Patent ID: 8875057

Claim:
A method, in a system comprising a user computer and a SHAREPOINT server communicating over a network, of enabling, using OUTLOOK running on the user computer, document management of files stored by the SHAREPOINT server in a SHAREPOINT tree structure, the method comprising the steps of: executing an instance of OUTLOOK on the user computer thereby creating an OUTLOOK display window on a display of the user computer; executing, dependent upon the step of executing the instance of OUTLOOK, a Document Management Framework client application on the user computer; creating, by the Document Management Framework client application, a Document Management Framework pane in the OUTLOOK display window, said Document Management Framework pane being separate from and additional to panes created by OUTLOOK; retrieving, by the Document Management Framework client application, a most-recently displayed tree view of the user's SHAREPOINT environment, from a Document Management Framework client side cache; invoking, by the Document Management Framework client application, a Document Management Framework web service application running on the SHAREPOINT server; traversing, by the Document Management Framework web service application, in response to a user selection of a target site in said retrieved tree view, the entire SHAREPOINT tree structure commencing at the selected target site and extending to the deepest level of the tree structure, to thereby determine all nodes of the tree structure below the target site, to which the user has access permission, regardless of breaks in inheritance of permission as the tree is traversed; displaying, in the Document Management Framework pane, in a hierarchical manner all the nodes of the tree structure for which the user either (i) has access permission, or (ii) contain nodes for which the user has access permission; wherein the displayed nodes are arranged with indentation to reflect nesting, and are displayed using icons that indicate the type of each node in the displayed tree structure.