Email collaboration is inflexible and a security threat. MxHero proposes a better way using Cloud Storage with a simple forward.
Email is at the center of our work. It is a primary communication channel with our co-workers, our clients and almost everyone else. Conceived almost 50 years ago, email has thrived despite having many shortcomings intrinsic to its early design. We continue to use email, but its poor ability to adapt to the times is extracting a high cost in terms of lack of security and poor productivity.
One defect of email that has both security and productivity implications, is the inability to separate a message from the inbox. By this I mean a way to save a single message like one can a document, so you can keep it as a record, share it without having to send a full copy to someone else, or include it in non-email applications.
MxHero recently deployed a new feature that goes a long way to solving all three of the aforementioned challenges. The new enhancement in mxHero’s Mail2Cloud platform allows companies that have cloud storage services (ex. Box, Egnyte, OneDrive, Google Drive, ShareFile), to setup a special email address. Forwarding or copying (Cc, Bcc) emails to this address result in a response email with a link to that message saved in the company’s cloud storage. The saved message is conveniently converted into a PDF with any attachments linked at the bottom. The feature works from any email client or system — mobile phone, tablet, desktop, etc.
…save a single message like one can a document, so you can keep it as a record, share it without having to send a full copy to someone else, or include it in non-email applications
The ability to have a message out of your inbox and in a powerful, secure collaboration platform is liberating in ways that aren’t completely obvious, given we have long adapted to email’s limitations.
MxHero copies your message (and attachments) to cloud storage and returns the link. That link allows you to securely refer to that message anywhere, including outside of email. Need to share your email in a text message or an internal collaboration tool like Slack or Facebook Workplace? Just paste the message’s link into the discussion. Want to add your email to your favorite to-do list tool? Copy the link to your task. Trying to reference client communications in your CRM system’s notes? Again paste the link. By optimizing email messages and attachments to cloud storage and proving their link, you gain new flexibility and portability with your email content that traditional email doesn’t offer.
Even within email, having a cloud storage link to a message is useful. In email it isn’t easy to discuss an email in a separate conversation from the original message. Today, a single message thread can involve several separate discussions. For example, you receive an email from a client. You forward that message to your team members and a conversation ensues, all in the same thread as your conversation with the client. The overlapping conversations in the same thread are not only confusing, but increase the risk that separate conversations get crossed. Most everyone has suffered the embarrassment of an improperly addressed email. Now you can leverage the cloud storage link to your email and include it safely in another email conversation — outside of the original conversation.
MxHero makes email collaboration more collaborative and secure. Typically email collaboration is tied down within email only. Email originates and ends in email, largely incompatible with other applications. Furthermore, in email, the only way to collaborate over a message and its attachments is to give someone else a full, unrestricted and untraceable copy. With mxHero provided email cloud storage links, you can collaborate over messages securely and conveniently from anywhere you can share a link.
Email has served us well and its simplicity and flexility has helped to connect the world like never before. However, it was designed in different times and that design has had trouble adapting to the demands of today. By leveraging new technologies, innovative solutions can help bridge the gap.