We've been speaking to a number of prospective customers over the last few weeks around our new combined offering of Office 365 (for a great email and calendaring service) and ContextStore (for comprehensive email management).

It's generating a lot of interest. But one of the interesting points for us is that a number of these companies like the solution because it solves the issue related to public folders not being available in Office 365.

Many companies are currently running Microsoft Exchange 2007 or Microsoft Exchange 2010 on site and rely heavily on the use of public folders in order to file and share emails. Although this isn't a recommended approach for large scale collaboration and email management, it serves its purpose and many businesses rely on the use of public folders as part of their working process. A lot of these companies would like to move to Office 365 / BPOS but the lack of public folder support stops them.

It was a pleasant surprise to us, but customers have recognised that KnowledgeMill ContextStore solves this problem. By filing emails into Contexts (essentially a shared project area) within ContextStore, companies now have a public folder filing system with all the advantages that ContextStore brings (collaboration, ediscovery, archiving, compliance, lifeycle management - you get the idea - browse the web site for more info). The great thing is that access to the filed content is available in Outlook just like public folders are. You can file emails very quickly whilst composing, drag and drop, file whole folders. You also have access the shared folders on the web, on your iphone, ipad, and sharepoint sites. Very cool. ContextStore is designed to work alongside Office 365 and the integration is seamless.

Another sweet thing is that we have migration path as well (again rather foolishly without even realising it). Our "associative filing" feature means that you select any folder in Exchange (including a public folder) and synchronise it with a folder in ContextStore. This means that any email that is in the Exchange folder is automatically pushed across into ContextStore. Hey presto - an really simple way to migrate your public folder data across. Given that it continuously synchronises the email data it also enables co-existence as you gradually migrate your users across from the on-site Exchange to Office 365.

Although this video is oriented towards law firms, it gives you the idea on how users access ContextStore folders directly through Outlook. It's only a few minutes long so check it out below. Or watch it on the KnowledgeMill YouTube Channel.

So what’s so smart about KnowledgeMill’s email management solution? In the first draft of this blog, I had a bit of a pop at alternative solutions. Cheap, unprofessional and ultimately self-seeking you’ll be glad to hear I canned that one. Instead, I thought I’d put myself in the shoes of key people at a law firm and figure out what “smart” would mean to them. The results are below. My thinking is that if your current email management solution doesn’t do ALL of these then it’s not “smart”. Read them, do a bit of role playing yourself and let me know how you get on.

The Partner

“A smart email management solution improves the profitability of the Firm”.

Better collaboration, greater efficiency, improved services and lower costs. It’s an open-and-shut case with ContextStore. KnowledgeMill helps you streamline your company’s operations and save money.

The Lawyer

“A smart email management solution increases my productivity and that of my team”.

Seamless integration with Outlook coupled with associative, bulk and suggestive filing takes the pain out of filing. Asynchronous filing ensures no Outlook lockups and wasted time. The OnePlace suite of applications improves user experience and productivity, helping users find important email more quickly and reliably.

The IT manager

“A smart email management solution reduces cost”. ContextStore reduces the cost and complexity of IT environments and provides flexibility with an environment that can scale to accommodate not just email but all electronically stored information. ContextStore’s appliance license model means no hidden 3rd party software costs.

The Risk Manager

“A smart email management solution protects the Firm”.

ContextStore drives good governance practices by retaining email in accordance with company policy and mitigates legal risk associated with mismanaged email. Its integrated eDiscovery module reduces cost.

The Business Development Manager

“A smart email management solution helps build client relationships”.

ContextStore provides real-time analytics on social networks. At a glance, users can see social networks internally within the business, identifying key influencers, evolving teams and informal groups. Similarly, they can look at social networks between employees and customer contacts.

If your current email management solution doesn’t do some of the above I wouldn’t say it was necessarily “dumb” but it’s certainly not as smart as ours. Intrigued but not entirely convinced? That’s an easy one to resolve - request a demo of KnowledgeMill’s smart email management solution or a FREE 30 day trial and draw your own conclusions!!

We have move to a great new Office around the corner from our old place.

Our new address is :

KnowledgeMill
6 Maidstone Building Mews
72-76 Borough High Street
London SE1 1GD
United Kingdom