Document Management Roll-up: Google Docs Connects to MS Office, Laserfiche Adds Doc Capture

By David Roe (@druadh20) Nov 23, 2010

With Thanksgiving fast approaching it seems as if some companies are already kicking back. That said, there are a couple of noteworthy announcements this week from Google, who has just announced Office integration, Confidela, which aims to make your documents safe on mobile devices and CAPSYS, who released new document capture capabilities for Laserfiche. In other news, Nuxeo World had some interesting sessions, especially on DM deployments.

Google Docs and MS Office Connect

It may only be Tuesday, but the announcement that Google Docs and Microsoft Office can now connect is probably going to be the biggest ‘document’ news this week.

Announced on Monday, the new plug-in installs a toolbar in Word, Excel and PowerPoint versions 2003, 2007 and 2010 that will be free for consumers and Google Apps enterprise customers when it's fully launched in the next few weeks.

It connects multiple people to a desktop-based Office document via Google's cloud, also creating a backup of it on Google Docs. The Office document can be shared with specific people who are able to make changes with their own Office software.

The plug-in is a result of Google’s acquisition of DocVerse back in March, and supports Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Once installed, a new ribbon will appear toward the top of the Office UI, linking the document you’re currently working on to its twin in Google Docs.

If you're editing a document in any of the three mentioned Microsoft programs, it will automatically sync with your Google Docs account as soon as you click the 'Save' button (note: you must click 'Save' to sync, this is not an as-you-type syncing feature). If you want to find our more, check it out here.

Protect Your Mobile Docs

To protect your mobile docs when collaborating, Confidela (news, site), the maker of WatchDox document control, tracking and protection solution, has announced that it is strengthening its support for mobile platforms with the release of an iPhone and iPad application that ensures safe document sharing on potentially insecure mobile platforms.

WatchDox’s solution enables businesses to easily set individualized protection parameters for user access via the iOS application, displaying documents on a secure viewer. The app extends all WatchDox features to iPads and iPhones, including user authentication, restrictions on copying, printing and forwarding documents, user-specific watermarks, advanced tracking and more.

If you’re going to be doing a lot of mobile work, then now is probably is a good time to start looking at security — not just for documents, but of the whole device.

Earlier this month, Gartner’s (news, site) Nick Jones argued in a blog post that the security parameters C-level decision makers have insisted on for standard operating systems have been absent from mobile ones.

The explosion in the use of inadequately secured consumer devices, some of which hold highly sensitive information, is a ticking bomb that will eventually explode. At some point — probably quite soon — there will be a mobile data-loss event that will cause a huge security panic.