Google have introduced a “Send and Archive” function in their Gmail (Google Mail) application. This is a labs feature at the moment and so isn’t turned on by default. I caught sight of this from a post on Mashable in my RSS feeds, which in turn refers to the Google Labs blog announcing this feature.
I already posted a link to this via twitter on Monday, but I thought I’d add some thoughts here now that I’ve used the feature in Gmail. And to say that it is very similar to a feature introduced by Interwoven in WorkSite already, their “Send and File” functionality.
On the left is Interwoven’s product integrated with Outlook and on the right is the Google labs feature.
Basically both are designed to get your emails out of your inbox into a long term storage area. In Interwoven’s case this means into a Workspace for the matter you’re working on and in Google’s case into your Archive area within Gmail.
After playing with the Gmail version for a while, two things struck me:
- Subsequent replies to your email don’t seem to be auto filed in the archive, I had to chose to archive these (admittedly one click archives the whole email thread). The Interwoven version though will “tag” the outgoing email so it can then file the incoming replies automatically.
- There is no structure to the archive (unlike say sub folders or workspaces), it’s just a big “bucket”. Google can handle this either by labelling the emails (from what I can see rather like a categorisation tag) or alternatively by just by relying on their search engine to find your stuff.
It’s this very last point I want to touch on. This to me is the killer feature! When your search engine is as good at returning what you’re after as Google’s, why bother structuring it at all?
After all email is an absolute pain to file in a rigid structure. For example, that email you received from the client may refer to two matters and some personal information just for you, how do you file that in a single folder? But a big bin with a fantastic search capability might just work!
Will the velocity engine from Vivisimo that’s in Interwoven WorkSite 8.3 bring the “Google search” to WorkSite? I’ll let you know when we get it up and running!
And if you’ve already got it up and running why not post a comment?
Hi Jason – we are currently in the process of piloting the Vivisimo search, with a view to implementing before end Q1. It’s awesome.
We have 10m docs in our legal database, and searches are massively faster than Verity, with which we have had all kinds of headaches because of the size of our dataset.
There are two desktop tools which we intend to push out end Q2, Express Search and Miner – grab the 8.3 server/indexer FAQ from the iWov support site, read up on these tools, they are fantastic.
So yea, I’m a fan of this search engine and the direction of the product – but I wouldn’t recommend unstructured client/matter filing paradigm for lawyers though! Structure is king!
Regarding send and file – have you seen the improvements to email filing due in 8.5?
I saw some details late last year, the moving of more of the work to the comm server is a great move. As is the new toolbar functionality proposed (MRU for workspaces, ALT+drag functionality on a toolbar, hurrah!)
I think there is a place for structure, but with email volumes now it gets difficult to browse through thousands of emails. Search for retrieval is a given.
What sort of server power are you using to get velocity to work on that size library (interested as ours are of similar size!)
I would agree that email volumes can be crazy, even on my home email I’m now receiving over 300 a day (no spam there either) in the end I used a search engine to search through email and plopped it all in one big bucket, this is because its much harder to categorize random email, with documents in a doc repository I think there is always room for structure, the reason for this is if the search features go down for any reason (service breaks etc) its still possible to find stuff in a well structured repository by manual browsing which is obviously important in an organisation which cannot afford to stop working on documents, such as law firms.
As for repository structure there are also arguments on density of structure etc when compared to some search algorithms used by diffent search engines, I would err.. on the side of caution before totally relying on search with no structure to me that feels wrong.. but it IS very tempting and i’ve heard multiple technologists also say that search engines will become kings as we disappear under an ever increasing mound of electronic paper.
2 x 8 core, 32Gb RAM, 1.3TB direct attached disk; the indexer needs serious grunt!
Alot depends on the team , Real Estate who work on a deal for 3 weeks and accumulate 50 emails and 50 documents should stick with structure – it makes complete sense for them. But projects/banking teams can work on matters for 6 months to a year and accrue 5 – 10 thousand. For these teams i think the “bucket” idea would be more suited. It goes back to the Refresh V Performance Issue aswell – with a search facility they dont need to have their viewing limits at frightening levels. I think each team within a law firm has to have a tailored system personally.