The benefits and limitations of Site Mailboxes in SharePoint 2013 are outlined in a new White Paper from Scinaptic Communications, which has addressed the issue in the latest release of OnePlaceMail R6.4.

A key feature of SharePoint 2013 is its Site Mailboxes, which brings together SharePoint 2013 and Microsoft Exchange 2013 within Microsoft Outlook 2013.

James Fox, CEO of Scinaptic said, “While the new update from SharePoint has the potential to dramatically alter the effectiveness of knowledge capture and records management, it comes with both implementation and end user limitations that could negate many of the benefits.”

Site Mailboxes lack the ability to capture email attributes when saving emails or their attachments; there is no way to tag content with custom metadata; no ability to rename a file when saving to SharePoint; no Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) integration; and no intuitive File Explorer integration. Additionally, the technology has specific configuration requirements and is only available to organisations that are up-to-date with their 2013 Microsoft products.

Realising that these limitations would be a dealbreaker for many organisations, the local Scinaptic development team has announced a new solution in its flagship product OnePlaceMail, which brings the full power of Microsoft SharePoint to the end user within Outlook.

James Fox said, “The new OnePlaceMail solution seamlessly extends Site Mailboxes in SharePoint 2013 to make Microsoft Office integration possible. It means File Explorer integration is possible. And it means that critical email metadata is captured and tagging of content with custom metadata is available to the end user. Records Managers can rest assured that email data is being effectively captured, regardless of whether the business is using Site Mailboxes now or in the future.

“Since the inception of SharePoint there has never been a solution from Microsoft for complete integration with Outlook. What this means is, businesses struggle with end user adoption. The key is to minimise change and unburden the end user by bringing the full power of SharePoint to the desktop via a familiar application. This makes the process of using theplatform extremely easy which means high user adoption and, in turn, sound records and document management, collaboration and more.”

Presently, when using the left navigation of Outlook when saving and accessing content from SharePoint.  For each specific business requirement, there are three choices: 1 . Site Mailboxes natively; 2. OnePlaceMail; or 3. Site Mailboxes extended by OnePlaceMail.

"The 3rd option of choosing to seamlessly extend Site Mailboxes is a key differentiator and reason to consider OnePlaceMail as part of any email management and records management strategy," said James Fox.

Scinaptic is based in Sydney, Australia and has partnered with leading organisations the world over across a range of industries such as government, energy, transport, engineering, banking and legal. OnePlaceMail is licensed to enterprise customers in over 30 countries.

To read Scinaptic’s whitepaper titled SharePoint 2013 Site Mailboxes – Overcome the Limitations, visit http://www.scinaptic.com/sharepoint-2013-site-mailboxes.html