How To Collaborate Securely with Your Customers

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With the ever-increasing pace of commerce and life generally it is vital that organizations be able to collaborate with their customers and service partners. By collaborating we mean sharing electronic documents so that the customer or service partners can efficiently access and use those documents, with all parties knowing the up-to-date state of documents (e.g. which one is the latest version, what changes have been made, which ones are approved, etc.).

In recent years many organisations have attempted this collaboration by sending the electronic documents as attachments to emails. But this can be very inefficient (who does have the latest version?) and it certainly is not secure.

 A raft of Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) services have arisen in response to this need for secure collaboration on electronic documents. Relevant names include Acronis Access Advanced, Box Enterprise, Citrix ShareFile, DropBox for Business, eFolder, Egnyte Connect, Huddle, Syncplicity, etc.

Microsoft Cloud – Good for Collaboration

If you want to collaborate on electronic documents with your customers and service partners, and do so securely, you should seriously consider using the Microsoft Cloud. The reasons why are clear:

  • Secure – Microsoft have invested heavily in making their SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Azure services secure. They have more security certifications than any other cloud provider. For example Microsoft Azure complies with ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 1 and SOC 2, as well as country-specific standards, such as Australia IRAP, UK G-Cloud and Singapore MTCS. (See Microsoft article)
  • You can upload very large files – Up to 15GB. Obviously important if you need to share and collaborate on large files, such as DWGs and video files. (Source: Microsoft Office Support Article).
  • Access from anywhere –- you can access the Microsoft cloud securely from any web-connected device, including desktop computers and SharePoint and OneDrive apps running on iOS, Android and Windows Mobile devices.
  • Already licensed – through their Office 365 subscriptions a very large number of organizations already are licensed to use SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Azure.

We Use the Microsoft Cloud to Collaborate Securely with Customers

MacroView itself uses the Microsoft Cloud to collaborate securely with its customers. Three of many examples include:

  • Supporting usage of MacroView Document Management Framework by Shoosmiths, a leading UK-based law firm;
  • Exchanging specifications and delivering builds of a sophisticated Microsoft Office template automation solution for Jacobs, a major international engineering firm headquartered in California;
  • Collaborating with Macquarie Bank on a custom document automation solution that is deployed to key service partners in Australia.

By using software from MacroView you can provide a significantly improved experience for your users as they share and collaborate on documents in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. For example::

  • MacroView Message lets users drag and drop in Microsoft Outlook to save emails, attachments and files from Windows folders to areas in the organisation’s Office 365 tenancy.
  • The user can search based on metadata and / or content for documents in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business without needing to leave Outlook and jump into the SharePoint web browser UI.
  • MacroView DMF extends this great user experience so that it is available in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Reader / Acrobat and in Windows itself.

MacroView extends Microsoft Outlook to show areas in an Office 365 tenancy that are being used to collaborate securely with customers and service partners. Note formatted preview of selected email.

For more information

For more information about effective solutions for collaborating securely using the Microsoft Cloud contact MacroView Solutions.

 

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