Zoho integrates productivity suite

BOSTON, USA: Zoho today announced Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint, which lets users work with Zoho online collaborative productivity applications to create, view, and edit files stored in Microsoft SharePoint.

“Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint brings the collaborative advantages of Zoho productivity applications to Microsoft SharePoint users,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist.

“We noticed that some businesses like the collaboration capabilities of online productivity applications, but they prefer to keep their data behind their firewall. With Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint, we are offering the best of both worlds, collaborative productivity apps integrated with Microsoft SharePoint behind the corporate firewall.”

Online apps with offline data: Perfect integration for businesses

Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint is delivered as an add-on that installs on top of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and 2003. Once installed, Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint lets users working in Microsoft SharePoint view, edit, and create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in Microsoft Office formats, but using Zoho online applications.

When a user clicks on a file in Microsoft SharePoint, the options will include “Edit in Zoho Editor” and “View in Zoho Editor.” The Edit option opens the file for editing in a Zoho editor within Microsoft SharePoint, either Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, or Zoho Show, depending upon the file selected.

The view option opens the file for viewing in appropriate Zoho applications within Microsoft SharePoint. The user must be connected to the Internet to access Zoho applications.

"Collaboration is one of the key aspects for online productivity applications, so we don't just call ours ‘Productivity Applications.’ We call them ‘Collaborative Productivity Applications,’” Vegesna said. “With Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint, we bring collaborative editing capabilities to Microsoft SharePoint.”

Vegesna continued, “With Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint, users can view and edit files directly in their browsers, inside Microsoft SharePoint with no additional installations required on client computers. This approach lets users work on Microsoft SharePoint documents from any operating system and in this economy, can help save some money on Microsoft Office licenses.”