Building Portals For All Browsers And Office Suites

Just a quick thought that it is important to be sure that functionality one deploys will work on all commonly used browser platforms. And, if one has functionality which allows users to move data into Office programs like Excel, Access or Word, it is important to validate that the functions work in all versions.

And, although this is less of a concern, one also needs to be mindful of some of the "integration pitfalls" between browsers and office platforms. We are, at times, asked to try and figure out why such integration does not work. This often results in our scouring Microsoft, Google Chrome or Firefox support areas to try and determine why downloads don't always start when they should or halt unexpectedly, etc. It often also results in our relying less on this "built-in" functionality and more on interfaces we develop which are browser or office suite independent.

The moral of the story is that, in order to provide excellent client service, one in the legal extranet field needs to be aware of all the issues relating to all the interfaces which are in place when clients attempt to move data from the collaboration platform to their desktop.