Azure RMS Sharing App & RMS Document Tracking

EMS Landing page

In the last blog we looked at Azure RMS and how it can be used to protect emails. We saw an example of a "rights protected" email using Outlook Web App. However the solution is only supported using Microsoft email clients. What happens if we want to send an email to a colleague and they wish to open that protected email on an Android or iOS device. Enter the Azure RMS Sharing App. Microsoft released the RMS Sharing App at the end of 2014. The announcement was made in the Official RMS Team Blog. You can read that article here

This is an extract: 

"First, we know that you desire built-in support for RMS into Microsoft Office on all platforms. We currently support RMS in Office 2010, Office 2013, and Office 365 but lack comprehensive support on other platforms.

We’ve come up with a way of supporting the sharing of secured Office documents in advance of the native Office support. We’ve done so via the RMS application’s Share Protected button. When you invoke Share Protected to share Office documents we send your email recipients both an RMS protected version of the Office document and a protected PDF copy of the same file. 

The Share Protected button is added to Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (v2010 and 2013) when you install the RMS app for Windows"

So how does this work. Download the App from the Microsoft Download Center

http://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/download/details.aspx?id=40857  

Install the App.

The installation requires a restart.

See the new "RMS Share Protected" button in Outlook. Create an email and click on the Share Protected button.

Log in using your Azure credentials (essentially your email address) so that your RMS license rights can be verified.

Choose the RMS rights. 

See the other configurable options:

• Set expiration date
• Email notification when someone opens the attached document
• Allow revoking of the document

The mail is then RMS protected. See that we now have two attachments - a protected Word document as normal and also a protected PDF document which can be opened on any device. Send the email..........

......and you get an immediate notification with a link to the RMS Document Tracking Site. Unfortunately this link doesn't work for me yet as it is currently just available in North America. When the site is available I will be able to track the document to see who has opened it and when. I will also be able to revoke the document at any time.

I will also be able to access the Document Tracking site from here.

The recipient receives the email. See that Word Online is not supported.

The recipient tries another app (Word in this case) and is given instructions on how to access the document. The user should select "Download" to install their version of the RMS Sharing App.

The recipient logs into the RMS Site........

....and is prompted to select and install the correct version of the app for their device. They can now open the document (I have no screenshots of this as they are disabled by RMS).

Finally I get an email to tell me that the recipient has opened the mail (with a link to the Document Tracking Site). 

This app is seriously cool.