Rocket Matter unveils Office 365 integration
There was a time when Rocket Matter would give each of its product updates a Star Trek-related name. That practice has gone the way of the original series as CEO Larry Port admits it was difficult to keep coming up with unique names.
Nevertheless, on Tuesday the cloud-based legal billing and management software company had so many announcements that it might have seemed like the Tribbles were taking over the Enterprise again.
First, the company unveiled what it has referred to as a “deep integration” with Microsoft Office 365. According to a press release, Rocket Matter users can now save Outlook emails and MS Office files directly into the program. Users can also sync both Outlook and Rocket Matter calendars.
Previously, Rocket Matter had worked with Outlook via a Windows-only plug-in. The new integration is cloud-based, which means it will work for Macs, Google Chromebooks and smartphones, Robert Ambrogi wrote at Lawsites)
Rocket Matter CEO Larry Port told the ABA Journal that the Office 365 integration process was much simpler and quicker than creating the original Windows-only plug-in. According to him, Rocket Matter decided to do the full-scale integration during the third quarter of 2016, and it was completed by the fourth quarter.
“Our heavy duty Outlook plug-in was released last summer, but it was so buggy and problematic and took us so long to get it out the door,” Port says. “But the Office 365 platform was much easier. For one thing, it’s not built on 2007 technology. It’s cloud-based, and that made it easier to do.”
Port also points out that lawyers and legal professionals are embracing Office 365 at a rapid pace, meaning Rocket Matter had to offer full-scale integration in order to meet market demand. “One thing we started to notice was that even long-term Mac fans were starting to use Office 365,” Port says. “The migration to Office 365 has been a little breathtaking actually, so many people have migrated so quickly.”
In addition to the Office 365 integration, Rocket Matter also announced a few other features. There’s now an improved search tool that examines a user’s system for potential conflicts of interest. Rocket Matter also unveiled a tool aimed at fee collection, which allows users to charge a fee for late payments and offer a discount for early payments, as well as the ability to charge clients a convenience fee for credit card payments.
Finally, Rocket Matter users will be able to have phone calls answered and recorded by virtual receptionist service Ruby Receptionists and then automatically uploaded into Rocket Matter. Ruby Receptionists, which announced an integration with Rocket Matter, Clio and Lexicata on Tuesday, can also analyze a user’s contacts so that its receptionists can be more familiar with certain callers.
“Ruby understands the unique needs of solo and small-firm practitioners and by integrating their Ruby call data with the tools they use every day, we help centralize their client communications into one system. This provides the first step in efficient and effective client billing, follow up and customer retention,” stated Katharine Nester, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Ruby Receptionists, in a press release.
