AI Responsibly with ndMAX
Technology is more ubiquitous in our personal and professional lives than ever before. But as our use of tech tools and platforms increase, so do the opportunities to lose control of our documents and data.
For law firms and legal departments, this technology sprawl and resulting spread of information across siloed platforms throughout the organization can create serious obstacles to productivity, efficiency, information governance, and more. The challenge is to find a solution that doesn't force you to compromise your firm’s or organization’s security for your lawyer’s productivity.
As an industry leader in cloud-based productivity, Microsoft’s tools have become a foundational element of modern business. While they do not cater to the specialized challenges and requirements of the legal industry out of the box, they do provide the most widely used set of productivity tools.
NetDocuments, on the other hand, is a comprehensive content platform designed specifically for legal professionals, with award-winning security, governance, and compliance built right in.
But here’s the great news: You don’t have to choose. You can have the legal-savvy capabilities of the leading cloud document management software (DMS) integrated seamlessly with your favorite Microsoft tools.
It’s true, NetDocuments and Microsoft are simply better together.
Many businesses, including law firms, adopted Microsoft Teams in the wake of COVID-19 to keep their organizations connected while working remotely. However, using Teams without a DMS, or alongside your DMS, isn’t necessarily the seamless work experience you hope for.
Often, as documents are passed between Teams users, they’re automatically uploaded and stored in your organization’s OneDrive or SharePoint instance, exacerbating that already troublesome information governance issue, spreading documents across multiple repositories.
That’s why we created ChatLink: A seamless connection between NetDocuments and Microsoft Teams that allows you to access all the capabilities of NetDocuments within the Teams experience you’re already familiar with, including add-on tools like Tasks, SetBuilder, and CollabSpaces, all without having to rely on OneDrive or SharePoint.
ChatLink allows you to connect Teams channels with matter-specific workspaces in NetDocuments, which means no time is wasted digging for what you need. This connection enables single-touch functionality so you can securely collaborate on documents — from check out to check in, renaming to versioning — without switching between platforms. And as document links are shared within Teams channels, the user access permissions you establish in NetDocuments carry over.
In short: ChatLink creates a fully integrated experience that helps keep lawyer’s daily workspaces secure, compliant, and easy to manage.
One of the most challenging pieces of compliance is keeping all matter-related communication safe and secure. By pairing ndThread, the chat solution from NetDocuments, and Microsoft Teams, you can give your lawyers the advantages of real-time messaging while meeting the high standards of legal governance. For legal departments in particular, this functionality enables Legal to work closely and casually with cross-functional peers without switching between platforms.
Like NetDocuments workspaces, ndThread can be added as a tab in your Microsoft Teams experience, so compliant conversations are still only a click away. One-to-one conversations, group discussions, ideas, and document annotations can be filed securely in your workspace repository — keeping everything part of the official record and saved within context.
Of course, Microsoft offers more than justTeams — and NetDocuments offers many more tools to keep your systems working insync. Here’s a look at just a few of our integrated solutions:
If your lawyers operate using Outlook, the ndMail integration provides a suite of email management and productivity tools designed for legal professionals. You can automate email filing with Outlook rules or leverage the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to file emails in a single click with predictive filing. With ndMail, your inbox becomes Productivity Central.
NetDocuments is tightly integrated with Microsoft Office apps and Adobe Acrobat through ndOffice, helping you streamline crucial workflows for your lawyers. Lawyers can also quickly access recent documents and their status with the Activity Center.
In addition to the standard functionality that enables lawyers to work completely out of Microsoft Office products, ndOffice helps them track virtually unlimited metadata and document sub-versions, as well as package and rename email attachments directly within Outlook to create a tailored experience for clients and peers.
The NetDocuments Connector for Microsoft Power Automate makes it easy to automate time-consuming manual processes inside and outside of your DMS with customized low code or no code workflows and access to over 50 NetDocuments API calls, linking organization needs to legal specific tasks without any extra effort.
And there’s more: Download our brochure to explore the NetDocuments + Microsoft in-depth, including extra features like DLP, MCAS, and FlexStore.
In addition to the powerful functionality that exists today, the connection between Microsoft and NetDocuments is growing even stronger. NetDocuments is partnering with Microsoft to become a fully-integrated Teams storage provider. This functionality will allow you to set NetDocuments as your one-and-only back-end document repository in Teams, so you can work even more seamlessly and securely.
But that’s not all. NetDocuments has even more enhancements coming in 2021!
Soon, everything you post in Teams will be mirrored in your DMS, without ever having to access the ndThread tab. Whether you’re dragging files from your local drive to Teams, or attaching a doc to a direct message, NetDocuments will import the file and save it directly to the associated matter file.
Combining the powerful, cloud-based tools offered by Microsoft and NetDocuments can deliver an incredible strategic advantage for law firms and legal departments by empowering your lawyers to work inspired with:
It’s clear that with the power of the leading DMS and business productivity platforms supporting your lawyers, success will never be out of reach.
Contact us to learn how integrating NetDocuments with Microsoft can optimize security and productivity for your firm.
