Replace a server side exchange solution that had been performing poorly.
The existing solution was written as an exchange server "plug-in" and captured
all outgoing email automatically with incoming email filed manually into Public
Folders for bulk importing into the Document Imaging System. The system is mission critical
and in use by all members of staff.
The system should integrate with JobStream to find and populate the relevant
meta data when emails are filed into the document management
solution.
We approached this from a different angle than the previous server based
solution by developing a client based Outlook plug-in. Moving the solution
from the server to client enabled us to offer a lot more functionality than was
present with the existing system. By integrating with Outlook and ensuring
the system was easy and intuitive to use user feedback has been very positive.
One strength that the server side solution brought however was centralised
updates as our solution is client based updates need to be applied to the each
workstation. To ensure that the system was not a drain on the resources of
the IT Department we deployed the application as "Click Once" solution onto the
clients intranet. Now when updates are provided they are deployed to
the server and the user simply clicks once to get the most recent version.
