SmartVault Adds New Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook

SmartVault Corporation, provider of SaaS document storage and sharing solutions, announced an enhancement to the service, the Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook.

With the plug-in, users can leverage the convenience of email, integrated with SmartVault’s secure, compliant solution for managing and sharing documents. This offers business users and accounting professionals an integrated solution for sending, receiving and managing documents securely inside of Outlook – without having to change the way they work. It creates secure links for sending files and embeds them in email messages, instead of attaching documents to emails. With the plug-in, accounting professionals can use email to share files securely and remain in compliance with federal Internal Revenue Code regulations and state privacy laws. The use of links also makes it easy to share large files without the use of a separate FTP service.

"We are focused on integrations that have a positive, game changing effect on workflow efficiency–and no communication tool is more widely used in business than email," said Eric Pulaski, founder and CEO of SmartVault. "Allowing users to share and manage their documents securely without ever leaving Outlook is transformative, and potentially yields a very high rate of adoption simply because users don’t have to learn anything new."

With Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook, users can:

• Upload Email Attachments: With the click of a button, users can upload email attachments to any folder in their SmartVault account Users can also create new folders from within Outlook.
• Send Secure Links to Files and Folders: Safely email confidential documents as easily as attaching a file to your email by clicking the paperclip button. The plug-in inserts a message into your email with a secure link to the documents, rather than attaching the files to the email itself. The recipient clicks the link and downloads documents instantly – as easy as opening an attachment, and more secure.
• Request Files from a Client or Colleague: Give clients or co-workers a way to send you documents. You can use this to make sure confidential documents are sent to you in a secure manner, as well as provide a way to send large files over the Internet and keep the size of your Exchange database manageable. You can tell to send you an automatic notification when files have been uploaded and are ready to view.
• Convert Email Attachments to Secure Links: Securely forward an email attachment to another recipient by uploading and converting attachments to secure links in SmartVault.
• Invite and Manage Users: Add a new user or grant access to a folder by managing basic user permissions and invitations without leaving Outlook.

"No matter how many tools are out there for sharing files, the majority of us still default to attaching a file to an email – it’s easy and convenient. However, if that file contains sensitive information and you send it over the web – you have a potential data security violation," stated Jennifer Katrulya, CPA, Chief Executive Officer of BMRG, LLC. "SmartVault’s new plug-in for Outlook not only solves that issue by converting the attachments to secure links, but helps us show our clients that there is a way to use email to send documents to their accountant or professional service provider, that does not expose them to security risks."

The Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook was built using the Software Developers Kit released in the fall of 2011. The new app is an example of how SmartVault’s document management and file sharing capabilities can be integrated into commonly used productivity applications to create workflows that add value to the business user.

It is free and available to all SmartVault users. To get started, users need a SmartVault account and Microsoft Outlook 2007 or 2010. Those without an account can start a trial.