What happens behind the scenes? Background integrations with Microsoft 365
Automatic email filing, calendar synchronisation and document saving often run in the background, connecting the legal system to Microsoft 365 through Microsoft Graph. When they work, nobody notices. How they are built decides what happens when they do not.
Checking constantly, or being told
Some integrations repeatedly ask Microsoft 365 whether anything has changed. Others subscribe to change notifications and ask only for what has changed. Microsoft identifies constant polling as the pattern most likely to get an application throttled, and recommends change notifications and change tracking instead. The difference shows up as filing that is minutes behind, or filing that quietly stops at busy times.
What happens when Microsoft says "slow down"
Microsoft 365 limits how many requests an application can make. A well-built integration waits for the time Microsoft specifies and tries again. A poorly built one gives up, and an email that should have been filed to the matter simply is not. Ask how failures are detected, retried and reported, and who is told.
How much can it reach?
Background integrations usually act on their own rather than as a user, which by default can mean every mailbox or every SharePoint site in the firm. Microsoft now lets administrators narrow that: Exchange Online can restrict an application to specific mailboxes, and SharePoint access can be limited to named sites. If the integration only needs fee earners' mailboxes and one document site, that is all it should have.
Where does a copy end up?
Some integrations leave email and documents in Microsoft 365 and store a link. Others copy them into the vendor's own storage. Neither is wrong, but a copy means client data in a second place, with its own security, retention and exit questions.
What to ask, and what to see
- Does your integration poll, or use change notifications? Show the delay between an email arriving and it appearing on the matter.
- What happens when Microsoft throttles you, and how would we know an item was missed?
- Can your access be limited to specific mailboxes and sites?
- Do you copy content into your own storage, or reference it in ours?
- Who monitors the integration, and what do we see when something fails?
Technical notes: small decisions, big consequences
Start with the overview: The details that decide the project
Accounts and finance
- Core accounting is still the gold standard
- One-way or two-way sync? Connecting your legal system to Xero
- Units or minutes? How time is recorded
- Your matter and nominal structure
- Making Tax Digital: the firm and its clients
Workflow, data and documents
- Workflow: deep, basic or none?
- Client onboarding and matter inception: portal, e-signature and ID checks working as one
- Custom data: what you rely on, and how you move it
- Precedents, merge codes and macros: your document bank in a new system
Your types of work
- Legal aid: your records, not just the Legal Aid Agency’s
- Litigation: Precedent H starts with time recording
- Family: Form E and financial disclosure
- Private client: where does the tax software fit?
Security and access
- Roles or individuals? How user permissions are set up
- Why manage security twice? Linking application security to Microsoft Entra
- How granular is the security inside the system?
- Who can see what in reporting?
- Shared platform, your data: separation, restore and erasure
- When the supplier is the target: where your data lives, who can reach it, and your real risk
Microsoft 365
- How does it connect to Outlook?
- What did you just give it permission to do?
- What happens behind the scenes? Background integrations with Microsoft 365 (you are here)
- OneDrive is not a document management system
- Microsoft 365 is not a backup
Data and decisions
Where does your firm stand?
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