Intapp workspaces: Improving document management, security, compliance, and user adoption in Microsoft Teams with firm collaboration software integration
As law firms have become increasingly reliant on virtual communications, many have adopted Microsoft Teams to fill this growing need. When firms moved to remote and hybrid work during the pandemic, the solution’s inclusion in law firms’ preexisting Microsoft 365 subscriptions contributed to its rapid expansion, and that expansion has continued. Survey data shows that Microsoft Teams has become a top choice among law firms, with adoption growing from 4% in 2020 to 42% in 2022.
Although it offers robust capabilities for team communications, file storage, and real-time collaboration on documents, Microsoft Teams needs to be focused for the specific needs of law firms.
Intapp Workspaces helps law firms expand the utility of their Microsoft 365 investments by adding a legal-centric layer to Microsoft Teams implementations, providing enhancements that strengthen security, improve performance, maintain consistency, and deliver a positive user experience.
Intapp Workspaces extends Microsoft Teams to include purpose-built collaboration areas that are tailored to the unique ways lawyers work with one another and their clients. These legal-specific capabilities also give law firms the tools they need to prevent inappropriate sharing of information with unauthorized individuals.
To address the risks associated with the infinite flexibility of the Microsoft Teams platform, Intapp Workspaces builds in guardrails to ensure firmwide boundaries are intact, while promoting the flexibility of the platform within responsible constraints of a firm’s policies.
Combined, these measures help ensure that firm data stored in Microsoft Teams is organized, secure, and appropriately provisioned.
Enhance document management in Microsoft Teams
Most firms already have a legacy documents management system that they want to integrate with Microsoft Teams. Because users typically use Microsoft Teams as their platform for working on documents and artifacts directly, IT teams need to ensure that the systems are compatible. Intapp Workspaces incorporates legacy document management systems into the Teams environment, so firms gain benefits from both platforms.
Intapp Workspaces firm collaboration software augments Microsoft Teams’ document management capabilities for law firms by enabling users to store, organize, and manage documents within Microsoft Teams. Users can create folders and subfolders to categorize documents, set access permissions, and search for documents using keywords and filters.
Using Intapp Workspaces, users can track changes to documents and maintain version history. The solution also allows multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously, and synchronizes updates in real time. When it’s necessary to share documents with external users, such as clients and partners, Intapp Workspaces automates access permissions and the setting of expiration dates for shared documents as needed.
Strengthen security and compliance
Firms that move from outdated, paper-based processes to communicating in Microsoft Teams gain the ability to streamline much of their collaboration — but with this increased capability comes greater risk of accidental or unauthorized file sharing, modification, and deletion . Unauthorized posts with external parties also pose a danger. Intapp Workspaces ensures that communication and collaboration efforts are appropriately secured based on the parameters of the situation.
To protect firm and client data and remain in compliance with data privacy and security regulations, such as GDPR and HIPAA, firm lawyers and IT teams can benefit greatly from the support of purpose-built tools like Intapp Workspaces.
Automation can play a key role in preserving firm security and compliance standards while connecting distributed teams. Intapp Workspaces ensures that Team membership meets established security standards and guidelines, and enforces ethical walls rules against membership . Firms can also utilize automated enforcement for compliance policies to scan messages and files to ensure that certain data types aren’t inappropriately shared in Microsoft Teams.
Furthermore, Intapp Workspaces encrypts data at risk and in transit, helping to ensure that sensitive information is protected from unauthorized access. The solution also builds in access controls that define granular access for Microsoft Teams content. Archiving and data retention features allow law firms to retain and dispose of content in accordance with regulatory and compliance requirements.
Drive lawyer adoption of Microsoft Teams
IT teams know that the easier it is for lawyers to create, find, and work in the Microsoft Teams channels they need, the more likely they are to accept and use the solution. Without appropriate measures to support ease of use and organize existing Teams, lawyers will likely struggle to navigate their way through potentially hundreds of Teams as they search for the ones they need to join. Inevitably, they will become frustrated, hindering adoption.
Law-firm IT teams have learned that offering customizable features for lawyers during implementation is critical to adoption, and Intapp Workspaces offers a variety of options.
Customized workflows, such as review and approval processes and enforcement of document retention procedures, automate routine tasks and streamline processes. Lawyers can also personalize their user interface through dashboards and simplified navigation menus.
Because Intapp Workspaces can integrate with a variety of technologies and applications beyond document management, including practice management and time and billing, lawyers have seamless access to the applications and data they need when they need it.
Provide a tailored, legal-specific experience in Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a powerful technology platform — but it’s designed for a vast range of industries and use cases unrelated to legal work. Like many horizontal software solutions, Microsoft Teams benefits from integrations that close functionality gaps.
Part of Intapp Collaboration & Content, Intapp Workspaces seamlessly creates purpose-built areas that bring collaborators together — pulling in the right team members and gathering relevant information across business systems.
The solution streamlines preferred ways of working by gathering dispersed engagement information from a range of systems and presenting it via a single pane of glass. By providing an engagement-centric experience, automatic provisioning, application integration, and engagement lifecycle management — all while strengthening security and governance — Intapp Workspaces helps law-firm IT teams easily address the requirements that matter most to law firms.
Purpose-built for Microsoft Teams, Intapp Workspaces firm collaboration software provides a secure and collaborative environment where legal teams can manage client-related information, documents, and workflows. The solution integrates with a variety of third-party applications, including Microsoft 365, iManage, NetDocuments, and Intapp Time. This integration allows users to work seamlessly with their preferred applications while maintaining control and visibility over their work within Intapp Workspaces.
To learn more about Intapp Workspaces, schedule a demo.
