Outlook – Direct MSG Drag and Drop Support in OCMS

One feature that many clients ask for is the ability to drag and drop email messages directly from Outlook to OpenContent Management Suite in order to upload the email and any attachments to the ECM repository.  Without a plugin or Outlook integration product, this is not possible with native HTML5 controls.  For this post, we will take a look at DragDrop, a plugin that enables this feature.

Without a plugin, the native HTML5 file handlers do not work with Outlook MSG files.  To enable the drag and drop functionality, the user must first drag the email to the desktop, which creates the MSG file.  This file can then be dragged into the ECM interface in order to upload the email and attachments.  Many clients do not like this two-step process and would rather have users drag directly from Outlook.  Luckily, if the user’s machine has DragDrop installed, the drag and drop directly from outlook works seamlessly with native HTML5 code.  No “middle” step is needed.

After dropping the files, OpenContent pulls of any attachments and all documents can be uploaded and indexed to the ECM repository just like any other document.   Check out the video below to see the drag, drop, and upload process in action:

Overall, we see DragDrop as a great, relatively inexpensive, tool for clients looking to ingest emails into an ECM repository using a one step process.  A couple of items to note however:

• Client Install – many client IT departments try to avoid client-side plugins whenever possible. While DragDrop does not utilize Flash, Java Applet, or ActiveX, it is still a install that must be deployed to every user machine.  We wouldn’t expect that newer versions of Outlook would be incompatible with DragDrop in the future, it’s something to consider when upgrading Outlook in the future.
• Web-based Outlook – with more and more clients moving to cloud-based systems, we would suggest to check for any future plans to move to a web-based version of Outlook or another email provider like Google Apps. Since DragDrop runs on the user’s client machine, we suspect that it will not work with web-based email systems.

Let us know your thoughts below