What is iManage ConnectLive?

This year’s iManage Connectlive brought together leaders from across legal and professional services, with over 1,000 attendees joining the two-day conference. Unlike other conferences, the event is not only an opportunity for iManage to announce and demonstrate new features but also a forum for iManage users, iManage partners and the legal community to connect and exchange ideas.

Yet, this time, iManage ConnectLive was hosted during what Neil Araujo, CEO of iManage referred to as “a period of huge transition” with AI disrupting and transforming the very nature of knowledge work. So, during the event, iManage showcased the next generation platform for documents, emails and knowledge – built to support the knowledge workers of today, with AI at its core.

 

Tiger Eye at iManage ConnectLive

As a longstanding iManage Partner, we sponsored the flagship conference and attended the two-day event to connect with clients, and help them to explore how new features can help with their specific challenges.

Many of the conversations we had centred on how firms can successfully adopt new technologies, ensuring that users are equipped with the knowledge and confidence needed to take advantage of the latest capabilities within iManage.

Given the event’s focus on AI, specialists in IT, information and compliance were specifically interested in how they can prepare data in order to deliver optimal results using AI technologies. Therefore, our team took part in frequent discussions about archiving, deletion, and data management.

 

About This Article

iManage highlighted a raft of new features and releases during iManage ConnectLive. In this article we have summarised our key takeaways and insights from the conference, pinpointing new releases and sharing our recommendations to help readers to prepare for changes, and make best use of platform enhancements.

 

Who Should Read This iManage ConnectLive Summary?

• IT Teams
• Organisation Leaders, Including Partners and Directors
• Knowledge and Innovation Professionals
• Compliance and Information Management Leaders

 

Insights and Takeaways from iManage ConnectLive 

 

Core, Context, Connected: How did iManage summarise their platform evolution?

At the iManage ConnectLive, the extensive range of new releases and features were framed around the concepts of ‘Core, Context and Connected’ unifying them under one cohesive narrative. Through this framework, iManage summarised the evolution of the platform, with an enhanced document management capability at the core, and broader features and functionality elevating both experiences and outcomes through AI and much more.

Below we explore these concepts (and the new releases) in more detail.

 

Core  

At its core, iManage’s knowledge work platform enables users to secure, work on and manage documents and emails efficiently. The platform is adopted widely across the legal sector, with 83% of the top global law firms utilising the platform.

To continue to meet the evolving needs of knowledge workers today, the very core of the iManage platform is undergoing a fundamental evolution.

 

A Transformed User Experience

To support the fast-paced nature of knowledge work today, iManage worked in close collaboration with customers to produce a ‘next generation’ version of the platform, built around truly transformed user interface which sits at the heart of workflows.

At iManage ConnectLive, iManage teased the advanced interface, which includes a streamlined navigation process, customisable dashboards and much more. The new user experience will be available in the coming months.

During the event, iManage also showcased advancements to Ask iManage, as well as their new Collaboration Link capability. The Collaboration Link feature allows external collaborators to view, edit and work on iManage documents without needing an iManage account, streamlining collaboration between internal teams and external stakeholders.

A new Admin Dashboard was also introduced, providing system administrators with a single-pane overview of key platform insights in one intuitive dashboard. The Admin Dashboard includes key information from systems like Threat Manager (e.g., monitoring and alerting) as well as data drawn from support tools and webhooks.

iManage also showcased the Zero Gravity experience which brings the platform into the Microsoft 365 tools that teams already use. With this, native iManage actions are made available inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, alongside smarter email filing and search. This experience enables users to file, find and work on documents without leaving these applications.

 

What’s New?

• New User Experience (Coming Soon)
• Changes to Ask iManage (Available Now)
  • Search Bar Enhancement:
    Users will now be able to ask the search bar questions in natural language rather than simple keyword searches to retrieve their answer.
  • Personalisation:
    Users will be able to set their custom profile, so every answer reflects their preferences, minimising time spent reviewing and editing answers from Ask iManage.
  • Playbooks:
    Firms will be able to set standard playbooks or sets of standards which can be applied to each and every agreement, ensuring consistency of output and driving efficiency.
  • Prompt Support:
    Ask iManage will help users to refine their questions or prompts by suggesting improvements.
  • The ability to save to iManage Work
  • Streamlined Guided Actions
• Collaboration Links (Available Now)
• The Admin Dashboard (Available Now)
• Zero Gravity Experience with Microsoft 365 (Various Features and Dates)

 

Context  

In discussions with attendees at iManage ConnectLive, our team noticed the shift in tone from the last event, with conversations moving beyond the potential of AI to the practicalities of using and governing it as part of everyday processes. This is unsurprising given that iManage’s Knowledge Work Benchmark Report found that 85% of lawyers use AI tools in some capacity.

Yet, adoption rates still vary drastically from firm to firm. In fact, the same Knowledge Work Benchmark Report highlights that only 17% of firms have fully integrated AI across their organisation. iManage’s next-gen platform aims to bridge this gap, making it easier for firms to adopt AI with confidence by grounding answers in trusted data and context.

Through shifting to focus on context, iManage is helping organisations to move from simply storing knowledge in the platform, to surfacing it in a governed, secure and reliable way, supported by valuable context.

 

What Is A Context Fabric?

Crucially, the next generation iManage platform is built around a ‘context fabric’.

In a recent article, iManage summarised that the context fabric is “the layer that gives AI access to everything an organisation knows, but only what each user or agent is permitted to reach.” In essence, this summarises how the level of data AI can access goes beyond documents themselves, while respecting security and permissions.

As iManage summarised in a recent news piece: if context is used correctly, it will “transform an organisation’s accumulated knowledge into a living, governed foundation for agentic work.”  Supported by a context fabric, AI doesn’t simply retrieve data from the system, but works to analyse and understand the content, relationships and real time activity across the organisation, drawing on what is held in iManage and on connected sources beyond it.

 

What’s New?

• AI Enrichment (Coming Soon)
  iManage’s new AI Enrichment capability will work to classify and enrich documents to support both humans and AI to understand the documents and content stored within the iManage platform. This enrichment will help to identify content, and highlight the data available within the system, which in turn makes it easier to ask questions of data using Ask iManage and other AI technologies.
• Enhancements to Insight+ (Multiple Updates – Availability Dates Vary)
  During the event iManage explored many of the enhancements added to Insight+ which are helping to deepen the context fabric. For example, AI summaries of content and the history of knowledge assets help users and AI alike to understand resources and put knowledge to action. Multi-region search was also showcased, which provides global organisations with a unified search experience across multiple regions, so users can find the firm’s governed knowledge, no matter which region the data resides in.

 

Connected 

 

MCP 

To support customers who have already invested in AI tools like Harvey, Claude or Microsoft Copilot, iManage have recently introduced a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server which enables these platforms to both access and leverage content from iManage in a secure, governed and consistent manner. This connection respects the existing ethical walls, permissions and access controls allowing clients to incorporate AI into established governance frameworks without compromising security.

This secure connection is imperative given the pace of change in knowledge work as AI is already widely used. For example, in recent research, iManage found that “nearly one third of organisations have already experienced a policy-impacting incident tied to unregulated AI tools.”

By providing a secure, governed way for AI tools to connect iManage, users can get more value from their existing AI investments, while ensuring they generate accurate, relevant and context-rich outputs.

 

Agents

During iManage ConnectLive, presenters also showed what is now possible with AI and iManage, highlighting how users can go beyond simple question-and-answer workflows. For example, it was shown how users can create and use agents built in external AI solutions such as Microsoft Copilot to automate both routine tasks and more complex processes.

 

What’s New? 

• Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server (Available Now)
• Connected Agents (e.g., for Microsoft Copilot) (Available Now)

 

Summary: What You Need To Know Following iManage ConnectLive

iManage introduced its next-generation platform at this year’s iManage ConnectLive, with a redesigned user experience, new AI capabilities, and a wide range of new features and capabilities to support both collaboration and productivity, while keeping data protected, governed and compliant.

 

Platform Evolution: What’s Coming and What’s Available Now

New iManage Releases and Enhancements Available Now: 

• Changes to Ask iManage
• Collaboration Links
• Admin Dashboards
• Zero Gravity Integration with new Microsoft Outlook (EAP Now)
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server
• Connected Agents (e.g., for Microsoft Copilot)

New iManage Releases and Enhancements Coming Soon: 

• The Transformed User Experience
• Further Zero Gravity Microsoft 365 Features
• AI Enrichment
• Insight+ Enhancements

 

Changes You Need to Make to Take Advantage of New Releases from iManage ConnectLive

It is no surprise that many of our conversations with attendees at iManage ConnectLive centred on the fundamentals of data management, given that the success of any AI solutions depends on how well your data and knowledge is governed, managed and prepared.

The mantra of ‘garbage in, garbage out’ still stands true today in the age of AI-enabled knowledge work, and poor data quality and fragmented content ultimately limit AI’s ability to deliver positive impact across an organisation.

The raft of changes made to the platform, and the many new features soon to be released, will all change the ways in which users interact with iManage. Training, adoption and change management are all critical for firms who want to take full advantage of the new iManage platform experience.

In summary, we recommend that businesses using iManage focus on the following tasks to take advantage of new releases following iManage ConnectLive:

1. Ensure archiving and deletion processes are automated, scalable and working optimally.
2. Review training and adoption capabilities internally, and consider investment if necessary. This is essential to ensure that staff have the knowledge and skills needed to use new features, and to upskill employees on transformative changes such as the new iManage interface.
3. Discuss new features internally and explore what is now possible, for example discussing how MCP and AI could automate tasks or transform everyday workflows.