Software integration company Mainsoft has introduced Harmony, software that will enable users to collaborate on documents stored in SharePoint via Microsoft Outlook e-mail.
The solution replaces document attachments with links to those documents stored in SharePoint libraries, reducing the size of the e-mail and making version control easier, according to Yaacov Cohen, founder and CEO of Mainsoft.
“It’s the evolution of the e-mail experience,” Cohen said. “People want things like SharePoint extended into their day-to-day work. But there is not enough integration bringing SharePoint to the end user instead of making the end user go to SharePoint.”
From within Outlook, users can click on an icon to launch Harmony, and a list of documents appears alongside the Outlook e-mail inbox, Cohen demonstrated to SPTechReport. Users can then create a new e-mail file, drag a link to the document file into the e-mail, and send it to the user, who then gains access to that document under terms set by the sender.
For instance, the recipient of the document might have read-only access for review, Cohen explained. Similarly, Outlook users can take attachments they’ve been sent and drag them into Harmony, so the next time the user wants to share that document with a team member or partner, he or she can simply drag the link into a new e-mail, Cohen showed.
Harmony also works with Google Docs, he said, and it supports Adobe PDF and Microsoft Word formats.
