New social and collaboration capabilities have been added to the free release of harmon.ie’s SharePoint – Outlook Edition product, which provides access to essential SharePoint functions from Outlook.

A SharePoint activity stream in the email window now allows teams to follow document updates in real time, creating ‘social documents’ that expedite project work. New social analytics functionality also helps workers build their SharePoint social network by offering smart colleague suggestions based on actual communication patterns.

harmon.ie claims its plugin enables users to perform SharePoint tasks up to six times faster than from the SharePoint web interface by eliminating SharePoint’s multi-step navigation. Basic SharePoint document sharing functions such as uploading a document can be completed using drag-and-drop, replacing SharePoint’s usual nine-step procedure.

Users can also define metadata, view document histories, access SharePoint profiles, search corporate directories and more from the harmon.ie window.

The harmon.ie enterprise edition adds one-click phone, instant message, videoconference and/or email connectivity to colleagues from documents or the activity stream, aggregating SharePoint, Microsoft Lync, harmon.ie social features and Outlook in a single window that eliminates the time and effort of switching applications to work collaboratively. It also adds the ability to manage Outlook email messages in SharePoint; centrally deploy, provision, and manage harmon.ie installations; and premium technical support not available in the free edition.

More than 1 million users now have harmon.ie for SharePoint, including 500,000 who have downloaded the free version to simplify SharePoint use as well as 500,000 users of the enterprise edition. According to a November 2011 survey of harmon.ie users, 75% who did not access and/or publish documents on SharePoint before installing harmon.ie in their email client now regularly share SharePoint documents or links using harmon.ie’s drag-and-drop strategy. This ability to increase SharePoint use aids efforts to advance the social enterprise.

David Lavenda, VP Marketing and Product Strategy of harmon.ie. said, “Our social email’s ability to remove barriers to SharePoint use benefits end users and enterprises alike by saving time, fostering teamwork, and supporting collaboration initiatives designed to help businesses improve their competitive advantage.”

The new free edition of harmon.ie for SharePoint – Outlook Edition can be downloaded at http://harmon.ie/SharePoint/FreeDownload. More information on the enterprise edition is available at: http://harmon.ie/SharePoint/Product.