Ted Graham: If you catch me on a bad day I'm certainly going to say it's an obstacle, but it has also often been a catalyst to capture more than we've ever been able to capture in the past. We're always trying to catch up with how our employees are using it. One of the things I'm able to do is haunt email discussion groups. You see, in all of our offices we have these all in lists where people will ask questions by email. It's a great way for us to keep on top of what the hot topics are. We then have the ability to capture that in a technology repository. Things like this wouldn't be obvious to us or available to us without Outlook and email and I always want to try to balance that sort of transactional need of this tool with the long-term reusable knowledge that we're looking for.

Teresa Grote: You know honestly I would have to break that out into two parts. I think Outlook is a catalyst and I think Exchange is an obstacle. What we're doing with IBF is taking Outlook and connecting it to the systems where I really want that content stored. That makes Outlook a catalyst. I don't think you can ignore that people are going to be working in Outlook, but the Exchange database is most definitely an obstacle.

Shy Alter: Outlook will be an obstacle if one does not think through how it can be better leveraged. What we do with Outlook dovetails with many KM processes like sharing and even capturing. It can be leveraged and become a catalyst. Ignore it and you fight for face time with your users, and then it becomes a hindrance.

It can be a problem area if its ignored. I think that the tendency of the likes of Ted and Teresa and their organizations, is not to ignore it but to recognize what it can or cannot do, take advantage of those elements that work, ignore those elements that don't work, and make their own decisions about what features they would or would not leverage. Ted is making a very good use of email because he believes that there is a great deal of value in the kind of communication that it provides, and Outlook is a big part of that. You can decide not to do anything about Outlook itself and not to extend it, but it needs to be an explicit decision, and you then need to make further decisions as to what it means to the users, how do they use Outlook, and how does it dovetail with your

Ted Graham: It's difficult to say without doing one of these tailored time and motion studies over somebody's shoulder, and we're not really going to be able to do that. In lieu of that we look for other ways to measure usage. A lot of it is anecdotal and we know just by looking at volumes and things like that in terms of messages back and forth. We're trying to get a better sense of what types of functions they are using it for. We certainly saw the rise in the use of Blackberry, and in the use of calendar functions because users could synchronize with their assistant on the road and things like that. The most important thing is to keep asking questions. Is there a management initiative or even some local office thing that will spur them on to use these things?

To give examples, we're now booking conference rooms via Outlook calendars. We're putting a conference scheduler online where you can download a particular conference to your Outlook calendar if it's something that you want to sign up for. We can only tell by these little flag points where its attached to some other method of tracking, but I dearly wish there was some better reporting on what elements of Outlook actually get used. Maybe even some usability studies on what people actually focus on within that client.

One of the interesting things I think Tacit did was to point out how much information is exchanged back and forth via email. As you were typing in a note, it would underline the company you typed and link you to a group of people who had either sent or received an email on this subject or company. I think this brought to the attention of a lot of people who weren't measuring this any other way that, wow, there is in fact, so much going back and forth via email that we just have no way to measure it. That's because we're all focused on Sharepoint portal where we can measure things.

Teresa Grote: We look at help desk issues to see "are we getting questions on applications"? Because most of our information is stored outside of Outlook we can look at content and the amount of information that is being accessed through our other applications. But yes, most of it is rhetorical.

But part of that is, "is Outlook the proper tool for exchanging that kind of information?" We've really tried to push people to the threads and bulletin boards on our Sharepoint site that relate to a topic or an area of law, and those are much easier to manage.

Teresa Grote: Personal knowledge management should always be a view to the enterprise. If we are to keep our central repositories correct than the concept of personal must be virtual.

Shy Alter: I guess its personal knowledge management, which is something that we do naturally. All of us are doing it every day and one of the tools that we use for that is Outlook. I believe that managing the knowledge life cycle in an enterprise starts with personal knowledge management. Let me give you an example. When you build a manufacturing plant, you want it to be close to the point at which you can get your raw materials and also have an equivalent to a distribution channel. While I think that Outlook is potentially not the only tool by any means, it is a place where some of that can happen. It is a place where you consume raw data and information. Also it's a place where you can generate some of that knowledge. When you compose an email that's essentially what you do. And finally, it's a distribution channel, a very powerful distribution channel because its using email messaging and it connects you to a group of consumers of this particular knowledge that you may have just created or consumed. So yes I think it's very important to see it in that context. Now again, it's not necessary to have Outlook alone as the central point, but it certainly should seriously be considered in that kind of context.

Teresa Grote: We have Interaction and we've had it for maybe 4 years now. It's kind of interesting because in a law firm it really is just a group of independent business people who share space and their businesses are their contacts, their clients. When you look at bringing in a new partner to a law firm you are looking at their book of business and it's their CRM. Because of this it's very challenging in many ways to get people to share that information. We've been pretty successful at it.

Of course, the only way we can measure that is through the growth of our contact management database, which has been substantial. The way we did that was through our Word integration. You want build in an advantage for people who go through Outlook integration, be they lawyers or assistants. You need to make that CRM system the most convenient place to put content, otherwise they are going to choose where it goes.

Frankly, none of our professionals care if its in Interaction, they just care that they can get the number when they want it. They don't care where it's coming from. It's important to create a two-way relationship between Word and your CRM so it's easy to put the address in for the first time, and it can be easily reused when generating documents or other information. That's the value proposition for an assistant or a secretary.

We do integrate it to a lot of different areas using Handshake so we have a case management or project management system that we've developed, and again I need contacts there, I need to know who's part of that matter or that project. So I've pulled those in from the project management system. We are evaluating another contact management system at this point, it's actually an application that Handshake as a company has written, and we're looking at that because it's considerably easier to associate contacts to different areas. It looks like Handshake will also meet our requirements for being able to have the different levels of public and private contacts.

Shy Alter: Start with some simple things like search. Outlook's built in search is severely limited. I believe that knowledge management starts with personal knowledge management practices, and better search tools will allow us to mine a treasure trove of information and knowledge - our own email correspondence. Another option that is somewhat similar to Ted's solution over at Hill and Knowlton is to provide ways for us to store some of our emails in structured threads for public consumption.

As Ted described, you can CC a repository, not just people. There was an attempt to mine emails in the organization as a way to identify expertise - I believe that Tacit is the company who was developing that product . They had problems though. People were not thrilled when their email traffic was scanned for such clues. They felt that their privacy was intruded upon. I am however curious as to how email or other document creation tools like MS Word could be used as nexuses for contextual queries, and about how they could provide access to relevant information and knowledge from around the enterprise. This goal seems attainable using tools like Microsoft's IBF. As an example, "smart tags" in an email message could trigger a query from a CRM. This is very powerful indeed.

Teresa Grote: There are just too many ideas to list. IBF allows any Office document to become a portal. The ability to drill down on customer, client or employee databases from within a document is tremendous. Conversely, the ability to populate a file from data sources and actually update sources is an incredible efficiency.

Shy Alter: Providing access to information and knowledge at the point we need it most is a key factor in making us more efficient. If I receive an email from a colleague or a client that requires me to provide my opinion or trigger a set of actions, why not make information that probably resides somewhere in the enterprise one click away? Why should I have to go look for it? If the information embedded in the email is the trigger, it should allow for this to happen quite seamlessly.

But here's another aspect to consider; knowledge that we as knowledge workers have generated should be captured and re-used. This is arguably the most difficult of tasks when it comes to this type of KM. Since many of my communications may reflect some of this knowledge, it should be made easier, maybe through simple drag and drop, to move some of this explicit knowledge into an appropriate workflow or repository for further qualification. This would be ideal since it was created in the course of my email communications or the creation of a document. It sure beats having to remember to do so after my workday is done.

Teresa Grote: What is the alternative? POP3? I'm not sure what other feasible way there is to maintain communication, which is the true power of Outlook.

Shy Alter: Exchange is a challenge. On the one hand it offers a seemingly perfect match to Outlook. Exchange is a data repository as well as a communications gateway. It allows for the creation of "soft" collaboration spaces - called public folders. It also provides organizational calendaring. It is perfectly coupled with many of Outlook's built in features, even though Outlook could be used as a stand-alone of course. But from our experience, developing on top of Exchange is very challenging indeed. We successfully developed a full fledged collaboration solution for one of our clients, heavily relying on Exchange, just to discover that Microsoft, who for a while promoted Exchange as a basis for such solutions, decided to shift its strategy away. In short, Exchange should be considered when very specific and relatively non-intrusive functions are required. It is not critical in my mind.

Teresa Grote: Sharepoint and Outlook can and do collaborate. Our environment is a perfect example.

Shy Alter: Absolutely. And for that matter any other portal as well. Most of them provide some rudimentary Outlook functionality to be incorporated into their interfaces, and in the case of SharePoint, Outlook could do the same - access some SharePoint content.

Ted Graham: I have seen many iterations of portal vendors attempts at bringing functions such as the Outlook inbox into portal interfaces. The biggest knock has always been speed just in terms of how fast the screen refreshes, whether it automatically refreshes, and so forth. I know a lot of improvements have been made recently, but I still think you are getting a shadow of the Outlook client functionality. I think things like a shared team calendar probably make more sense to add into your portal. Simple things like room booking, for example. But I'm not a big believer in having people live within the Outlook inbox within a portal. I see it as a good supplement if you're traveling, but that's about it.

Teresa Grote: Yes, without question.

Shy Alter: If this is to be considered, and it should be, then whatever is brought over should provide a rich experience, not a thin facsimile of the original. Also, it should closely tie into what your users want to do through the portal. As an example: If I can get my Outlook contacts through my portal, I should also be able to trigger queries into other enterprise repositories that will add context to those contacts.

Teresa Grote: A good, open database and commitment from Microsoft to make it a KM tool - I do not believe that commitment is there, as they are banking on Sharepoint.

Shy Alter: The most fundamental challenge is to connect Outlook to other information and knowledge resources. Doing this enables users to bring more context to their activities through Outlook.

Ted Graham: I actually look to one thing that isn't necessarily mentioned here as an example here, which is the presence indication that you'll see in Outlook 2003. What they'll show you if you right click on somebody's name is an online contact, meaning that it's tied into MSN Messenger and can determine if people who are emailing you are online. I think this is going to be a very important step forward. You've got a lot of international companies trying to sort this out, and with good reason. Being able to find out if my counterpart in London is still in the office, and whether we can get an issue resolved within the workday is very important. And its just a way of making people remember that there's somebody who I can contact directly instead of just waiting for this sort of tennis match back and forth. We talked a little bit about contacts and contact management on our webinar and I think that will be another big thing that's brought out of Outlook in terms of more functionality. But really one of the things we have to work through is understanding how to roll out that type of group wide contacts and how you would meld what is personal/private and what belongs to the company.

Teresa Grote: You know my opinion - building anything specifically into Outlook is a short term strategy. Public folders are being phased out and Outlook functionality is already found in other applications, with the exception of e-mail.

Teresa Grote: See above - very, very concerned

Shy Alter: It is clear that Microsoft thought of Outlook as a focal point for the knowledge worker a number of years ago - their “Digital Dashboard” framework was clearly promoted as such. Since then, they shifted their strategy away from Outlook as an “open” platform.

Developing solutions with Outlook should be pursued, but with the caveat that Microsoft will not offer as broad support as they do with other tools, like SharePoint. The introduction of Microsoft IBF (Information Bridge Framework) does hold some promise, for Outlook as well as other MS Office components. However it is interesting to note that 3rd party vendors who provide Outlook “plug in” functionality and therefore extend their own systems into this popular tool are scoring major points with their clients by doing so.

Teresa Grote: Our IBF implementation for our collections function is a perfect example. E-mail is delivered with all the appropriate links to information to help determine if a credit limit should be increased. The function can be performed from within the e-mail.

Teresa Grote: Absolutely web services and strong, robust APIs. This allows me to group information presentation in logical fashions depending on the application.

Shy Alter: It is possible to create "folder templates" and thus allow some control over how those folders will look and behave. For instance, you can create a folder structure that includes unique folder types for documents, contacts or even tasks. This will probably require a bit of customization – but the fundamental structure of Exchange allows for that to happen.

Teresa Grote: There are about 10 areas I found that were troublesome - some more than others and some easily corrected. Probably the biggest issue I found was their approach (or lack thereof) to having an off-line mode. There are also issues with the way they handle versioning (a big deal to legal) and document identification (numbering). Another big issue is that the documents are stored in the SQL database essentially creating a "blob". I'm not comfortable with this at this point.

Teresa Grote: If you have a trust problem in your organization, no level of technology will take care of that. I believe our professionals have experienced the benefits and none of the perceived ills. This was a cultural shift as well as a good implementation of the security aspects of CRM

Shy Alter: There are a number of options. One is to encourage users to share their contacts; the other is to copy their contacts into a centralized contacts folder or set of folders that could be shared by all.

Probably the best way to do this is to create a folder containing Contact items underneath a public folder. If you can get people to use the same structure for these folders (by client, by project, etc.), people will learn where to look for contact information. This approach has several advantages:

Contact folders can be added to each user's Outlook address book, so the names will be available whenever you send e-mail.

Contact information can be maintained by business resources rather than by Exchange administrators (as is the case with contacts in Active DIrectory).

• Distribution lists can be created which include both internal users and external contacts.



• Exchange public folders can be added to the distribution lists, making it easy to archive conversations.

Unfortunately, Exchange still separates Outlook contacts and Active Directory contacts. This is problematic because:

• Outlook contacts can't be centralized. The same contact, with different information, may exist in many different folders, with no way of determining which information is current.



• External contacts can't send to Outlook distribution lists (but can send to Exchange distribution lists).