Email Manager

Email Manager is a SharePoint Framework (SPFx) App that needs to be installed once in your SharePoint environment. There is no need to install any software on the user’s computer since it is fully browser-based. Your data is secure because the emails are processed in your browser and does not require the use of external systems or services. The tool is easy to use because it extends the standard SharePoint interface. Specifically it adds buttons to the ribbon of document libraries and adds options to the ellipsis menu (…) of emails.

Viewing emails is optimised for performance and viewing an email typically takes less than 1 s. Accessing the email attachments is also very fast because the data is already present in the memory of the browser. Users can directly view email attachments with common file formats such as pdf, jpg, png, gif, … in the browser. A unique feature of the App is to also view Office attachments (docx, xlsx, …) directly in the browser. This way documents with potentially sensitive content are not stored locally but remain in the cloud.

Browsing through large sets of emails is optimised by offering previous / next buttons and by using the keyboard’s left and right arrow keys. In addition, users can navigate to a specific email by entering a number.

Presentation
The App can be used in the “SharePoint Online” presentation mode which mimics the standard SharePoint Online email preview with the main difference that the attachments are shown with hyperlinks.

The App can also be used with the “Outlook” presentation mode which mimics the Outlook client presentation.

View emails with email attachments
Email Manager supports viewing email attachments in emails. The attachments in the email attachments can also be directly viewed in the browser without downloading any content. This enables users to get their work done and the security / compliance officers do not have to worry about downloaded content on local computers.

Open SharePoint email(s) in Outlook
The optional “Open in app” feature allows users to select one or more emails in SharePoint and open them using Outlook (or their default mail client). This requires a configuration of the client browser to directly open the email.

Extract email metadata
Email Manager can automatically extract email metadata such as To, From, Subject, … during uploading. End users can simply drag and drop emails from Outlook into SharePoint or use the SharePoint “Upload” button. This allows for efficient viewing, sorting, filtering and searching using email metadata.

Note: Email Manager allows for extracting email metadata during uploading. It cannot be used for emails that are already present in SharePoint / Teams. For example, emails that have been migrated from a legacy system. Extraction of metadata from emails in SharePoint / Teams is supported by the BulkMetadataManager tool (link).

Use with Microsoft Teams
The Email Manager functionality can also be used in Teams. Open the “Files” tab and then select “Open in SharePoint” or add a new tab to open SharePoint.
Emails can be uploaded using drag and drop from Outlook and the App can automatically extract email metadata. Emails can be quickly viewed and the email attachments can be directly viewed in Teams without first downloading the email, opening the email using your mail client and then viewing the attachment using the local applications (e.g. Adobe Reader, Word, …).

The Email Manager tool can handle document libraries exceeding the list view threshold and supports views and filters or sort order applied in the originating SharePoint page. Users can tag emails during viewing for further processing such as moving the emails to a different location, set properties or download all selected emails.

Attaching a SharePoint document to an email can be done in a single click. Open the document’s ellipsis menu and select “Mail Item”. This generates a new email with the selected document attached. If you need to attach multiple documents simply select the checkboxes for each of the required documents and click the “Mail item(s)” button in the ribbon. Attaching a folder structure as a zip file to an email is also possible.

The current version of Email Manager can handle msg and eml emails. The tool supports:
– the latest versions of Chrome, Edge, FireFox, Opera and Safari
– Windows 10, Windows 11, macOS and iPad
– Teams App (Windows 10/11 or macOS) or Teams web client
– SharePoint Online (Office 365), SharePoint 2019 and Microsoft Teams