Outlook Social Connector – Email Future As Teamwork Tool.

Email is still the predominant part of how daily communication takes place and business talks with each other. Though email cannot be analysed and mined for data, with the launch of Microsoft Outlook Social Connector, users can associate information and knowledge with a variety of teamwork systems like SharePoint.

Microsoft’s rethink about how information exchange collaborates, echoes Googles’s approach with GoogleWave and creates new avenues for innovative email marketing.

Revitalising email as a collaborative tool means overcoming present inability to be scanned for data to draw important insights for use again in the future. The quintessential requirement of today’s business and social media environment is to identify key communicated information and knowledge.

Email is currently, temporary and information or problems solved in email tend to exist for the moment. Without archiving all messages, the knowledge created is lost, creating obstacles for online marketing continuity and referencing.

It is virtually impossible to layer workflow over email and beyond the user’s signature or the sender’s address, there is no intrinsic personal or brand identity stamped with authority into the message. Today, expertise and knowledge is strongly associated with individuals, creating the need for a ‘social link’, which Microsoft’s Outlook Social Connector and GoogleWave are attempting to address.

The forward integration of email with other communication tools for businesses and organisations wanting to expand email use within their marketing strategies can mean the opening up of unified search, expert discovery, information and knowledge management, data analysis, and more.

Internal teamwork and online communities can often integrate with email systems to offer people the ability to read and write from their inboxes, and utilise programmes which allow group owners to create their own two way mailing lists to discussion forums.

The email future lies in integration with online communities who draw others into discussion, and capture invaluable knowledge and archived material.