TRIM Context Has Out-of-the-Box SharePoint Products and Technologies Integration

TOWER Software and Microsoft demonstrate joint solution for best practice information management.

January 10, 2008 – Reston, Virginia – The Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, Virginia, recently hosted a Proof of Concept (PoC) for senior US Navy officers and executives to demonstrate the integration of Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies and TOWER Software’s TRIM Context.  TRIM Context is deployed to 360,000 users on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) as their electronic records management solution.  Defense echelon commands represented at the meeting were the Director of Navy Records, Administrative Assistant UnderSecretary of the Navy, and Commander, Navy Installations Command. 

Working with Microsoft on this PoC, TOWER Software was able to demonstrate how tightly SharePoint Products and Technologies and TRIM Context can be integrated to move records management capability from a client application to a web application.  Action Officers will now be able to create, manage, save, retrieve and dispose of records through SharePoint Products and Technologies, while SharePoint Products and Technologies interact in the background with TRIM Context.  Scenarios demonstrated success in displaying federated search results across multiple TRIM Context datasets and domains, while TRIM Context security controlled access by not revealing results from a server the user wasn’t authorized to see. 

When asked how this Proof of Concept compared to others they have done, Ed Hild, Microsoft Senior Technology Specialist noted, “It was one of the smoothest PoCs this group has seen because there was no coding.  It was out-of-the-box.”

The objective of the PoC was to show scenarios in “a day in the life of an Action Officer” to demonstrate how their daily tasks could be handled more efficiently.  “Over 24 different scenarios were demonstrated with a 100% pass rate,” said Andrew Payze, Solutions Manager for TOWER Software.  These scenarios included ones defined as “required” by the Navy while others showed additional feature functionality of the TRIM Context SharePoint Integration.  One scenario showed the U.S. Navy fleet’s ability to move SharePoint Products and Technologies document library objects into TRIM Context automatically when a ship returns to home port.  Another scenario captured an instant message chat session as a record in TRIM Context.

Charley Barth, Director of Records for the Department of the Navy, took the lead for the Navy in providing the scenarios that would show the ability to save and securely find content across the different commands, using the same consistent interface in order to improve business processes and accuracy of information. "I am excited about the realm of possibilities that have been presented to us," Mr. Barth said.

TOWER Software is a Microsoft Gold certified ISV Partner with proven global records management expertise.  “This is an important accomplishment that will be of interest to many of our mutual customers.” said Jeff Shulman, TOWER Software US Vice President. “The market is ready for a collaborative user interface like SharePoint that integrates with the industrial strength records management functionality TRIM Context can provide.”