How to Transform Your Microsoft Outlook into a Workflow System

“I want to work with workflow tasks from Microsoft Outlook. Is it possible?”  - Andrey Yanchenko, Head of Sales Engineering at NetCracker

The Problem I got used to working with Outlook and wouldn’t like to change it. I use it to assign and track and manage outlook tasks, share my calendar, exchange work files, and to send, receive and discuss tasks in emails. It’s a great collaborative system yet I would like to get more out of it. I want it to be coupled with a workflow software. Processes behind my tasks will coordinate team work while I am not going to have to switch between applications to see my full to-do list. My personal tasks and team workflow tasks will be synchronized together in one Outlook list of tasks. To make it fully collaborative, I’d like to have comments tread for each working task, too.

The Solution Comindware Tracker Outlook Add-in is a free Outlook extension that you can get right from your Comindware Tracker account. It will put Comindware Tracker workflow system behind your Outlook. It will be light and invisible. And it will give you the power of collaborating on workflows and tasks with your team directly from your Outlook.

How Will It Work? After you have the Comindware Add-In up and running, your Outlook list of tasks still looks like a list of tasks:

The difference is hidden behind the scenes: now your Outlook is coupled and synchronized with Comindware Tracker. Tasks from Comindware Tracker workflows automatically go to your Outlook list, and you can enjoy all the advantages of collaborative workflow tasks:

1. Workflow enables you to collaborate in team. It divides a process into steps and gives a task to the responsible at each step. As it is performed automatically by Comindware Tracker, you won’t need to write an email to your co-worker saying that your part of work has been accomplished, give details and attach documents: you save it together with your task and then it automatically goes to the next on your team, with all the content and the context.

2. Larger functionality for your tasks:

• processes behind workflow tasks,
• in progress\deferred status with play\pause buttons,
• collaborative thread,
• files versioning, hierarchy of tasks and subtasks,
• synchronization between Outlook and Comindware Tracker lists of tasks.

3. All in one: emails, calendar, team collaboration, tasks, attachments, workflow. You don’t need to switch between solutions, and all of the tasks and their content are synchronized automatically between solutions.

4. It’s powerful. Comindware Outlook Add-in is spared from any excessive features which makes it really light, so that it will not slow your MS Outlook by any means: it’s really quick.

5. You don’t need to learn anything new to work with Comindware Tracker through Outlook. The ribbon interface is already familiar to you, and you only get much larger functionality.

How Can I Get It?

The Comindware Outlook Add-in goes in the package with Comindware Tracker, and it’s free for Comindware Tracker users. Log in to your account in Comindware Tracker and hit the Menu tab. You will see the button that will get Comindware Outlook Add-In installed on your computer. You can find out more about the add-in installation here:

Try it now, it’s free!

Comindware Tracker and Microsoft Outlook are tightly integrated with the help of Comindware Outlook Add-in. Other third party applications can be integrated with Comindware Tracker through web-based API. Let’s take an example of Comindware Tracker integration with SalesForce: this will be the subject of our next topic.

TRY IT FREE      or       BUY IT NOW

Anastasia Chumakova is Product Marketing Analyst at Comindware.  She currently explores online process management product development trends, contributes to www.comindware.com and provides tips for better use of Comindware Tracker and online work management solutions.  Stay in touch with Comindware: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.

---