WaveBoard puts SharePoint Discussions on email

August 24, 2009:SusQtech WaveBoard is a new SharePoint add-on that allows those using Discussion Boards in SharePoint to send and receive complete postings through an email client.

WaveBoard solves one of the shortcomings of SharePoint's Discussion Board feature: users must log in to the SharePoint site in order to post and read the postings of others. Out of the box, SharePoint does include Alerts which let subscribers know when new content has been posted.

The Alerts, however, only include a hyperlink back to the discussion board. The functionality has limited the practical application of the discussion boards for many organizations. With WaveBoard, once a user has chosen to subscribe to the mailing list for a particular discussion board, all activity for that board can take place via email.

WaveBoard is currently in use on the publicly available on www.TheSUG.org, a site for SharePoint users. In order to test the add-on, visitors must become members of TheSUG then look for discussion boards with an envelope icon in the top right corner. Clicking on the envelope will allow a user to select between immediate delivery of postings, and daily or weekly digests.