Tag Archives: blackberry

General Legal IT

Sent Items – current bane of email management

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Here’s a problem for you all, let’s see if this blog post can generate some comments on possible solutions.

Lawyers travel a lot, whether they’re in a regional firm or a global firm they will travel and they will want to use IT whilst they travel (especially email). Now although we are in a WiFi world the hotspots aren’t always accessible or cheap and so offline or limited connection is still the norm away from the office.

The problem I’m building up to is caused when you want to file email in a matter centric way within a document management system (DMS). I’m sure the ideal for most lawyers is to maintain a full electronic file using the DMS just as they’d maintain a full and proper paper file. But the electronic file is usually the current file too and thus they want to have access to these emails when away from the office (the same as historically they would have carried a pile of papers in a briefcase).

As a lawyer in the office, from an Autonomy iManage point of view using WorkSite, I can maintain the electronic file for all my documents. But the answer for out of office access is either by using their OffSite product or by using the WorkSite for BlackBerry product. Both an expense, did I say I also didn’t want to spent a lot of money solving this problem?

Now with WorkSite 8.5 the new synchronised folders within the Outlook Inbox is fantastic, I can keep all my emails in Outlook/Exchange (which is running in cache mode so all my emails are on my laptop offline or available in the Blackberry) and I know that they are being filed/synchronised into WorkSite. Thus at the end of the matter I can remove the folder in Outlook with confidence that the emails are on the electronic file.

Perfect!

Now here’s the problem. Sent items! What do I do with them?

Filing them has always been difficult, products like Send and File help with this by suggesting filing locations as I send the email. However if I move the email on Send and File then I can’t refer to the emails out of the office? But I can’t copy as I want the ability to keep my Sent Items clean like my Inbox, removing emails I’ve finished with!

An ideal would be for Send and File to move the email into the synchronised sub folder in my Inbox, that way it’s filed, available offline and out of my Sent Items. But I’ve checked with Autonomy, it doesn’t do this!

So there it is. How do I keep my Sent Items clean and tidy, have access to my emails through Outlook cached mode and ensure filing in the electronic matter?

Comments very much appreciated!

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General IT

Lost in Stockholm : the benefits of mobile applications

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I suspect there are a number of organisations that lock their Blackberry or Windows Mobile devices down, stopping people installing applications on them. There are plenty of valid reasons for this, but there are some great applications that I think should be installed as default by all companies.

One of these is the Google Maps application (available for Windows Mobile and Blackberry), it’s especially useful if your devices have GPS chips in them (which a growing amount do).

I spent this last weekend in Stockholm with some friends, on one of the days we went our separate ways during the day and then arranged to meet up later.

I got a call about 4pm :

“We’re in a pub called The Londoner”

“Where is that?”

“Not sure, it’s just down from the Olympic Stadium”

“OK, do you know the street?”

“Nope sorry….”

There were some directions given at this point but as we couldn’t work out the starting point accurately I wasn’t hopeful!

Anyway the point of all this was to explain the benefits of Google Maps.

I fired up the application on my Windows Mobile device, the GPS located my position in a city I’d never visited before, I then used the integrated search function to find “The Londoner”. This searched was location aware and only searched for places and names near my location.

The description given showed I had found the correct place and from this point in the application it was a simple click to show directions and immediately highlight the path from where I was to the destination.

As soon as you move a little arrow shows your direction on the map so you can tell you’re heading off the right way.

The interface is extremely intuitive and on a 3G connection very quick, there is no jumping off into the mobile browser it’s all done in the Google Maps Application. And if the city has street view you can even access that on the mobile device.

Now clearly there is little business benefit of finding directions to a pub, but a travelling lawyer could use the app to easily find directions to a clients or the firms offices in a different city. There could even be savings if staff were encouraged to walk rather than jump in a taxi (which I bet is common when in a new city).

Now if only it integrated with your internal CRM systems ……

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