Making do just got a lot easier thanks to Taglocity 2.0, a plugin which brings some much needed functionality to Microsoft’s Office-based desktop email program.

For freelance and personal purposes, I use MobileMe and Gmail, and I rarely have reason to complain about either (excluding the web-based iteration of MobileMe, which is about as consistent as West Coast weather). Gmail’s labels, recent conversations, and filtering options are especially useful. Taglocity brings that kind of functionality and more to your Outlook inbox, at the cost of a little added weight to an already resource-heavy program.

By default, Taglocity installs a pane to the far right of your Outlook browser, and and additional toolbar.

Through the toolbar you can search filter results, and tag individual emails, which works like Gmail’s labels. There will always be people on both sides of the folder/label fence. I use folders at work and labels at home, and I’m comfortable with both, but I like having the option Taglocity provides to label across and between folders.

Threaded conversations is another feature Outlook lacks that Taglocity enables.

By default, the right pane displays conversations with the sender of the email you currently have selected, along with their contact information, if you have them in your Outlook contacts database. You can switch to attachments view to quickly access all files sent between you and that person, and, at the bottom of the pane, view basic analytics including number of messages sent, received, and CC’d to and from that contact or address.

A key feature Taglocity brings to the table in terms of working with a wider group is Group creation and support. User can create, manage, and subscribe to Groups to manage multi-user announcements and FYI notices. A huge chunk of my inbox clutter is due to staff landing/departure notices, non-essential updates regarding other lines of business, and other distracting material that I can check in my downtime. With Groups this is not longer a problem, as I can choose to “pull” this kind of info when I can review it without disrupting my regular workflow. Groups also lets you share tags and set up semantic subscriptions, so that people who need to know something always get the right info, even if they’re just joining the team and without needing to be CC’d.

Even after only a couple of days, I can’t really see myself using Outlook without the added functionality of Taglocity. And since Taglocity Standard is free, I have no reason to stop. Taglocity Professional is $99, but most users will likely find the feature differences not worth the added expense.

Get Taglocity 2.0 for Outlook now and start streamlining your email workflow.

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That’s just the topic of a report from Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. While you can buy a copy of ” Executive Q&A: Social Tagging For eBusiness” for $279, here’s a free recap of the advice offered by Rotman Epps.

Consider using taxonomy-directed tagging, but give the choice. If your site suggests specific tags to the user, that encourages consistency and makes the tagging process easier for users to figure out. But don’t deny users the ability to come up with their own tags — that’s not very social. Just as it is with the people who update dictionaries, watch for the most popular uses of tags over time to expand the company collection.

Automate the process of coming up with that initial taxonomy of tags. Rotman Epps mentions several tools that can help. Endeca Technologies and Mercado Software can both extract phrases from product text that already exists on the site, and PowerReviews will do the job in a turnkey fashion by reviewing sites related to a product category, interviewing people and doing survey work.

Decide beforehand whether you’re going to go with a manual or automatic approval process for user-created tags. If your organization is concerned about filtering out junk, you may choose to go with the manual approach. The downside: It’s time-intensive, and, after all, what you want to engender with tagging in the first place is putting at least some of the content generation burden onto users. Rotman Epps says that “the relative newness of the technology makes this a concern that few companies had to confront.” She references companies that have gone the hybrid model — allowing any and all tags without prior approval, but bringing to the forefront only those tags that enhance the searchability of the site.

Broaden the appeal of tagging by making it easy to do. Have users select tags with check boxes or menus; provide help at points where it’ll best serve the readers in mouse-overs and popups; integrate tag functions with site search and navigation.

Let the user set the privacy level. Forrester recommends that you let a user determine whether his or her tags are viewable only by the person who set them, by that person’s network or by anybody using the site.

Do you have a tagging scheme worth sharing?

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• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce