MatterMojo introduces new workflow capability

LONDON 26 April 2016 – Ad Coelum Technology Limited, a legal software business focused on making lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, today announced that it has built a new workflow capability in MatterMojo.

MatterMojo is an affordable cloud-based matter management system which allows law firms and legal departments to manage clients, matters, inception and risk via a simple but elegant portal. It also has contact and task management, time recording and integrates with key document management providers. 

In the configuration area of MatterMojo, you are now able to create new ‘Workflow Definitions’ and specify where these can be run e.g. all matters, only a certain practice area etc. A Workflow Definition can have many ‘Milestone Definitions’ and those, in turn, can have many ‘Task Definitions’. From a matter, it will then be possible to create workflows, milestones and tasks automatically based on these definitions. A workflow tab allows you to drive the automation by creating new workflows and starting milestones which auto-generates the tasks.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “We have now started the journey to bridge the gap between matter management and case management. This is a significant milestone and the business is growing by the day”.

###

About

Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumtechnology.com), a legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology. Ad Coelum Technology’s vision is to create a more productive legal profession by evolving case & matter management utilising cloud, mobile & social technology enabling a rich and compelling user experience for today’s lawyer and their clients. Built upon Microsoft Azure with significant benefits over on-premises technology; MatterMojo® www.mattermojo.com is a cloud-based matter management system that delivers fee earner productivity across multiple devices.

###

MatterMojo Webinar - Matter Management as a Service from MatterMojo

MatterMojo are pleased to announce that we will be delivering a webinar on Tuesday, 31 March, at 16:00 BST. Join Paul Payne, CTO, and Tim Cheadle, CEO, to learn more about how MatterMojo can work in your law firm.

MatterMojo is targeted at law firms looking for an affordable, cloud-based client and matter management solution. Easily manage your clients, matters, contacts, tasks, and documents while improving your compliance and reducing risk, all via a simple but elegant portal that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Office 365.

Delivered to law firms through a cloud-based subscription model, the proposition re-defines the way matter management software is deployed and consumed. Switching away from on-premises technology for the core platform drastically reduces deployment and upgrade complexity; allowing the company to focus on delivering new features and bug fixes through a process of continuous delivery. Through this bold step, MatterMojo promises to re-align the matter management experience alongside the world of consumer technology, where a seamless and enjoyable experience across multiple devices has become a normality.

If you would like to register for this webinar on the 31st, please click the following link:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3652181068986958337

Note: This webinar is exclusively for law firms and their staff.

If you are unable to attend this webinar but would like to discuss your requirements, please get in touch via support@mattermojo.com – we’ll be happy to arrange a demo of our solutions.

Getting the most out of your Office 365 Azure Active Directory

If you already have an Azure subscription for managing your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) you are ready to sign-up for MatterMojo and use your Office 365 account to sign-in. If not please read on to find out how to prepare your Office 365 account for single sign-on with MatterMojo…

What is Azure AD?

Azure AD is a cloud-based service for managing user access to applications. It is part of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and underpins a wide range of Microsoft online products, including Office 365.

When you sign up to Office 365 you are asked to create a domain ending in ‘onmicrosoft.com’ e.g. mylawfirm.onmicrosoft.com. Behind the scenes Microsoft is creating an Azure AD for this domain to manage security and access for your instance of Office 365. Every time you sign in to Office 365 you are actually signing into Azure AD which validates your identity and passes this information to Office 365.

Azure AD can also be used to manage access to a wide range of non-Microsoft applications. This is great news for users because they only need to remember one set of credentials and it is great news for administrators because they can control access to thousands of applications from a central place.
This great capability is only available from within the Microsoft Azure portal. Fortunately registration is simple for Office 365 users and only takes a couple of minutes...

Enabling full Azure AD functionality for your Office 365 Instance

1. Log in to Office 365 as an administrator and navigate to the Admin Center (you will need to ask your Office 365 administrator to follow these steps if you are not an administrator yourself).

2. Scroll down to the bottom of the left-hand menu and click on ‘Admin \ Azure AD’

3. This launches a special Microsoft Azure sign-up page where you will need to enter a few details – no credit card is required but you do have to verify you are not a robot by entering a code sent to your mobile phone.

4. Once you have verified your identity you will be taken to the Azure subscriptions page where you will see your new subscription in a pending state.

Once your subscription is ready, click on the 'Portal’ link on the right hand-side to go to a cut-down version of the Azure portal where you can take full advantage of your Azure AD. To access the Azure portal again later the link is https://manage.windowsazure.com.

Now you have enabled Azure AD for your Office 365 account you can use it to sign-up and manage access to MatterMojo and thousands more applications. Head over to the Azure AD Market Place to see this ever growing list of cloud applications that support single sign-on using Azure AD.

That’s it for the sign-up steps! If you face any issues with the steps above or would like more information please contact us at support@mattermojo.com.

Building MatterMojo Episode 3 - Mobility Vision

In this video we'll be focusing on how we aim to improve law firm productivity by providing mobile access to client and matter information stored both on-premises and in the cloud.

The first advantage of MatterMojo’s cloud-first architecture is that the full web experience can always be accessed from the smartphone browser. Although it is not intended for heavy use on a smartphone, today's screen resolutions and MatterMojo’s responsive web design make it perfectly useable, providing users with the full power of MatterMojo from any internet connected device.

For true mobile scenarios where consumption of data is high and input relatively low, we intend to provide native MatterMojo smartphone apps for users on the move. In this video we will focus on our vision for Windows Phone and social media integration with LinkedIn.

Realise the benefits – Managing Partner/Finance Director/IT Director/Lawyer

Traditional legal business applications have often been very complicated. The amount and variety of hardware and software required to run them can be quite daunting and expensive. Law firms often need a whole team of experts to install, configure, test, run, secure, and update them.

Legal business applications are moving to the cloud. It’s not just a fad - the shift from traditional software models to the Internet has steadily gained momentum over the last 10 years. Looking forward, the next decade of cloud computing promises new ways to collaborate everywhere, anytime; especially through mobile devices.

In order to help articulate the benefits of adopting cloud computing and matter management as a service, we have summarised a quick overview below:

Managing Partners/Senior Partner:

·         Create competitive advantage by utilizing the latest productivity applications

·         Build a collaborative and connected enterprise leveraging consumer technology

·         Improve staff morale via investing in the latest tools

·         Maximise business continuity and minimize downtime

·         Establish new lines of business quickly or embrace acquired practices fast

CFO/Finance Directors:

·         Save costs and improve your cash flow management through a subscription model

·         Better manage compliance and risk initiatives

·         Simplify your technology investment, by reducing or potentially removing the need to manage complicated on premise servers and eradicate expensive replacement cycles

IT Directors and Managers:

·         Replace or leverage tired looking, legacy investments

·         Reduce total cost of ownership

·         Introduce exciting productivity apps

·         Integrate complex, disparate systems

·         Ensure systems are compliant and secure

Lawyers:

·         Improve utilisation

·         Increase collaboration with clients

·         Access information effectively whilst on the move

·         Quickly intake new clients whilst managing risk

Want to learn more? Sign up for our Registered Interest Group - http://www.adcoelumtechnology.com/MatterMojo/RIG

Cloud computing for lawyers not dummies! Part Three - Economics

In our last article we covered cloud service and deployment models. In this piece, we will focus on the reasons for adopting cloud and some of the economic arguments underlying the technology choice.

A recent Legal IT survey conducted in conjunction with InPractice www.inpractice.co.uk highlighted some great reasons for cloud adoption.



Benefits of cloud adoption

Cost was the number one driver followed by client collaboration and mobile access. So does cloud really drive down ownership costs? Let's explore some of the financial benefits of cloud adoption...

CapEx - certainly you can expect a significant reduction in Capex (aside from portal connection fees) as dependency on "owned" (read "up front cost") servers reduces or disappears based upon whether the IT infrastructure resides partially or wholly elsewhere.

Hardware - Can be more fully utilised, smoothing out demand and leveraging economies of scale from your chosen cloud provider.

Power - Less hardware onsite equals less power consumed. Save energy and you'll be greener too!

Resilience - Typical clouds have several locations for their data centers, and they mirror your data and applications across at least two of them. You don't have to provision for duplicate hardware in case of failure/outage.

Staffing costs - although a somewhat taboo subject, cloud computing does reduce the need for on-premise staff or more positively allows sensible redeployment of the in-house IT resource pool.

So what's the bottom line? Industry analysts predict a cost saving somewhere between 20-30% when cloud is fully embraced.

Moving away from legacy technology and the cost argument, we believe that the real benefits come in the form of improved collaboration for lawyers and their clients. A cloud based portal approach opens up the possibility to communicate seamlessly from mobile, tablet and desktop. Combine this with a more compelling user interface and everybody wins with an enjoyable experience.

In summary, competitive advantage can be gained by adopting Ad Coelum Technology:

• Reducing total cost of ownership through a cloud subscription pricing model
• Strong integration with legacy on-premise solutions and Microsoft applications such as Office and SharePoint
• Vastly improved connectivity for mobile scenarios, incorporating social media features and enhanced collaboration with clients

Cloud computing for lawyers, not dummies! Part Two!

In our first article on cloud computing, we settled on "the cloud is the internet as a business or consumer platform". Of course, the cloud can be deployed in a number of ways and in this blog we will walk you through the different types of cloud service and deployment models.

Several good descriptions of cloud technology exist but we found this one by the American National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) very useful. You can read it here in this concise 3 page pdf.

Service Models

Firstly, let's talk about service models. Service models refer to the capabilities of a cloud service. The three most common are Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

• SaaS: The ability to use a software package deployed by the service provider. Think Gmail!
• PaaS: A development platform hosted by the service provider to facilitate rapid design, testing, and deployment of new applications. Think Azure! Please find a neat video here
• IaaS: Can be viewed as the opposite of SaaS, whereby the service provider only delivers hardware resources (network, compute, storage) required to run a customer’s operating systems and applications. Think Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud!

Deployment Models

Secondly, let's discuss deployment models. Deployment models refer to the way in which the service is provisioned. There are 4 primary cloud deployment models - Private, Community, Public and Hybrid. 

• Private: The service is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organisation
• Community: The service is provisioned for exclusive use by a community of organisations
• Public: The service is provisioned for open use by the general public
• Hybrid: A mix of two or more private, community and public clouds

 

Ad Coelum Technology Models

So, what models do we intend to use to deliver our innovative cloud platform to forward thinking law firms?

In terms of our service model, we intend to begin with SaaS, making it easy for our customers to start using our software and allowing us to ensure that their experience is fully managed. As our platform evolves we also fully intend to leverage PaaS, exposing more and more of the platform to our customers, especially our integration engine powered by Windows Azure Service Bus technology.

From a deployment perspective, our solutions will be provisioned as a private cloud on a single-tenant basis, ensuring customer data remains secure and completely separate. This model also enables upgrades to solutions to be managed on a per-customer basis.

We have selected the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud to help us realise our vision to create a more productive legal profession by evolving case & matter management utilising cloud, mobile and social technology to provide a rich and compelling user experience. Below are just a handful of the fantastic benefits we and our customers will enjoy from a cloud platform like Windows Azure:

• Global footprint - Azure data centres provide a truly global cloud network
• High availability - 99.9% or higher SLA across all Azure services
• Only pay for what you use - resources are only billed when in use
• Ability to scale-out - hardware procurement becomes a thing of the past!

We're all in it together...

As an innovative new cloud technology company, we will also be practicing what we preach! Below are just a few of the many cloud technologies we will be using to run our business:

• Windows Azure for internal applications and of course, our legal software!
• Office 365 for content management, email and other forms of communication
• Dynamics CRM Online for business development
• Team Foundation Service for managing our cloud software development lifecycle

So there you have it. As we develop our business, we will experience the advantages and opportunities of cloud computing right along-side our customers. After all we can't promote the cloud as a means of business advantage if we don't live it and breath it ourselves!