Actionstep offers a number of different integrations to help you manage your emails and documents better. In this article, we explain your options and offer advice on which ones you will want to use.

Saving emails to Actionstep

Actionstep offers the following integrations to allow you to save emails to matters in Actionstep:

Actionstep's Google Add-In (formerly Google Gadget) for Mail
Actionstep's Outlook add-in for Office 365
Actionstep's Office desktop plugin

Obviously, if you are accessing your email through a Google suite hosted email, we would recommend that you use Actionstep's Google Add-In (formerly Google Gadget) for Mail. See Installing The Gmail Add-on to install.

If you are using Microsoft Outlook to manage your emails you should use one of the other two options. If you have an Office 365 business account, we would strongly recommend that you use Actionstep's Outlook add-in for Office 365. This add-in will work straight in your Outlook, it will work on a Mac or PC and on the desktop or online version of Outlook. See Setting up Actionstep's Outlook add-in for Office 365 to install.

If you are using Outlook on a PC but not with an Office 365 business account, then install our desktop plugin for Office. This will only work on your desktop version of Outlook and only on a PC. See Installing the Office Plugin to install this and Using the Plugin-Outlook for how to use it.

If you process your emails through another system apart from Gmail or Outlook, then Actionstep does not offer a direct integration option. However, you can configure your mailbox in Actionstep so that you can send emails from and receive them into Actionstep. You may want to consider doing this as well as using one of the integrations above. See Email Setup for more details..

Opening documents in Actionstep and saving changes back to Actionstep

Actionstep offers the ability to be able to open and edit a document that is stored on a matter using the following methods:

Open in Office Online
Open in Office via OneDrive
Open in Office via Actionstep plugin
Open in Google Docs

Check the requirements below to ensure you can run the option you want.

Actionstep users will get a better experience using the 'Open in Office Online' for editing documents in a browser and collaborating on documents It is recommended to use 'Open in Office via Actionstep plugin' for editing documents using desktop versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

We explain each option in more detail below.

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If you are using Actionstep's Outlook add-in for Office 365 for your emails you may still want to install and use the Actionstep Office plugin to use it in Word, Excel and Powerpoint. See Using the Office plugin and Outlook add-in for Office 365 at the same time.

Requirements

The first three options require you to have Microsoft Office installed. Each will allow you to open and edit an Office document like a Word, Excel or Powerpoint file.

The first two options ('Open in Office Online' and 'Open in Office via OneDrive require an Office 365 business account to be able to work. Both will work on either a PC or Mac computer.

The 'Open in Office via Actionstep plugin' option will require you to have Office installed on a Windows computer. The computer should be run on Windows 7 or higher and the version of Office should be 2013 or higher.

The last option, 'Open in Google Docs' requires you to have a Google account.

Open in Office Online

This option will open the document in Office Online, the web-based version of Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Changes that are made to documents while they are open in the browser will be saved virtually as they are made to the document.

Other users will be able to see that the document has been opened by another Actionstep user and will have the option to also edit it. Changes made by both users will appear in real-time and can be seen by each user.

See Opening a Document In Microsoft Office Online for more details.

Open in Office via OneDrive

This option will open the document in the desktop version of the Office product (Word, Excel or PowerPoint). The document can be altered as normal but changes to the document will not be saved to Actionstep until the alterations are finished. Changes will, however, be saved into your OneDrive account so the risk of loss of progress is very unlikely.

When a user opens the document, the document will show as 'Checked out' in Actionstep. This will prevent any other users from opening the same document. Once changes to the document have been finished the user must close the Office product and will at that stage be able to 'Check in' the document. This will save the document as it is currently saved in OneDrive to Actionstep.

Open Office via Actionstep plugin

This uses Actionstep's Office plugin to Open your document. This is the same plugin that can be installed to save emails to Actionstep matters that is mentioned above in this article.

To use this, a user must install the Office plugin to their PC first. Once installed, this option will open the desktop version of the Office program for the file type you clicked on (Word, Excel or PowerPoint).

Changes made to that document will not be saved as they are made but clicking the save button in Word, Excel or Powerpoint will save the changes.

The plugin also allows you to save a document that you opened in Word, Excel or Powerpoint but not from Actionstep into Actionstep. You can also save a copy of the document into another matter.

See Installing the Office Plugin for how to install and Using the Plugin - Word, Excel & PowerPoint for how to use it.

Open in Google Docs

Use this option to open the document in Google Docs. Google Docs will automatically save changes made to the document to Google Docs, however, those changes will not be saved to the version of the document kept in Actionstep.

Help Center

What integration to use for your email and documents