Search and Act in SharePoint

The Business Challenge

Some departments use SharePoint as their preferred workgroup interface. While SharePoint has its own content management features, it’s often necessary for departmental users to access and use documents stored and managed in other enterprise content repositories. This poses two challenges for users: they need to find and work directly with the documents housed outside of SharePoint. Without the proper tools, users need to leave SharePoint and use proprietary ECM interfaces to perform searches and editing actions. This is a slow and clumsy process that becomes even harder as more external ECM systems are added.

The EntropySoft Solution

EntropySoft’s FAST Search for SharePoint and FAST ESP Connectors allow documents from external content repositories to be included within their indexes. This means users can securely search and find documents from these external ECM systems directly from the native search bar in SharePoint. When coupled with the EntropySoft Content Hub SharePoint Edition™, users can work with and act on ECM system content as if it was stored within SharePoint. They never have to leave SharePoint to act on external documents; this means users are able to check-out, edit, and check-in documents directly from and back to the ECM system, so that external content is never duplicated. Users can access document versions and metadata, and with the appropriate permissions, they can also edit meta data or delete versions. From EntropySoft View, users experience tight integration with Microsoft Office applications and can directly edit files in the ECM system without saving local copies.

Results

When using the EntropySoft search module for FAST and SharePoint Search Server, integrating your organization's ECM systems with the SharePoint portal is straightforward. Users easily find the enterprise data they need, and can work directly in Microsoft Office, as if the data was stored within the SharePoint portal natively.