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REF / MICROSOFT 365

An EDMS your staff do not have to be persuaded to open

The most common reason a document management system fails is that it lives somewhere else. Staff carry on emailing attachments because filing properly means stopping what they are doing and going to another application. EDMS by Sibasi is built into the applications they already have open — so filing a document is part of the work rather than a chore at the end of it.

Book a demo Why the platform is the advantage
M365-01 · Outlook

Email stops being a parallel filing system

The decisive exchange on any matter is almost always an email, and it almost always ends up in one person's mailbox. From the Outlook reading pane, a message and its attachments file to the correct case, contract or project library in one action — with sender, recipients, date and thread preserved as metadata rather than flattened into a file name.

  • File a message and attachments without leaving Outlook
  • Sender, recipients, sent date and conversation thread captured as metadata
  • Suggested destination based on the thread and the sender
  • Works on Outlook for Windows, Mac, web and mobile
  • Filed mail becomes searchable alongside every other document on the file
M365-02 · SharePoint

The repository itself, governed properly

SharePoint provides the storage, versioning, permissions and search. EDMS by Sibasi provides what SharePoint does not ship with: your file plan, your metadata model, your content types, your retention schedules and your registry processes, configured as a product rather than assembled as a project.

  • Libraries structured to your functional file plan
  • Corporate taxonomy and managed metadata across every site
  • Content types for each record class in your classification scheme
  • Major and minor versioning with unlimited history
  • Security-trimmed enterprise search across the whole estate
M365-03 · OneDrive

Field and branch offices keep working when the link does not

County offices, branches and field teams do not have consistent bandwidth, and a system that assumes fibre simply goes unused. Selected libraries sync for offline access and reconcile automatically when the connection returns, with version conflicts surfaced rather than silently resolved.

  • Offline access to selected libraries and files
  • Automatic reconciliation when connectivity returns
  • Conflict detection surfaced to the user, not resolved silently
  • Files On-Demand so local disk is not consumed by the whole repository
  • Same permissions and audit trail as the online repository
M365-04 · Microsoft Teams

Approvals arrive where the conversation already is

An approval that requires opening a separate portal is an approval that waits. Tasks arrive as actionable cards in Teams, can be approved or rejected in place with a comment, and the decision is written to the document's audit trail exactly as if it had been made in the portal.

  • Approve or reject from a Teams card without opening a portal
  • Document library surfaced as a tab in the relevant team
  • Overdue and escalated tasks pushed to the responsible channel
  • Comments captured against the document, not lost in chat
  • Works on Teams mobile for approvers who are rarely at a desk
M365-05 · Office add-ins

The EDMS appears as a pane inside Word, Excel and Outlook

Add-ins put the repository inside the applications themselves. From the task pane in Word or Excel a user can see the file plan, set metadata, check a document in or out, start an approval, or pull an approved template, without alt-tabbing to a browser. The Outlook add-in does the same for mail and attachments. They deploy centrally from the Microsoft 365 admin centre, so nobody has to install anything.

  • Outlook add-in for filing mail and attachments to the right case or contract
  • Word and Excel task pane for metadata, check-in and check-out, and approvals
  • Approved templates inserted directly from the repository
  • Document generation with metadata merged into the draft
  • Centrally deployed from the Microsoft 365 admin centre, no desktop install
  • Works across Windows, Mac and the web versions of Office
M365-06 · Dynamics 365 and Dynamics NAV

The document and the transaction stop living apart

Finance and operations run in Dynamics; the paperwork that justifies each transaction usually lives somewhere else. The integration joins them, so a purchase order in Business Central opens its signed contract, delivery note and supplier invoice from the same screen, and the documents stay governed by the EDMS rather than copied into an attachment field.

  • Dynamics 365 Business Central: purchase orders, invoices, contracts and supplier documents on the transaction
  • Dynamics NAV: supported on existing on-premises deployments, including pre-upgrade estates
  • Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service: the customer file joined to the CRM record
  • Documents stay in the EDMS under its retention and permissions, referenced rather than duplicated
  • Metadata written back to Dynamics so records can be found from either side
  • Approval outcomes in the EDMS posted back against the Dynamics transaction
M365-07 · Power BI and Power Automate

The system reports on itself, and connects to everything else

Turnaround times, overdue approvals, retention coverage, storage growth and adoption by department on a live dashboard. Power Automate carries the integrations outward — to finance, HR, case management and core banking systems — so the document and the transaction stay in step.

  • Live dashboards on turnaround, backlog and retention coverage
  • Compliance reports for audit committees and regulators
  • Hundreds of prebuilt connectors to line-of-business systems
  • Custom connectors for systems without a modern API
  • Microsoft Graph and REST APIs for direct integration

REF / LICENSING

You are probably already paying for most of the platform

Microsoft licences are bought in your own name, from us or from any partner you choose, and are not included in the deployment price. That is deliberate: nothing recurring gets added per user for the document system, and there is no separate identity store to license.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Small and mid-sized organisations

Includes SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and Entra ID P1. Sufficient for Basic and most Standard deployments.

Microsoft 365 E3

Enterprises and larger public bodies

Adds records management, retention policies and eDiscovery — the baseline for a deployment with statutory retention obligations.

Microsoft 365 E5

Regulated and security-sensitive institutions

Adds advanced Purview compliance, insider risk management, advanced eDiscovery and the full information protection surface.

Non-profit and academic plans

NGOs, foundations, universities and colleges

Microsoft grants and discounted academic pricing bring E3 and E5 within reach of organisations that could not otherwise fund them. We handle the qualification.

Sibasi is a Microsoft Gold Partner and can supply, migrate or optimise your licensing alongside the deployment. If you are over-licensed or holding plans that do not include the records-management features your obligations require, we will say so before you buy.

REF / DEPLOYMENT

Cloud is the default, not the requirement

Microsoft 365 cloud

SharePoint Online in your own tenant. Fastest to deploy, full AI capability, Microsoft operates the platform.

On-premises

SharePoint Server in your own data centre, where policy requires infrastructure you control. Some cloud AI services are unavailable.

Hybrid or sovereign

Sensitive classes held locally with collaboration in the cloud, or the whole platform in a chosen Azure region for residency rules.

REF / QUESTIONS

Asked most often about the Microsoft platform

Is SharePoint an EDMS on its own?

Not out of the box. SharePoint provides the platform: storage, versioning, permissions, search and integration with Microsoft 365. It does not arrive with your file plan, your retention schedules, your approval workflows, your metadata model or your registry processes — and those are what an EDMS actually is. EDMS by Sibasi is the product built on top: the configuration, intellectual property and governance layer that turns a SharePoint tenant into a working document and records management system, delivered as a defined deployment rather than a build-it-yourself project.

Does the system work with Outlook, Teams and OneDrive?

Yes. That is a large part of the point. Documents can be filed to the correct library directly from the Outlook reading pane, with the email metadata preserved. Approval tasks arrive in Microsoft Teams and can be actioned without opening a separate portal. Files sync through OneDrive for offline work and reconcile when the connection returns. Because the repository is SharePoint, documents open in the desktop and web versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint with version control intact.

Can it be deployed on our own servers instead of the cloud?

Yes. EDMS by Sibasi deploys on SharePoint Online in your Microsoft 365 tenant, on SharePoint Server inside your own data centre, or as a hybrid where sensitive records stay on premises while collaboration runs in the cloud. Where residency rules require data to stay in a particular country, a dedicated Azure region deployment is also available. Some AI capabilities depend on cloud services; we make the trade-off explicit at design stage rather than after signature.

Are Microsoft licences included in the price?

No, and that usually works in your favour. Microsoft 365 or SharePoint licences are bought in your own name, from us or any partner you choose. Most organisations that need an EDMS already hold them: Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3, E5 and the non-profit and academic equivalents all include SharePoint. Because the platform is already licensed, there is no second per-user subscription for the document system — which is the structural cost difference against a standalone EDMS product charged per user per month, indefinitely.

REF / NEXT STEP

See it inside your own Outlook and Teams

A demo in the applications your staff already use, so the adoption question answers itself before the procurement question is asked.

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