MacroView DMF addresses many of the frustrations that are reported by users as they attempt to use the out-of-the-box interface for managing documents and emails in SharePoint. These include:
- Cannot drag-and-drop in Outlook to save emails and attachments to SharePoint.
- Difficult to visualize and navigate the structure of the SharePoint document store.
- Poor performance when the SharePoint document store is large – e.g. library contains large number of folders and files.
- Need to leave the application where you are working (e.g. Word, Excel) to perform a Search across the SharePoint document store.
- Errors when you attempt to load a file whose name contains characters that are invalid in SharePoint.
- Difficult to save a PDF to SharePoint directly from Adobe Reader or Acrobat. Re-saving a PDF that you have opened from SharePoint forces you to re-enter metadata and lose version history.
- Existing metadata and version history not retained when you move a document to a document library in a different Site Collection.
- Inconsistent capture of metadata – no prompting for metadata when you upload multiple documents, with the result that documents may not be visible to other users.
- When you upload a file from Windows folder you lose its Created Date and Author details
MacroView DMF provides an intuitive, accurate tree-view display of your SharePoint document store, which makes visualizing the structure of that SharePoint store as familiar as using Windows Explorer.
- Handles your existing SharePoint structure – regardless of how many Web Applications, Servers, Site Collections, Sites / sub-Sites, Libraries, Document Sets or Folders.
- Paged display of unlimited numbers of files.
- Automatically security-trimmed, so that each user sees all areas that contain content for which he / she has access permission.
- Favorites allow one-click access to Sites, Libraries and Folders that you use frequently. You can declare your own Favorites and have Favorites automatically created for you (e.g. by subscribing to a Colleague’s Favorites).
- Rapid access to files that you have recently saved and / or edited.
- Search Site Tree enables rapid navigation to a site or library – no matter how deeply nested.
- Automatic filtering as you expand a node that contains a large number of sub-nodes – e.g. a Site that contains more than 100 sub-Sites – ensures good performance and efficient resource utilization, even in very large SharePoint document stores.
MacroView DMF metadata capture is a consistent experience across the applications that that you use, including Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Reader / Acrobat and Windows itself.
- Supports all SharePoint field types including Person/Group and External Data.
- Dynamically reflects library structure – new metadata columns appear automatically the next time a document is saved to the Library.
- Automatic recording of email attributes.
- Personal defaults reduce user profiling effort.
- Eliminates Document Info Panel (DIP).
- User-friendly interface for Managed Metadata columns, including browsing of term store hierarchies and type-ahead value selection.
- Prompts when you save or upload multiple files, including option to prompt once-only for common metadata.
- Respects / reuses metadata on moving and copying files between document libraries.
MacroView DMF lets you harness the power of SharePoint 2010 (or FAST) Search while you continue to work in familiar applications such as Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
- Supports searching by metadata (including Document ID) and / or content.
- Finds PDFs based on their text content and emails based on text in their attachments.
- Spports wildcards, saved searches and searches for My Documents and for Documents Checked Out to Me.
- Supports FAST refiners.
- MacroView DMF Search Panels are readily configurable to reflect your metadata usage.
- Preview search results and browse to related documents while you are working in Outlook.
- Uses existing SharePoint / FAST indexes – no additional indexes or crawls required.
More and more PDFs are being generated by smart copiers and received as email attachments. MacroView DMF provides best-available support for saving and re-saving PDFs to SharePoint.
- Save PDFs to SharePoint direct from Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat.
- Choose the destination document library or folder from the intuitive DMF tree-view display of the complete SharePoint document store.
- Consistent, intuitive metadata capture.
- Versioning respected and existing metadata displayed for editing as you re-save a PDF back to SharePoint – ideal for workflow applications around PDF scanned images.
If you are running Office 2010 Professional Plus, the right-click menu of MacroView DMF will contain a Connect to SharePoint Workspace item. This streamlines the creation of a SharePoint Workspace so that multiple users, including those working offline, can collaborate on emails and associated attachment files.
MacroView DMF automatically checks out documents as they are opened from SharePoint for editing. DMF also provides a rich right-click menu, with options for Check-In / Discard Check Out and for viewing and opening the available versions of a document.
Enhanced Document Level Security (EDLS)
This optional DMF module streamlines the setting of document-level permissions, even by Contribute level users. By checking a Private box you can make a document ‘For My Eyes Only’. You can also assign specific access to selected other users and groups.
MacroView UDN
This optional DMF module enhances and extends the native SharePoint capabilities around Unique Document Numbering. Additional features include:
- Numbering across a whole Web Application rather than a Site Collection.
- Better formatting of Document IDs.
- Update of footers of Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents to display unique document number, version number and other Document Reference information.
MacroView DMF dramatically improves the user interface experience, but does not change how documents or their metadata are stored in SharePoint, nor how SharePoint indexes and searches for documents.
MacroView DMF makes all its access to the SharePoint content database via the Microsoft-supplied low-level Object Model layer. MacroView DMF fully respects the SharePoint security model.
The advantage is that with MacroView DMF you are free to use whatever applications you like – e.g. K2, Nintex, StoragePoint, etc – and to access and manage the SharePoint document store via the browser.
The MacroView DMF tree-view can display the Site Collection / Site / Library / Folder structure of multiple SharePoint Web Applications – running under SharePoint Server 2010, SharePoint Foundation 2010, MOSS 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services v3.
MacroView DMF server-side components play a key role in enabling full functionality and volume handling. These components are installed by a SharePoint Solution (WSP).
On client PCs, MacroView DMF will run in Office 2010 or Office 2007. This means that you can stage your deployment of Office 2010 – you do not have to run Office 2010 to be able to have good integration with SharePoint 2010.
MacroView DMF client-side components are installed by using an Active Directory MSI. Extensive client side configuration settings are compatible with A/D Group Policy, and MacroView can supply a sample Group Policy ADM template.