Monday, December 15, 2008

New Release of Extranet Collaboration Manager


Our software team is continuously working to improve and enrich the feature set of our Extranet Collaboration Manager product. This latest release ExCM is no exception, containing a long list of improvements which further establish ExCM as the premiere solution available today for managing your SharePoint-based extranet. Just take a look at these new features:
Feature: User Defined Invitation Expiration Length
The expiration length of an invitation can now be set by an administrator. Possibly values include 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months and 1 year.
Feature: E-mail Address as Username
Administrators can configure a site to use the e-mail address as the user name. This option is applied to the registration, add user and manage profile pages.
Feature: Invitation Zone Targeting
Administrators can specify the SharePoint zone used during an invitation. This feature is especially useful in a dual zone authentication environment where you want all invitation requests to send the user to the Extranet zone (even if the invitation is sent by an internal user).
Feature: New E-mail Messages and Improved E-mail Tokenization
Each e-mail message now supports over 160 standard e-mail tokens (see help documentation for full list). Each token now includes an HTML encoded version to allow better e-mail client support. The addition of the new tokens provides a very flexible e-mail message system. Standard token groups include...
    • ExtranetUrls
    • ExtranetUser (Only when user is present)
    • ExtranetUser.Profile (Only when user profile is present)
    • Site
    • SiteCollection
    • User (Current SharePoint User)
    • WebApplication
    • Zone.Current
    • Zone.Default
    • Zone.Invitation
New e-mail messages have been provided to include the new tokens. The new messages include a better HTML format, Invitation URL support, Extranet User Profile attributes. The goal was to allow an administrator to setup the user profile attributes and invitation zone and not have to worry about modifying the e-mail messages.
Feature: Password Information Message
Administrators can provide a password information message which provides insight to the required password complexity during user registration, password reset and add user pages.
Feature: View Users in Role
Site Collection Administrators can new view all extranet accounts that are members of a selected role.
Feature: Password Reset Support for User with Identical E-mail Addresses
When a user attempts to reset the password for their account and one or more accounts are using the same e-mail address, the user is presented with a list of matching accounts and is asked to select the matching account. After the correct account is selected the user can continue to reset their password.
Feature: Removed Delegation and Mail Provider Configuration
The Delegation Provider and Mail Provider configuration options have been deprecated. These options were deprecated to simplify the interface and eliminate confusion. Implementation of this feature will be altered to provide greater functionality in a future release.
Feature: Improved Installation Experience
The ExCM installation experience has been improved. Improvements include an improved interface which is easier to follow. The SPSolutions.SharePoint.Delegation.wsp and the SPSolutions.SharePoint.Delegation.Templates.Membership.wsp solutions have been merged together to provide an easier installation experience. As a result the Membership Delegation Templates feature has been merged with the Delegation Web Components feature.
The Site Provisioning Assistant installation has been separated from the Extranet Collaboration Manager during the Enterprise Edition installation. The Site Provisioning Assistant Application is still bundled together in this package.
Feature: New Trial Licensing Model
Installation of a trial license is no longer required to evaluate the product. The application creates a 30-day trial license when first accessed.
Download an evaluation copy of ExCM or contact our sales team to arrange a demonstration.