SLIM Companion Email Manager
SLIM Companion™ Email Manager increases user productivity and provides unique functionality to simplify your work. See figure at left for a quick overview (click here for the full version).
Email Manager is a SharePoint Framework (SPFx) App that extends the standard SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2019 and Microsoft Teams functionality for emails.
For Small and Medium Enterprises use the form below for ordering 10 up to 500 user licenses. For Large Enterprises please visit the Email Manager pricing page (link) or request (link) a quotation for a site license.
$19.67
Supported browsers: Chrome, Edge, FireFox, Opera and Safari.
Supported applications: SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2019 and Microsoft Teams.
Supported clients: Windows 10, Windows 11, macOS and iPad
Request access to our SharePoint Online demo environment
Non-profit organizations
Non-profit organizations can get 20% off. Click here for more info.
Unique capabilities
Fast
Extract email metadata on the fly
View attachments directly in browser
Product features
See all features below
Efficiently manage emails in SharePoint and Teams
Standard SharePoint / Teams
Before describing the features of SLIM Companion Email Manager it is important to understand the capabilities and limitations of standard SharePoint Online and Teams.
Emails are stored as regular documents in document libraries without email metadata. As a result users cannot sort emails by sent date or group emails by conversation. The file names will be based on the email subject. Email replies are named with a sequence number e.g. subject (1).msg resulting in meaningless file names. This simple naming mechanism also introduces a risk that emails are overwritten by other users even though they contain different content.
It typically takes multiple seconds to preview an email with the standard viewer. The names of email attachments are shown but the attachments cannot be opened. Users need to download the email to their computer and then open the email using a mail client (e.g. Outlook) before they can access the attachment. This is not always possible. For example, opening an msg email on a macOS (OS X) client, an iPad or a computer without Outlook. For some organizations downloading attachments is not acceptable because potentially sensitive content ends up on local computers.
The sent date shown in the preview is in UTC. This is confusing for users.
Users also frequently need to attach SharePoint or Teams document(s) to an email. This involves downloading of the document, opening a new email in their mail client and then attaching the downloaded document. This becomes even more cumbersome when dealing with multiple documents or complete folder structures.
The situation for SharePoint 2019 is even worse. It is not possible to upload emails from Outlook using drag and drop. There is no functionality to view emails or email attachments in the browser.
In short, SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2019 and Teams provide very basic functionality to handle emails.
Email Manager in-depth
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 on local computers 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.
View files in zip attachments in your browser
This allows users to view files in a zip attachment directly in the browser without downloading and opening the zip file. This feature is available for commonly used file formats such as docx, xlsx, pptx, pdf, msg, eml, jpg, png, gif, json, js and xml.
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 from the white listed SharePoint tenant.
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 SharePoint document(s) to an email is made simple. Select one or multiple document(s) and click the “Mail item(s)” button. This generates a new email with the selecteded document(s) attached. “Mail item(s)” can also be used to zip a folder structure in SharePoint and attach the zip file to an email.
Localization (Internationalization)
Email Manager supports multiple languages via language packs.
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
If you are interested to use Email Manager on SharePoint Server Subscription Edition please let us know.
Additional information
For further information check out the following sources:
In short: Email Manager is a must for efficiently managing emails in SharePoint or Teams