FAQs from IT DEPARTMENTS about Acta Mustang

IT Department Frequently Asked Questions - Prepared by Acta Solutions on March 20, 2021

Background

As we continue to move forward with our partner jurisdictions, we have compiled a list of the recurring questions from IT teams. IT teams are essential to our success in delivering value to our end-users. Our goal with this document is to answer upfront questions so that we can have deeper discussions with the IT team as our partnership continues.

Our product is a cloud-hosted, lightweight solution that is installed as an email add-in. We currently work with Outlook as an Outlook add-in. Our team handles all maintenance, updates, and service requests. 

Frequently Asked Questions  

1. What IT staff resources are required to implement and maintain this solution? 

The Acta Solutions team will handle all maintenance, updates, and service requests. We collaborate with the IT team for approval to install and help with installation of the solution. Since the solution is a lightweight plug-in, installation should take minimal IT staff resources. 

2. What are the solution’s requirements? 

The Acta Mustang™ add-in runs in Microsoft Outlook. Our add-in is supported on the following versions of Outlook:

• Outlook on Windows (Microsoft 365 license)
• Outlook on Mac (Microsoft 365 license)
• Outlook on the web
  

3. What permissions are required to power this solution?

The Acta Mustang™ add-in requires the following permissions from a users Outlook inbox:

• Read Item Permission - The ability to read an individual email only when a user opens it within their inbox. This does not give permission to scrape or crawl the inbox indiscriminately. (note also that we do not store any data relating to emails opened by our users; this permission is required by Microsoft Outlook add-ins to be able to activate the add-in while an email is open)
• Write Item Permission - The ability to populate the contents of a user's email (note that this does not include the ability to send an email, but rather only to insert content into an email draft. Users still have complete control over the final sending of an email from their Outlook inbox)
  

At this point in time since the value of the Acta Mustang™ add-in is in populating emails and requires read access in order to be opened during client usage, we do not offer a subset of these permission requirements. Also note that these permissions are accepted implicitly on installation, and require no additional action by users beyond the installation of the add-in.

4. What set-up will be required for this solution? 

One of two scenarios is possible:

1. The IT team makes an administrative installation across approved department users. 
2. The IT team allows side-loading of the application for approved department users.

5. What information will be ingested into or exposed to the Acta Solutions system?

The only information ingested into the Acta Solutions system is the associated tag/responses selected by a user and the time it was used. 

6. What security measures does Acta Solutions have in place?

Cybersecurity is a top-priority for our team since we are working with public entities. We ensure the security of our clients data by using encryption in-flight and encryption at-rest for all our data. We use a cloud-based architecture meaning that we are protected by the data practice standards of AWS, which is the most secure cloud environment. Additionally, our use of serverless, on-demand computing resources means there is no single point of failure for security threats to our system. 

For more information or any questions, please contact Tai Huynh at tai@actasolutions.io or (727) 458-3073.