Custom MS office toolbar for Zola Media

Project overview

Internal business assets management is a highly responsible task that must always be precise and well-structured. In common practice, companies use tools that have already become an unwritten work standard, namely, the renowned suite of Office tools. However, based on the specifics of a particular internal workflow, certain customizations or additions may be required to make things more convenient for specialists. That’s why companies order the development of custom third-party plugins and particular features like the custom MS Office toolbar we developed for our client.

Client Zola Media

Team 2 members

Country United States of America

Duration 6 months

Client information

Zola Media is an established US-based provider of legal data management software solutions, law firm website creation capabilities, and client generation methods. The company offers two full-blown authentic platforms – ZolaSuite for data management and ZolaCreative for client generation efforts. In terms of both platforms, a wide range of business optimizing services is available, including cloud integrations, SEO, automation, and more business-boosting options.

Business challenge

Streamlining internal business processes reflects most vividly externally. Companies focused on performance and service quality improvement seek ways to build a sturdy internal workflow foundation to reinforce the overall activity. Custom extensions to existing standard solutions provide significant opportunities to achieve that. Individual corporate workflows must be treated individually. That’s why extended MS Office Word capabilities were necessary for our client’s internal organization and optimization efforts.

Technical challenges

We needed to create a custom toolbar plugin for MS Office Word that had to be integrated with the existing web API. The main goal was to achieve web compatibility and document interaction features. We had to start with a PoC to outline the basic structure and coordinate things with the client’s requirements. The major functionality to implement was saving and viewing documents in a web application through a dedicated API. All this required a lot of hard coding and manual work to build from the ground up.

Solution delivered

A custom toolbar for MS Word is a custom addition to the system that connects MS Office capabilities to the ZolaSuite platform. The toolbar is compatible with MS Office 2013, 2016, and higher versions. The main goal is to make users’ lives easier by allowing them to instantly upload edited documents to Zola’s centralized web system and view them when they need. That brings the next level of ZolaSuite interactivity and helps better align document management routines with up-to-date data management standards.

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Key features

Docs user access

Users can save Word files in the web system without going far and access everything they need in one place.

Docs management

Users can also tag, search, specify low-level descriptions and comments, and do more docs management.

API interconnection

All edited documents are synched with the ZolaSuite API for faster processes and platform interactions.

Versatile operation

The toolbar plugin works across all applications included in the ZolaSuite set of comprehensive editing tools.

Value to our client

Workflow boostAvoiding the necessity to switch between different software to achieve a single goal helps boost productivity.

Data accessibilityManagers, data analysts, and other company employees get a great opportunity to immediately store everything in one place.

Universal systemIntegration with the MS Office via a custom toolbar makes ZolaSuite an all-in-one powerhouse data management solution.

Our tech stack

Office 365