Formicary Integrates Persistent Group Chat for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 with Office SharePoint Server 2007

London, UK (PRWEB) June 22, 2010 -- Formicary, a provider of software solutions and systems integration (SI), has launched a solution which, for the first time, integrates Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 Persistent Group Chat with Microsoft’s content management system, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. Integrating Formicary’s secure web-based Chat offering, WebChat, with Office SharePoint Server will combine the immediacy and information sharing culture of the chat room environment with the detailed knowledge held by the content management system.

Originally developed to extend the benefits of Group Chat to individuals not directly connected the OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat client, such as remote workers or third party customers, WebChat will bring a new dimension to how SharePoint is used by the business. For example, the improved access to information will help aiding decision making or improving customer service activity.

“Office SharePoint Server is designed to be a collaborative, information sharing environment”, says Philip Miller, Head of Intelligent Collaboration Group, Formicary, “but if there is no efficient means of actually communicating, then the application is not being fully optimised. Likewise, by bringing the knowledge of SharePoint into the chat room environment, it’s adding greater context to the discussions. In our experience, employees navigate away from applications like SharePoint once they have the specific information they were looking for. By hosting Group Chat discussions within the application, they are more likely to stay logged on and therefore utilise the benefits offered by the solution in the first place.”

Peter Culver, IT manager, Redburn Partners, a company already benefiting from the new application adds, “WebChat integration into SharePoint is key for us. SharePoint is likely to become a central technology for our organisation in the future and in our opinion, would not be complete without WebChat. Having WebChat integrated has added integrity to SharePoint and was identified early on as a true enabler in us securing user buy-in on the application. Without it, we really felt that we would have been scraping the surface of what SharePoint is capable of.”

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