AI Responsibly with ndMAX
With the Microsoft Build 2024 conference underway, we’re excited to share a few updates on how NetDocuments is expanding our connections across the Microsoft ecosystem. Because hundreds of thousands of legal professionals across the globe rely on NetDocuments and Microsoft every day, we’re focused on bringing together these two foundational technologies and creating a new experience that’s truly effortless for users.
At NetDocuments, we have long recognized the power of connecting NetDocuments’ cloud technology with Microsoft solutions. Over 10 years ago, we introduced ndOffice, enabling lawyers and legal teams to easily open, edit, and save documents stored in NetDocuments right from Microsoft Word. It was a powerful moment for our customers, showing how our cloud platform could enrich and seamlessly integrate with their everyday Microsoft experiences.
A few years later, we did the same in Outlook. With ndMail, lawyers gained control of their inboxes with smart recommendations to file emails into client folders — all inside of Outlook. Now lawyers could manage a complete client file, letting them organize and search across everything from contracts to briefs to emails.
Just last year, we worked with Microsoft to deliver the award-winning gen AI solution PatternBuilder MAX, which continues to define how legal professionals can responsibly and reliably leverage AI in their organizations.
But even with this incredible history, we’re just getting started. Welcome to the next generation of connected experiences with NetDocuments + Microsoft, a vision of the future with scalable intelligence, powerful integrations, and a singular design philosophy. Here’s a look at what’s ahead and what it means for our customers:
The NetDocuments and Microsoft Copilot integration enables legal professionals to easily find documents and information within the NetDocuments platform, from directly inside Copilot. Lawyers can use natural language requests to instantly get results that include links to matching content stored in NetDocuments.
For example, a customer could pull up a list of recent documents edited by a colleague, or contracts drafted for a client, without ever leaving Microsoft 365 applications, such as Outlook and Teams. A lawyer can then execute queries against the document, quickly uncovering key information buried in pages of legal text.
The Copilot integration will also connect users to intelligent apps that execute advanced legal-specific automation capabilities, powered by NetDocuments’ ndMAX generative AI solution. This unlocks powerful capabilities to extract legal data, draft and revise based on firm precedent, and much more at scale and precision never before seen.
“NetDocuments recognizes the importance of seamless work to Ice Miller. As Microsoft evolves M365 to give our firm a more uniform user experience across all mediums, NetDocuments is leading the way to make their technologies available and fully functional wherever and however our people work.” — Steve Johnson, Director of IT Applications, Ice Miller
Desktop Co-Authoring Capabilities with CSPP+
To support when users want to collaborate on a document, NetDocuments will be expanding its co-authoring capabilities to include real-time desktop co-authoring in Microsoft Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. As part of NetDocuments’ participation in Microsoft’s Cloud Storage Provider Program Plus (CSPP+), users can work collaboratively on documents using native co-editing capabilities via the web or desktop — while the documents always remain inside NetDocuments (along with the history of revisions that can be revisited anytime).
“I was particularly impressed by the deep integration with the M365 stack and the refined add-in design, which promises consistent user experience across platforms, complemented by its intuitive contextual awareness.” — Mitch Owens, CIO, Gilbert + Tobin
Better Email Management in Outlook
We’ve recently released several significant enhancements to its new web-based integration with Outlook. We are seeing many customers moving all of their users to our new Microsoft 365-based add-in, finding it easy-to-use and simple to manage.
Whether Firms and departments are currently using the new Outlook, or moving at their own pace to adopting it, organizations can have confidence knowing that the NetDocuments integration is ready and available. The same mail filing experience is available on Outlook mobile as well.
Enhanced Collaboration in Teams
The recent delivery of a new Teams experience provides a seamless look and feel, trusted security, ability to access documents and make notes, all within Teams, all while simultaneously leveraging the benefits of the NetDocuments platform to further reduce time spent “toggling” between applications further improving productivity, security, and collaboration within an organization.
NetDocuments’ new design system is based on Microsoft’s own Fluent UI, meaning users will enjoy a consistent, intuitive experience within Microsoft applications and the NetDocuments platform. This Fluent-based designed system will also power not only Microsoft add-ins, but also drive new web interfaces to provide a comprehensive experience that is consistent across devices and operating systems.
We are extremely excited about our new initiatives with Microsoft, which reinforce our commitment to delivering reliable innovation. While we continue to develop cutting-edge capabilities like AI within our ndMAX suite, we are also laser-focused on deepening our integrations and enhancing our platform to create scalable intelligence, stronger connections, and richer experiences. It is our commitment to deliver the best possible platform for our customers, meeting their needs both now and in the future.
There’s plenty more to share about this future direction, so I’d like to invite you to join our upcoming webinar on June 19 to learn more about this new chapter of Microsoft integrations so you can see how they’ll benefit your everyday work. This will be a great opportunity to gain insights, ask questions, and see these updates in action.
