Manual Indexing and Sharing of emails (Outlook 2010/2007/2003)

From Outlook, emails can be selected and indexed/tagged by users, using up to six index fields.  Selections can be made from drop down lists e.g. Client Id, Client Name, Category etc or free text entry.  The indexes and content can be exactly the same as those used in your Practice Management application, this approach has many associated benefits.

Tagged emails are archived to a central email archive on your system and a SQL database is updated with tagging data together with data extracted from the email e.g. From, To, Subject, Date, Message etc. 

Searches can be a combination of tagged data as well as extracted data, together with ‘Google style’ searching in results.  Emails that match the search criteria can be viewed in the original email format together with any attachments and re-imported back into Outlook as and when necessary.

By tagging emails to the central email archive, everyone can view them and so overcome the problem of emails being inaccessible on local PC’s or local Mailboxes.  Rules can be set up to give users access rights to specific groups of emails or ‘private’ emails can be excluded from general viewing.