Emailing to a SharePoint list or document library in SharePoint online is not currently available. Below we’ve put together a product comparison table to easily compare some of the options you have to solve this issue. Enjoy.
In the early days of SharePoint Online, there was a great effort by the team at Microsoft to make sure that there was feature parity to the on-premise version with every incremental release of the online version. However from the early days it was clear that the on-premise version and online version wouldn’t entirely move in the same direction. There were the struggles originally with the customization of SharePoint but slowly that moved away from the on-premise version as it went more client-side Javascript first.
We saw other major differences, most notably was the omission Timer Jobs that did wonders for the background processes in SharePoint. And one of the hardest working timers jobs? This one here:
In this timer job, SharePoint, or at least the on-premise versions, allowed incoming email. So we had the option have having incoming email for every list and library. I know I configured it many times. Fast forward a few years, and with the timer jobs no longer, we no longer have this option in SharePoint Online.
Due to the limited functionally of SharePoint, we need to use automation software to send email data into sharepoint.
There are a few options now, as a result of this obvious need. We examine some of them below:
(This option has been removed in SharePoint Online as of March 2017)
This one I found doing some research, and I felt it was worth pointing out. Essentially this boils down to creating a new mailbox on the Exchange server and this app is really just a link to it. Which means its really just a mailbox, in a site and doesn’t really cover the scenario of email in a list or more specifically, sending an email to a SharePoint list or library. Which really means that you get none of the niceties of metadata, workflow and document management options you get with document libraries and lists:
Pros
- Provides a nice way to collaborate on both document libraries and mail in the same interface.
- Capture email and email attachments on a project basis, meaning all communications and documents sit in one place. Like Office 365 groups
- Site Mailbox has it’s own unique email address
- Emails sit in Microsoft Exchange, whilst documents sit in Microsoft SharePoint
Cons
- The email is NOT in SharePoint. It actually sits in Microsoft Exchange – therefore no benefits of document management features like workflow etc
- Both Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint need to be setup by administrators
- You need SharePoint 2013, Exchange 2013 and Outlook 2013
Office 365 Groups is the cross-application membership service in Office 365. At the basic level, an Office 365 Group is an object in Azure Active Directory with a list of members and a loose coupling to related workloads including a SharePoint team site, Yammer Group, shared Exchange mailbox resources, Planner, PowerBI and OneNote. You can add or remove people to the Group just as you would any other group-based security object in Active Directory.
Office 365 is a great tool to collaborate a project, or manage a specific client. We’ve used them a lot here at Parserr. And best part is you can include external clients in the conversation.
Image courtesy of https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2016/09/08/introducing-guest-access-for-office-365-groups/
Image courtesy https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2016/11/17/introducing-a-new-file-experience-for-groups-in-outlook-on-the-web/
Pros
- Store emails and documents side by side in one place
- Collaborate on email and documents in one place
- Access to Office 365 groups from IOS and Android apps
Cons
- SharePoint Document libraries features like versioning, metadata, workflow or views arent available.
- No metadata available from the email – eg. Email subject or data within to sort your document library documents
- No custom lists
| Site Mailbox App | Office 365 groups | Drag & drop from desktop | Onedrive Sync | Microsoft Flow | Parserr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What is it? | A Microsoft Exchange inbox which sits within SharePoint but isnt directly tied to a SharePoint List | Office 365 Groups is a group of users, packaged together with a Document library, calendar, Yammer group, Planner, PowerBI and OneNote | See example image above. Drag and drop the email directly from Outlook to SharePoint | Two-way sync between a local folder and a SharePoint Document Library | Cloud based tool that allows employees to create and automate workflows across multiple applications and services without the need for developer help | Our third party product assists customers in extracting data from email and email to SharePoint functionality |
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| Price | Included in Office 365 | Included in Office 365 | Included in Office 365 | Included in Office 365 | Included in Office 365 | Free account. Plans start at $22.99/month |
| Email into SharePoint List/Library
Does the email actually end up in a list or library? |
☓ | ☓ | ✔ (Library only) | ✔ (Library only) | ✔ (Library only) | ✔ (Both) |
| Time Spent per Email | NA | NA | 1 minute | 1 minute | None | None |
| Email attachments into a SharePoint List/Library | ☓ | ☓ | ☓ | ✔ (Library only) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Use extracted data from email as metadata in Lists/Libraries | ☓ | ☓ | ☓ | ☓ | ✔ (Requires programming concepts) | ✔ |
| Use extracted data from email attachments (PDF, CSV, XLSX) as metadata in Lists/Libraries | ☓ | ☓ | ☓ | ☓ | ☓ | ✔ |
After comparing many different tools online, we believe Parserr is the best tool to send email data to SharePoint. Parserr is a simple, easy to use parsing tool that provides the quickest automation, best functionality, offers numerous integrations, and is the most affordable – Try our Free Email Parserr Today!
