“Marrying CB Blockchain Seal with Konnect eMail sets a new benchmark in record compliance, authenticity, and management, focusing on user adoption and convenience.”
– Adam Maurer, COO of Connecting Software
“Konnect eMail integration with CB Blockchain Seal gives users a solid compliance foundation as they don’t even leave Outlook to save email records into SharePoint, whilst seals ensure records are verified as authentic and are reliable over decades.”
– Gaurav Tiwari, Product Director at Konnect eMail
Partner: Konnect eMail
Partner Country: Australia
Partner Main Activity Areas: Record Compliance and Management for Microsoft 365 Environments
Product Application: CB Blockchain Seal
The Challenge: Enhancing Record Compliance in Microsoft 365 Environments
To ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, controls, and obligations, it is crucial that you are able to demonstrate the authenticity of the files in your Microsoft 365 environment, namely in SharePoint as part of audits or any other record compliance procedure.
Organizations using Microsoft 365 environments face significant challenges in managing and ensuring record compliance. Manual processes for handling emails and attachments often lead to inefficiencies and potential risks of non-compliance, particularly when depending on the manual actions of individual end-users. Microsoft does not provide an out-of-the-box seamless integration between Outlook and SharePoint, which can lead to gaps in the record-keeping workflow.
“We wanted to solve this issue for our customers by creating a solution that bridges the gap between Outlook and SharePoint and simplifies record and email compliance within Microsoft 365 environments,” says Gaurav Tiwari, Product Director at Konnect eMail. “We intend to establish a proactive and comprehensive compliance culture ensuring organizations and government agencies meet their regulatory requirements, controls, and obligations,” he adds.
“Our products evolve users’ Outlook experience into a powerful Information Management tool by surfacing the organization’s entire Microsoft 365 environment within Outlook itself. We enable users to easily drag and drop emails and attachments to a convenient sidebar within Outlook and capture critical metadata for classification and record management,” Gaurav Tiwari elaborates, “This not only increases user adoption of SharePoint massively across the organization but also productivity whilst ensuring record retention for long-term use”.
The Solution: Seamless Integration of Konnect eMail with CB Blockchain Seal
The partnership between Connecting Software and Konnect eMail addresses these challenges head-on by integrating the robust record management capabilities of Konnect eMail with the ability to prove file authenticity at any time of CB Blockchain Seal.
Konnect eMail provides tools that allow users to save, retrieve, and search emails and their attachments in SharePoint. The emails are saved in .eml or .msg format, but the key aspect is that this is done directly within Outlook, without needing to transfer files to SharePoint manually.
Once the file is in SharePoint, you can configure CB Blockchain Seal for SharePoint to seal that file automatically (based on the folder or file type, for example).
Each sealed file has a corresponding timestamp, which is important for compliance. Plus, from the moment each file is sealed, it can be verified at any time, from anywhere - either from CB Blockchain Seal for SharePoint, which will present the list of files in SharePoint, or from CB Blockchain Seal Verifier online. The verification process ensures the file remains immutable since sealing.
Key Features and Benefits of the Integration
Customer-Centric Use Cases
By using both Konnect eMail and CB Blockchain Seal for SharePoint, Microsoft 365 users can:
- Build Proactive Compliance Culture in Daily Activities: Users can maintain sound record keeping in their daily work activities within Outlook, eliminating any disruption of their daily work and the need to switch between applications –
- Meet Record & Information Legislation Requirements: Support information governance initiatives and assist with various regulatory requirements under their respective record laws, such as the Federal Records Act 1950 of USA, GDPR guidelines, or the Public Records Act 1973 Victoria of Australia.
- Provide Visibility by Metadata Extraction: Automatically extract essential metadata, such as sender information, recipient details, subject, and attachment content, making records easily searchable and identifiable with robust search capabilities.
- Boost SharePoint Adoption and Facilitate Document Sealing: The ease of saving emails and attachments by just dragging and dropping them to SharePoint increases adoption of the platform, which ensures documents are available for sealing and verification.
- Broad Applicability: Especially beneficial for industries like legal, banking, finance, construction, and government, where stringent record compliance is crucial.
Key focus sectors of our integrated solution is Finance & Legal. “Our clients in the Finance sector, including a major Canadian Government agency, use Konnect eMail extensively within their Legal department. Drag and drop of emails from Outlook to SharePoint with the ability to classify every email record has been extremely significant for efficient storage and retrieval of government and public case documents and has also promoted effective collaboration between legal and compliance staff “ Gaurav explains.
Adding the digital sealing of files is a logical next step. As Adam Maurer explains “Entities currently spend too much time, effort, and money to prove authenticity of files for regulatory purposes. A cost-effective, immutable solution to prove authenticity of your files to regulators and auditors can save you time and money while enhancing trust. Ensuring you can verify the authenticity of the files in your environment on a whim will give you the confidence that you remain compliant with documentation accuracy laws and regulations.”
Similarly, the banking and insurance sector benefits from enhanced compliance and documentation accuracy, which are vital for regulations such as those stipulated by the Public Records Office Victoria (PROV) in Australia. These regulations necessitate stringent record-keeping standards, making the seamless integration between Microsoft 365, Konnect eMail, and CB Blockchain Seal even more valuable.
Transforming Record Compliance with Technology
This strategic partnership between Connecting Software and Konnect eMail sets a new standard in record compliance and management for Microsoft 365 environments. By combining ease of use with powerful compliance features, this collaboration not only solves critical challenges but also unlocks new potential for efficiency and an unprecedented level of trust across various industries.
What is Konnect eMail?
Konnect eMail provides tools to save emails and attachments to SharePoint, OneDrive & Microsoft Teams while capturing email metadata for classification and records management. By centralizing email management within Outlook and providing robust features for record keeping, Konnect eMail empowers organizations to enhance information governance, improve record retention, streamline document management, ensure compliance with industry standards, increase SharePoint adoption, and improve document visibility and retrieval. With Konnect eMail, organizations can efficiently manage their records, meet regulatory requirements, and optimize their workflows to boost productivity.
What is Connecting Software?
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