Whenever I think of Mainsoft, the Mainsoft Lotus Notes to SharePoint integration plug-in is the first thing that comes to mind. I know they do other things with other tools, but it’s the end-user collaboration piece that’s central for me.

Now they have another tool in their collection which is going to force me to broaden my view: Harmony for Outlook, which introduces a side-bar to enable document sharing between Outlook and SharePoint or Google Docs. Eg, on the Google Docs side,

“Share Google documents automatically. Drag a Google document from the sidebar to create links in your e-mail messages and meeting requests. Harmony automatically shares the document with the recipients. You decide to give recipients read or write access. Recipients simply click the link in the message to open the document in their browser. They don’t need Harmony installed.“

It’s similar for SharePoint too.

So:
– Mainsoft now offers a new tool to eliminate email attachments and improve document co-authoring.
– The tool is directly integrated into Outlook, where a lot of people spend a lot of their day.
– It supports both a corporate SharePoint play, and a consumer Google Docs play.
– Best news is … it’s free*.

Make sure you watch the overview video.

* On “free” … Of course, “free” comes with pros and cons. The pros are self-evident, but the cons can be dangerous: (a) proliferation within an organization without IT sign-off, (b) potential for conflicts between Harmony and other add-ins, (c) potential for making Outlook less stable, and (d) potential for downstream costs if the vendor decides to go “non-free”. Forewarned is forearmed …