An add-in for Microsoft Outlook that
enables you and your team to use KB articles stored on
SharePoint lists to reply to support emails in Outlook
seamlessly
Team KnowledgeBase add-in
helps support staffs to effortlessly store knowledge
base articles in one or more SharePoint lists and
connect it to Microsoft Outlook for resolving and
replying to email replies. Without requiring
switching back and forth between Outlook and
SharePoint, support staffs can now easily browse
through articles grouped by categories and types, or
make use of the search functionality to locate a
relevant KB article, and insert it to the outgoing
email reply as PDF file attachment, or
embedded inline content or as hyperlink URL
directly from within Outlook.
With Team KnowledgeBase, any
team can leverage the information stored on its
SharePoint lists, to reduce customer support,
improve staff productivity and save time that would
otherwise have been wasted in searching for
information across disparate systems such as shared
folders and paper documents, all inside Outlook.
Highlights:
Seamless integration with Microsoft Outlook1
and SharePoint2
No database requirement - KB
articles are stored in your
SharePoint server as list items
Use any number
of SharePoint lists as source
repositories for storing KB articles
No file server
requirement - Only a simple client
install
Centralized administration,
configuration and
deployment of SharePoint lists and
field mappings
for all workgroup users.
Find
relevant KB article fast - Keywords
search options from within Outlook
Grouping of
KB articles in multi-tier categories
and types for easy locating of
relevant article effortlessly in
Outlook
Use your existing SharePoint site or
list permissions to grant/deny
access to the KB articles
Preserves the original formatted
content, embed images and files
attachments of the chosen KB article, if any,
when inserting it to email reply in
Outlook
Insert chosen KB
article as file attachment in the
following document formats:
- Adobe Portable document (.pdf)
- XML Paper Specification document (.xps)
- Microsoft® Word document (.doc)
- Web-archive Single Page (.mht)
Insert chosen KB article as
inline
content into the email reply
Insert the
hyperlink URL of the chosen KB article
into the email reply
Special
MSI installer available for
enterprise wide deployment (upon
request)
Support for
Office 2010 and Office 365
1
Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Outlook
2010 (32 bit) 2
WSS 2, WSS 3, MOSS,
SharePoint® Foundation 2010, SharePoint®
Server 2010
(Also supports SharePoint hosted in Clouds such as
Microsoft SharePoint Online part of
Office 365 etc.)
Purpose of this add-on
You and your support team frequently find trying to
solve the same issue over and over. Your end-users
send you emails on similar issues repeatedly. And if
you are already aware of the solution, typically,
you will try to compose the solution or if you have
vague recollection of it, you would try to navigate
to your existing document libraries, past emails
etc. Just consider how much time and effort you had
wasted in trying to find the right information at
the moment of need, not to mention the delayed
response to the support request. You wish you could
share your knowledge on a centralized information
system with other team members so that everyone has
the same understanding and are communicating the
same message when asked about specific issues.
Many IT managers resort to using SharePoint lists to
document best practices and solutions to common
problems, in the form of KB articles, because of the
easy accessibility and collaborative capability. So,
when a support request email is received in Outlook,
support staffs would generally go to the SharePoint
lists and browse or search through the tier of KB
articles. If a relevant article is found, either the
staff would rewrite the solution from scratch into
the email, or copy the contents from SharePoint site
to the email reply, in a crude fashion. In the midst
of this, the formatting, inline images and other
attachments of the particular KB article do not make
it to the email. After putting much effort and time,
you still didn’t get the complete KB article
inserted into the email reply. Moreover, the
frequent switching back and forth between the email
client and SharePoint site tends to loosen the focus
of the support staff, leaving him/her frustrated.
Evidently, organizations and teams that leverage
SharePoint as knowledge base would need to reinvent
the wheel and implement an efficient way of
importing SharePoint based article or document, to
outgoing email reply.
Team Knowledge Base is
designed to bridge this gap between your email
client such as Outlook and your SharePoint lists
where all your knowledge base articles are stored,
such that you can effortlessly locate a KB article
(stored on SharePoint) relevant to an issue from
within Outlook itself, and insert it into an
outgoing email reply in a single click. All these
and more making sure, the outgoing email retains all
the actual files and the original formatting of the
selected KB article. No more frequent switching
between Outlook and SharePoint, no more copy-paste
job etc.
Why implement a knowledge base? Factors that demand for a knowledge management
system for your organization:
Rising rate of
innovation and increasing competition in
marketplaces
To replace
informal knowledge with format methods,
especially, when the organization is
under-staffed
Competitive
pressures reduce the size of workers that holds
valuable business knowledge.
To help new
workers to experience and acquire knowledge in
the shortest time.
Early
retirements and increasing mobility of the work
force lead to loss of knowledge.
Need to manage
increasing complexity as business operations
become globalized.
Changes in
strategic direction may result in the loss of
knowledge in a specific area.
Retaining
knowledge when employees leave or change
positions
As most of our work is information based, it is
imperative that organizations maintain a structured
library of information and solutions, such that, the
knowledge system provides access to right
information, at the right time, to the right workers
in need. In short, knowledge and information have
become the medium in which business problems occur.
As a result, managing knowledge represents the
primary opportunity for achieving substantial
savings, significant improvements in human
performance, and competitive advantage
Designed for team
to document solutions to frequently asked questions in the form
of KB articles and store on an Exchange public folder, to be
used later on for replying to emails in Outlook.
It’s here! Office 365 support on our products!
By now, most of you might be aware of latest cloud based
Office collaboration and services from Microsoft – Office 365. The offering
consists of Office Professional Plus, Exchange Online, SharePoint
Online and Lync Online....(19th Nov'11)
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