 

Cesare D’Amico, IT Manager at DRASS Group.

A fierce proponent of hyperbaric therapy since the 1950s, DRASS solutions include cutting-edge hyperbaric chambers for oxygen therapy (like that used in COVID-19 treatments), and other hyperbaric chambers for the commercial and defense sectors.

Drass_Case Study_v1.pdf

harmon.ie helps DRASS manage emails and documents in SharePoint and Microsoft Teams

DRASS manages emails and documents in SharePoint and Microsoft Teams using harmon.ie

The Governance Beginner's Guide for Microsoft Teams

New harmon.ie Release Improves Remote Working with Microsoft Teams

Strategies for Remote Working with Microsoft Teams

Email Management with SharePoint and Teams

harmonie_Infographic20201.pdf

The partnership with harmon.ie allowed MAPAL to get maximum value from their SharePoint environment, by recording information on every aspect of their contract management processes in a single repository.

MAPAL relies on Outlook as their primary method of communicating with clients and vendors. Problems began to arise when contracts were saved centrally in SharePoint, but related email correspondence was siloed in individuals’ Outlook inboxes. Clearly, a solution was needed which would allow MAPAL to seamlessly move emails into the relevant SharePoint folder. With harmon.ie, correspondences and contract information of all kinds can be seamlessly preserved in the appropriate SharePoint folder. 

Since rolling out harmon.ie, MAPAL has seen a significant rise in the number of documents that are shared into SharePoint.

MAPAL is a global provider of tools and solutions for the manufacturing industry. The company consists of over 5,500 employees worldwide, distributed across 40 different branches and subsidiaries in 25 countries.

MAPAL prides itself on being at the forefront of the digital workplace. It takes advantage of machine learning and IoT technology when creating solutions; the company is constantly searching for new ways to improve business IT in everyday working life. With so many offices in different locations, seamless global collaboration is one of the most important challenges facing MAPAL.

Mapal-Case-Study-2020.pdf

MAPAL Manages Contracts with the help of harmon.ie

Why-compliance-is-integral-to-collaboration-success-2019-ebook.pdf

Why a Collaborative Mindset is Integral to Information Management

See how the harmon.ie SmartAssistant, the world's first solution to connect emails to Microsoft Teams enables you to:

Drag and drop emails and attachments from Outlook directly to a Teams channel.

Add descriptive labels to emails and attachments in Teams so you can find them later.

What's New with the harmon.ie SmartAssistant

Use Office 365 and Teams to work with Clients, Partners, and Suppliers

What Information Managers can Learn from Marie Kondo: How to Tidy up Workplace Clutter

Smart-Email-Retention-ebook-2019.pdf

Top Ten Hidden harmon.ie Productivity Features

Over 1300 employees, 18000 volunteers, and more than a million members

By using harmon.ie for Outlook, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has improved the document management capabilities of SharePoint to maximize information management across the business.

 Workers at RSPB are witnessing how a streamlined approach to information management is taking them out of the confines of their email inboxes and making their day-to-day work easier.

“Using harmon.ie is helping us better manage our information, especially the really important stuff. The documents we need to keep, like our records and any corporate information, are easier to access and more secure.” 
Jenny Sinclair, Lead Information Manager, RSPB

About the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)

Since being founded in 1889, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has witnessed a growing threat to wildlife and aimed to combat that threat by growing themselves. Now the largest nature conservation charity in the United Kingdom, RSPB continually strives to improve work both internally and with external organizations to give nature the home it deserves. 

RSPB-Case-Study-2019.pdf

harmon.ie Helps RSPB Soar Above Information Management

harmon.ie unifies information management across BAUER Group's regional IT departments with advanced, automated metadata.

For BAUER Group, centralizing the IT infrastructure and information in dispersed locations was a key challenge that harmon.ie helped overcome. Through harmon.ie's technology, BAUER Group merged employee's Outlook inboxes, and the information within them, with SharePoint.

"For construction projects it's important to have all the information - which primarily resides in documents, contracts, and emails - stored in a central location. Because of this, harmon.ie is a business necessity for BAUER Group."
Michaela Meissner, ECM Consultant, BAUER Group

BAUER Group provides services, equipment, and products for construction and machinery manufacturing. The company is split into three segments.
 - Construction, which caries out foundational engineering projects independently with its own machinery.
 - Machinery, which supplies the construction equipment - a market leader in the development and manufacturing of specialist foundational engineering equipment.
 - Resources, which focuses on products and services around water treatment, biotechnology, environmental remediation, waste management, and desalination to support project execution.

Bauer-Group-Case-Study-2019.pdf

BAUER Group Unifies Information Management with harmon.ie

UNISON goes mobile with harmon.ie to boost SharePoint adoption.

The mobile experience of using SharePoint with harmon.ie is incredibly popular with UNISON’s employees. When out of the office, they can now instantly access their files, update documents, and upload their changes back into SharePoint from their phones. harmon.ie has transformed SharePoint from a potentially valuable but unpopular IT asset to a hugely successful and vital tool for UNISON’s mobile workforce.

“Our users no longer avoid using SharePoint. Instead, they're now saying they love to use the platform, with the help of harmon.ie.” 
Laurence Arterton, Head of Client Support & ICT Services

UNISON is the UK’s largest trade union with a membership of 1.3 million workers. The organization’s membership is made up of workers in a wide range of sectors including local government, energy, health care, police, transport, and more. UNISON employs approximately 1300 staff located in 32 offices.

Unison_Case_Study-Aug2019.pdf

Five Perils of Email Over-retention:  What You Need to Know

ProfServices-ebook-2019.pdf

Guide to Intelligent Email Management in Professional Services

harmon.ie at SharePoint Conference North America 2019

Capture, Classify, and Find Emails and Documents

Intelligent Email Management with harmon.ie

Discover the Intelligent Solution to Email Management

challenges-of-email-mgmt-ebook-2019.pdf

Download our ebook ‘The Challenge of Email Management and What you Need to Solve it’ to learn the best practices that will help you implement your email management initiative successfully.

The Challenge of Email Management and What you Need to Solve It

Three-options-for-solving-the-email-mgmt-problem.pdf

Download our ebook, ‘Three Options for Solving the Email Management Problem’, to learn the pros and cons of the different approaches to email management.

Three Options for Solving the Email Management Problem

How-SharePoint-can-be-the-ideal-solution-for-intelligent-email-mgmt.pdf

How SharePoint can be the Ideal Solution for Intelligent Email Management

Manage Clients with Office 365 and SharePoint

Is SharePoint the Right Solution for Email Management?

Microsoft team speaks about harmon.ie to describe how we worked work together to present information to Office 365 users by topics, the way you think, using the Microsoft Graph and Microsoft Data Connect.

Microsoft team speaks about harmon.ie to describe how we worked work together to present information to Office 365 users by topics

Microsoft team speaks about harmon.ie

Whats-the-right-email-mgmt-solution-for-your-organization.pdf

What's the right email management solution for your organization?

Save Incoming emails and attachments to SharePoint    

Mind-the-gap-a-better-way-to-manage-emails-in-SharePoint.pdf

Mind the Gap: A Better Way to Manage Emails in SharePoint

View and Edit Email & Document Properties (Metadata)

harmon.ie brings together the multinational’s global Legal Department through more efficient information management.

The Legal Department of the REHAU Group selected SharePoint and harmon.ie to optimize and streamline their internal process for storing and sharing case files, legal documents and other important data; allowing them to draw important information together from all points across locations, including Microsoft SharePoint and Outlook. 

The Legal Department has branches in multiple countries. Before harmon.ie, this meant multiple file storage systems in several locations. By using harmon.ie within their SharePoint and Office environment, the REHAU Group brought previously disparate information together into one place.

“We saw that a harmon.ie and SharePoint solution covers 95% or almost 100% of our needs… it’s much more cost efficient than a specialized third-party solution.”
Christian Steier, Legal Digital Officer, REHAU Group 

The REHAU Group is a leading systems and service provider for polymer-based solutions for use in construction, automotive and industry. The Legal Department is responsible for the corporate legal matters of the entire worldwide REHAU Group, which accounts for about 20,000 employees.

The volume of information that must be successfully dealt with by the Legal Department is large and vital to business functionality across the company. So, the right solution was critical not only to the Legal Department but for company-wide success. 

Rehau-Case-Study-final.pdf

The Legal Department of the Rehau Group selected SharePoint and harmon.ie to optimize and streamline their internal process for managing and storing information.

Rehau Group optimized the way they store informaiton with harmon.ie

Bringing critical information together with harmon.ie

Find Emails and Documents Using Filter by Tags

Improving-Information-governance-in-SharePoint.pdf

Improve Information Governance in SharePoint

Information-Governance-with-SharePoint-datasheet-2020.pdf

The Secret to Success in Information Governance

Managing-Cases-with-SharePoint-datasheet-2020.pdf

State_&_Local_Government_2018_f3.pdf

File-Share-Migration-to-SharePoint-datasheet-2020.pdf

harmon.ie helps construction giant to integrate SharePoint and Outlook and create better processes

Kier Group plc used harmon.ie to improve user experience of collaborating and managing information in Office 365. Kier migrated from several legacy systems, which meant a change in process and culture was needed when it came to storing and sharing information.

harmon.ie helped Kier Group enable seamless integration with SharePoint, Outlook, and Office 365. This transformed their complex information management process from many systems into a single, streamlined and secure platform.

“harmon.ie has significantly boosted our teams’ adoption of SharePoint, which has improved how we share project information which is so vital in an industry like construction”
Shipra Sharma, Business Analyst, Kier Group

Kier Customer Testimonial: harmon.ie Enables Deep Work with Office 365

Kier Group plc renews the places where we work, live, and play. They operate across a range of sectors including defence, education, housing, industrials, power, transport, and utilities. A sector leader in the health and education markets, with key capabilities in civil engineering and design and build from small works to major projects. Constantly juggling these multiple projects, Kier Group are always on the lookout for ways to improve how they work.

Kier embraced SharePoint – a single, evolving, and scalable platform. But get the most out of it, they added harmon.ie, who helped bring SharePoint and Outlook together for the construction company. This has simplified how Kier employees can store, organize, and manage the vital information for their many projects.

Kier-Case-Study-2018.pdf

In this case study, we introduce how Kier Group plc used harmon.ie to improve user experience of collaborating and managing information in Office 365.

Kier Group plc: A foundation for success, the case study

A foundation for success at Kier Group plc

Share Emails and Documents with Other Users

Send SharePoint Links Instead of Email Attachments

Testimonials: Customers talk about harmon.ie

harmon.ie 6.8: Improve SharePoint Search within Outlook

Learn how you can turn SharePoint into the central repository for documents and emails.

Manage-emails-with-sharepoint-datasheet-2020.pdf

Klotz GmbH is a German-based organization that develops and builds specialized machinery and technical software for measurement, testing and automation equipment.

Klotz’ machinery is used worldwide throughout the automotive industry.

Project-collaboration in business requires efficient processes to meet challenging deadlines and ensure accuracy when sharing fluid information. With the right tools, an organization hopes not only to remain organized, but to gain a competitive advantage.

“There is a significant difference between a process that takes three seconds to archive a project document and a process that takes 30 seconds for the same task,” suggests Jürgen Kaiser, Project Manager at Klotz.

Needing to utilize a common platform for document management and collaboration, Klotz decided to deploy Microsoft SharePoint. Their objective was simple and explicitly fixed: all documents were to be handled in digital form. Paper-based documents like purchase records were to be digitized as early in the process as possible.

In the modern business world, emails are a vital and indispensable element in collaborative projects. In many cases, for every document of record, you may have many accompanying emails of record. Are these email records not documents in and of themselves? Should they not be treated and archived as such?

As the primary step for document retrieval, it’s essential that document archival processes are simple and, if possible, automated. It doesn’t make sense to trade off the time it takes for an employee to retrieve a document with the time it takes for them to properly archive it.

Having already deployed SharePoint, Klotz still needed a way for their users to access project emails via classifications such as “to,” “from,” and “subject,” in addition to the contextual aspects of the documents. The challenge that Klotz faced stemmed from their understanding that document management software is only as good as its ability to produce information on-demand.

While looking to enrich their existing SharePoint investment, Klotz took note of several third-party software solutions. After evaluating numerous options, they chose harmon.ie because of several differentiators. Some of harmon.ie’s key benefits to Klotz have included:

Fast, efficient navigation in the SharePoint web and folder hierarchy

Consistent and self-explanatory user interface

Search function to retrieve SharePoint document libraries and folders

harmon.ie’s simple, intuitive solution has enabled Klotz employees to get the most out of more than just their SharePoint, but also out of their email and file documentation. Klotz needed to find that connector to bridge the gap between Outlook and SharePoint, and harmon.ie presented them with the automated content synchronization and collaboration means for achieving that.

The ability to synchronize email steadily and regularly, rather than intermittently, has allowed Klotz to work directly from SharePoint without any single- or multi-user confusion – or additional user support efforts. harmon.ie has also improved Klotz’ email management through increased visibility and smooth functionality.

harmon.ie has helped Klotz employees to be able to retrieve SharePoint information more quickly, easily, and efficiently than ever before. They even found the Outlook integration to be simple and easy to follow.

harmon.ie’s metadata tagging and email sorting has greatly improved Klotz’ record keeping and data cataloging. “Klotz employees have even commented on how remarkably well harmon.ie has been able to derive metadata classifications from long email threads,” says Jürgen Kaiser. For Klotz employees to improve their collaboration and increase their production, they were happy to welcome an automated solution that wouldn’t bog them down with complicated steps for manipulating their document workflow.

“Using harmon.ie, we were able to achieve our project objectives with respect to document management in SharePoint,” reported Jürgen Kaiser.

Having already invested in SharePoint, the organization was able to strengthen this solution and enhance their workflow. Thanks to harmon.ie, a number of key areas – from synchronization to documentation to retrieval – have been vastly improved in an intuitive, user-friendly manner.

Read this ebook, Moving to a New File Share Experience, and learn how to save your business time, effort, and money during your file migration.

Moving-to-a-new-file-share-experience.pdf

When the two governing bodies within Waterford, Ireland, were merged as the result of the 2014 Local Government Reform Act, the newly united Waterford City and County Council faced a daunting task: how to combine operations that served nearly 114,000 people and merge a huge trove of records in a very short time, all while staying in compliance with Ireland's strict record-keeping laws.

The oversight of this task fell to one person who knew that the best bet was to find an intuitive, software-based solution, that would let Council employees handle the tasks within the systems they already used, while also archiving the full spectrum of record types – from documents, to audio files, to emails – in a way that both kept them available, and kept the Council in compliance with the law.

Waterford City and County Council, Ireland: A harmon.ie Success Story

The City Council and County Council in Waterford were the last local government authorities to be merged under the Local Government Reform Act which meant they had the shortest amount of time to transition into a single entity with unified records that were easily accessible. Complying with record-keeping laws, of course, was not negotiable, and some of the documents dated back a century or more.

"We're heavily regulated. You may have to keep a document 30 or 40 years if it's a planning file and potentially hundreds of years, if it's property management," Rachel Neylin, Online Manager for Waterford City and County Council. “We have to have these file indexes in place, so people have to be trained on them."

There also was another crucial issue to contend with. "Unless the solution addressed how workers use email," said Neylin, "it wasn't going to work at all and you might as well not even bother. So many people work through email and they use it in a colloquial fashion, so they don't tend to attach the same importance to an email," she said. “They don't realize it is actually a record and can be produced in court if required."

The Waterford City and County Council had much to accomplish and not much time to do it – nor many people to oversee the process. "Originally they were going to have five people working on this project," said Neylin, "but that project group hasn’t materialized."

Having used SharePoint in the past, Neylin felt it was a good fit for what needed to be done. SharePoint 2007 was already in limited use by the finance, sport, corporate, and management departments for document management. But SharePoint’s limited exposure was not the biggest problem: SharePoint 2007 was widely disdained by employees. Even among those who had been trained on it, many had been swayed by rumors it was difficult to work with and were hesitant to learn how to use it properly.

The existing bias meant a widespread cultural change was needed before there could be broad adoption. "Workers' perception of SharePoint was one thing to try and counter," Neylin said. "It also wasn't viewed very positively because it was seen as being part of the merger. Because we have people working out of multiple, maybe three or four locations in day, any potential solution needed to work from every location."

The Solution and the harmon.ie Experience

Rachel needed something that would help employees embrace all of SharePoint's features and Google led her to harmon.ie. She downloaded the free version first and tried it out with several employees, some of whom had used SharePoint before and others who had not – the latter being the "hard nuts to crack." She knew if they could be won over, they would become "flag bearers" for harmon.ie and create that cultural change necessary to get SharePoint adopted by workers.

How did the trial go? Very well: the Waterford City and County Council decided to hire two trainers and now has 250 people using harmon.ie and the more current SharePoint 2013.

"harmon.ie was the key in getting the whole SharePoint option moving forward," said Neylin.

Having the SharePoint team calendar and harmon.ie operating from the same pane in Outlook also helped because workers then associated them with each other. That, in turn, developed a positive vibe among users that replaced the previous distrust of SharePoint. Along with sharing documents, workers also shared their experiences, asking each other what they thought and replying, "Oh, it was great," said Neylin.

Using harmon.ie to facilitate SharePoint adoption has helped the Council tackle the mass of documents it and its independent predecessors accumulated under Irish regulations. The trove included PDFs, PowerPoints, GPS and GIS files, audio clips, spreadsheets, images and text documents, as well as emails that are increasingly associated with every project. This also addressed the Council’s need to comply with stringent regulations for document retention.

"It’s absolutely key that we have a proper file index, that we have proper retention periods, and that people understand that anything that comes through email can be regarded as a record, so they have to be careful of what they say, what they do, and how they save it," Neylin said. "If we didn't have harmon.ie, we wouldn't be able to do it all."

Local authorities, like the one in Waterford, assume many roles in their communities. In that way, they are a lot like a collection of businesses with different products and services. Neylin felt SharePoint, on its own, was aimed more at handling the documents of a single company, but harmon.ie provided the kind of support the Council needed to show its employees all of SharePoint's abilities and how they could be used across all departments, keeping the necessary documents immediately within reach whenever needed.

The Waterford City and County Council continue to train employees in harmon.ie and SharePoint, with a goal of increasing adoption to approximately 450 users. harmon.ie has been absolutely key in getting the SharePoint solution underway for the Council’s records management needs. "harmon.ie is just really, really good. Very practical, very user-friendly and intuitive," said Neylin.

Powered by harmon.ie, the Council is on the verge of completing the once monumental task of moving records archived under the old internet domains of its predecessors, into SharePoint. Once accomplished, the old domains can finally be shut down – a symbolic closing of the books on its transformation into a single governing body.

"If we didn’t have harmon.ie, we wouldn’t be able to do it at all," Neylin said. "Loads of things now are being done through harmon.ie."

Waterford City and County Council Case Study

Network Communications Manufacturer eradicates old habits and enables not only easy compliance, but seamless, cross-organizational collaboration.

One of the world’s largest publicly traded companies, this company is a market-leading manufacturer of network equipment provides end-to-end network integration and management solutions.

This is the story of a global technology leader and its Chief Legal Counsel as the business champion of a best-in-class, corporate-wide knowledge management, retention and compliance program – with the legal group leading the charge and subsequently bringing in IT, sales and other departments on board. The company’s pragmatic approach to flexing technology to the needs of the business is a success story of how today’s leaders can apply lessons learned from the SharePoint trenches to empower cross-organizational technology adoption, use and compliance, in order to achieve business goals.

The company was facing a challenge familiar to many enterprise organizations: the need to capture and store emails, documents, and attachments in an organized manner, so they could be found later on. Its employees had come up with their own solution-of-least-resistance: storing emails in Outlook, and storing documents on shared drives, in hundreds of different folders. This led to “folder creep” and unchecked duplication as more and more folders were created across multiple departments. Adding to the folder creep, documents were could not being cataloged and were often duplicated by saving multiple copies on the shared drives and by distributing copies via email attachments. Due to this document proliferation, the latest version could not be located when needed, to say nothing about the vast wasted storage space of duplicated document copies.

The first-level solution was to implement SharePoint, which allowed employees to store documents centrally and easily. However, this was not entirely successful in curbing the folder and document creep and did not address the need for proper indexing, storing and retrieval of files and emails. Employees found it hard to actually use SharePoint; in particular assigning metadata was too complicated.

The web systems administrator and SharePoint administrator, summed up the persisting issues: “When I looked at other team sites, I noticed that people seemed to see SharePoint as another file folder. Employees would create a new folder, and then a new one, and then a new one, essentially replicating shared drives now in SharePoint.”

Users, it turned out, were treating SharePoint like they had their personal Outlook clients and were still not applying the pertinent metadata to each file. This practice actually increased the problems it sought to solve, especially when employees shared documents as most continued to share as attachments in emails, exacerbating the version control

challenges. It was clear the company needed a better, easy-to-use and scalable way to ensure employees would not only adopt SharePoint and apply the proper metadata to documents, but also change the way they handled email attachments –from appending files to using SharePoint links.

The company’s Vice President and Chief Legal Counsel knew that unless his team helped solved the business need – make document sharing and storing seamless for employees, and solve for it easily and quickly – the company would not be able to meet the stringent regulatory and legal requirements expected.

The company had strict policies already in place to ensure compliance and audit standards were maintained, with SharePoint at the center of their knowledge and document management infrastructure.