End-to-End Email Records Management: How Gimmal & Colligo Are Automating Compliance for Modern Organizations
Written by Gimmal Product Marketing
Managing records in a modern organization is no easy feat—especially when so much critical business information flows through email. That’s why Gimmal and Colligo recently teamed up for a two-part webinar series to show how our integrated solutions simplify, automate, and transform email records management in Microsoft 365.
Whether you missed the webinars or want a recap, this post will walk you through the highlights, actionable strategies, and real-world benefits of our partnership.
Why Email Records Management Matters More Than Ever
Email is the backbone of organizational communication. But did you know:
- 5 to 10% of business emails are official records?
- 5 out of every 6 records enter organizations via email?
From contracts and invoices to legal notices and HR documents, critical records are buried in inboxes, sent folders, and personal archives. If these aren’t managed correctly—and in compliance with ever-evolving regulations—organizations face:
- Legal and financial penalties
- Reputational damage
- Operational inefficiency
Outlook is for communication, not long-term storage. Keeping everything in mailboxes creates chaos, silos, and risk. The solution? Centralize and automate records management in your Microsoft 365 environment.
Why Gimmal and Colligo?
Both Gimmal and Colligo have decades of experience helping organizations bring order to information chaos:
Gimmal: Since 2002, a leader in information governance and records management, serving clients worldwide across public and private sectors.
Colligo: 25+ years of expertise building Microsoft-centric solutions, specializing in email and content management with a focus on compliance, productivity, and user adoption.
Together, we deliver a seamless, automated, and user-friendly approach to email records management—integrated with SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365.
The Three Pillars of Modern Email Records Management
1. Discovery & Classification
Gimmal Discover scans your organization’s mailboxes for messages and attachments that match customizable business rules—keywords, metadata, sender/recipient, even advanced patterns (regular expressions)—to identify what should be classified as a record.
Key Benefits:
- Granular, rules-based automation: No more relying on end users to decide what’s a record.
- Centralized control: IT, compliance, or records managers set the policies—users focus on their work.
2. Automated Capture and Filing
Once records are identified, Colligo Email Manager automatically moves them (and their attachments and metadata) into SharePoint Online—your secure, searchable, collaborative system of record.
Key Benefits:
- No more manual filing: Automation eliminates the admin burden (and human error) of dragging/dropping emails.
- Rich metadata extraction: Ensures emails are easy to find, filter, and report on—just like in Outlook, but centralized and compliant.
3. Retention, Disposition, and Lifecycle Management
After capture, Gimmal Records takes over:
- Automated classification: New content is assigned to the right record series based on your retention schedule.
- Lifecycle management: From declaration (locking down records) through retention, legal hold, approval workflows, and eventual disposition (destruction or transfer).
- Audit-ready, defensible compliance: Every action is tracked, certificates of destruction are generated, and legal/regulatory obligations are met.
What Does This Look Like in Practice?
Imagine this workflow:
- A key email (say, a signed contract) arrives.
- Gimmal Discover flags it as a record (based on your rules), and copies it to a monitored Outlook folder.
- Colligo Email Manager picks it up, extracts metadata, and files it into the right SharePoint location—automatically.
- Gimmal Records applies the correct retention and disposition policy, based on content, sender, or other rules.
- Records are locked, retained, and can be disposed of or transferred (with approvals as needed).
- Everything is auditable, findable, and defensible.
Result: No more year-end “filing frenzies,” no more missing documents, no more compliance headaches.
Real-World Impact: A Municipal Success Story
A large North American municipality faced massive email volumes, frequent FOIA requests, and the need to centralize and secure critical records. With Gimmal and Colligo, they:
- Automated capture of essential emails and attachments into SharePoint
- Enabled fast, metadata-driven search for efficient FOIA response
- Applied consistent, defensible retention policies across all content
- Saved 30–60 minutes per employee per day
- Gained peace of mind around compliance and litigation readiness
Multiply those time savings across hundreds of employees, and the ROI is clear.
FAQ Highlights from Our Webinar Series
Q: Do you need Microsoft Purview for Gimmal or Colligo to work?
A: No—our solutions work with standard Microsoft 365 (E3/G3) licenses.
Q: Who sets the rules for what’s a record?
A: Policies are usually set centrally by IT/compliance, not each user.
Q: Can you process historical emails (e.g., old PST files)?
A: Yes—Gimmal Discover can ingest and classify legacy email archives.
Q: How are personal emails handled?
A: Only business records (5–10% of emails) are moved to SharePoint per policy; personal emails remain outside the system of record.
Q: What about legal holds and multi-step approvals?
A: Gimmal Records supports both—ensuring defensible, compliant processes.
Q: Is AI involved?
A: Colligo leverages AI for smarter, easier auto-filing and metadata extraction—but all intelligence can be toggled to fit your organization’s readiness.
The Bottom Line: Compliance Without Compromise
Email records management doesn’t have to be a manual, error-prone, or burdensome process. With Gimmal and Colligo’s integrated approach, you can:
- Automate discovery, classification, and capture of critical emails
- Centralize records in SharePoint for collaboration and compliance
- Apply robust retention, legal hold, and disposition policies
- Empower end users to focus on their work—not filing
Ready to move your organization up the maturity curve—and stay on the right side of compliance?
Get Started or Learn More
Watch the full webinar recordings linked in this post.
Request a demo.
See us at upcoming events: AIM, ARMA, and more—check out our events page for more details.
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