InMail X is a new product from Australia that aims to improve email integration with Worldox (it also works with SharePoint, Worksite and some other products). In addition to basic Worldox integration it also has some other, in my view even more useful, functions.
When you click the “Send and File” button that is added to Outlook, InMailX pops up a list of recently used client/matters together with their description. If this for a matter not previously used, you can also pop up the Worldox dialog to select it, and it is then automatically added to your “Favorites.” InMailX also lets you define a tag to be added automatically to the subject line so that you have more information than the Re:Re:Re:Re: that may or may not have anything to do with the actual email. So for example, you could add the client/matter number or name to the subject lines. If you copy rather than move an email to Worldox, inMailX adds a column to Outlook showing what file it has been copied to, including the description, not just the client/matter number.
You can also save copies of a given email to multiple client/matters – a bad practice, but one that is frequently demanded by clients. This does save copies, however, so you have more than one copy of the same email.
One of the more nifty features allows you to truncate the back and forth “conversations” when you print an email, so that you can specify how much of the email you want to print (e.g., only the actual email, or the email and what it is responding to) without have to print pages and pages that you just throw out.
But another feature is even more important. InMailX lets you remove metadata from Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. If desired, you can add something to the file name to indicate it has been cleaned (e.g., “Cleaned”). Thus InMailX takes the place of other metadata removal programs such as Payne Consulting’s popular MetaData Assistant.
Furthermore, if you email multiple attachments, inMailX will convert them all to a single PDF file AND let you order the attachments in the order you want the recipient to read them, including setting up bookmarks in the PDF file. This is a very cool feature. If you are sending 10 files, you can create a single PDF, with the files in the correct order, and each file bookmarked in a table of contents.
Lastly, inMailX is extremely customizable. There are many more options than I can describe here: suffice it to say that you will be able to tweak the program to match pretty much exactly how you want it to work for your firm.
InMailX is modular. Most firms will probably want only the three basic modules, but larger firms might want additional functionality that, for example, allows them to centrally manage all the firm’s signature blocks and create email forms. InMailX is new to the United States, but has been around in Australia for a while. Like many newer programs, the makers are very aggressive: in the process of testing and evaluating inMailX I found several issues that needed to be added or fixed: corresponding new builds were available in less than a week.
InMailX is definitely on the expensive side: the three basic modules, together with the Worldox connector, are $260 per user plus 20% yearly maintenance or $312/user for the first year (software costs more in Australia). But depending on how committed the firm is to saving extra clicks and whether the additional attachment and metadata removal features are desirable, it might well be worth it. If you don’t have a metadata removal program, figure on about $80 or so per user against the cost of InMailX. You can contact them at www.inmailx.com