SharePoint & Office 365 integration

SharePoint DMS brings document management and e-mail management applications to Office 365 with impressive functionality and a recognisable user interface. This SharePoint solution responds to a need many organisations have: improved management of their documents and e-mails compared to a shared network drive or personal Outlook folders.

Recognisable, simple and accurate tree view of your Sharepoint Online environment

To start, enter the url of your Office 365 environment in SharePoint DMS. SharePoint DMS then automatically redirects all site collections from your Office 365 environment and displays them directly. So there is no need to set up each site collection separately. With 1 click, you open each site collection in the same way you browse through your folders in Windows Explorer or Outlook. When you expand your sites, you will see the subsites, document libraries, document sets and folders belonging to the specific site that you have permission to view.

When you click on a document library, document set or folder, SharePoint DMS will display the columns, filters and sorting options as determined in Sharepoint. You can see all the views set in Sharepoint. You only see the views you have permission for, other views remain hidden.

Clicking on a column easily sorts ascending or descending on this specific value. It is also possible to filter using the values from the columns. SharePoint DMS previews almost all document and e-mail types. This makes it tremendously fast and user-friendly to browse through content.

Windows style right-click menu

When a document or e-mail is selected and the right mouse button is pressed, an extensive menu of different functions appears. Working with the right mouse button is a familiar action for practically every Windows user. There are already some functions under the right mouse button by default, but SharePoint DMS drastically expands it and adds new functions.

SharePoint DMS brings together the familiar features from Windows Explorer (Open, Open With, Print, Cut, Copy, Delete, Rename, Properties, etc.) with those from SharePoint (Check Out, Check In, Uncheck Out, Version History). In addition, there is even room for customised bespoke functionalities. Think, for example, of workflow actions linked to Sharepoint.

The right-click menu is context-dependent. For example, when a search result is right-clicked, the option Open file location displayed. So you have exactly those functions available that are relevant at the time.

Comprehensive metadata support

The ability to capture additional metadata for documents and use that metadata to find those documents is one of the most important elements of a document management solution. SharePoint DMS supports metadata for both Sharepoint Online and Sharepoint on-premise. Filling in and editing the metadata is all done in the familiar Windows style interface.

SharePoint DMS also supports metadata navigation based on a term set. This allows efficient navigation to documents based on metadata.

Version management in SharePoint

The ability to work with multiple versions is a key requirement of a good document management solution. Many organisations handle versions in different file names (Terms and Conditions V1.docx, Terms and ConditionsV2.docx, etc.), creating a mountain of files of one document. With SharePoint DMS, there is only one document and all older versions can be found in the version management of that specific document. Thus, document management becomes unified and an older version can be reverted to at any time.

SharePoint Online works with Majors Only and Major and Minor (Draft) versions and SharePoint DMS supports this. Checkout required can also be set for a SharePoint Online document library (documents cannot be opened unless checked out). SharePoint DMS automates this step by checking out the document.

Efficient navigation in an Office 365 environment

A major strength of SharePoint DMS is the way it is easier to work with large Sharepoint environments. The tree structure of a Sharepoint environment with many sublayers (Site Collections, Sites, Document Sets, etc.) is effortlessly displayed. A very useful feature within SharePoint DMS is Search Site Tree. This uses the power of the Sharepoint search engine to quickly find branches in the tree structure by, for example, a keyword.

Use can also be made of Favorites and Recent to navigate quickly. These functions are extremely useful when the tree structure is very extensive.

Searching for documents in Sharepoint

Sharepoint Online provides a search capability and SharePoint DMS makes it familiar and intuitive. SharePoint DMS allows users to search content within documents based on keywords simply from applications such as Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Adobde Reader / Arcobat. This user interface is a huge improvement over the regular search functionality within SharePoint.

Security and permissions

Permissions set in SharePoint are inherited by SharePoint DMS. This means that documents (or document sets or folders) are not visible the moment the relevant user does not have permission to do so. When a user has only read only access, these documents are marked with a colour.