© 2011 Geisel
Envisioning International Ltd. All rights reserved.
The information
contained in this document represents the current view of MADSolutions (A
Division of Geisel Envisioning International Ltd.) on the issues discussed as
of the date of publication.
Since MADSolutions
must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be
a commitment on the part of MADSolutions, and MADSolutions cannot guarantee the
accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.
This document
is
for informational purposes only. MADSolutions, nor the parent
company Geisel Envisioning International Ltd., MAKE NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT.
MADSolutions, Attachment
Executive, Attachment Executive Server, and Email Management Server are registered
trademarks, trademarks, or copyrights of Geisel Envisioning International Ltd.
Microsoft, Windows, Windows
2000, Windows 2003, Exchange and Outlook are either registered trademarks or
trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in Canada and/or other countries.
Other product or company
names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
MADSolutions
(Geisel Envisioning International Ltd.)
2000 Argentia Road,
Plaza IV, Suite 295 • Mississauga, ON L5N 1W1
Technical
Document
Published: February 2011
For the latest
information, please see: http://www.madsolutions.com
Introduction
With the fast
pace of business today, companies are constantly passing information within the
company and to customers via email. Implementing
a solution to deal with the excessive number messages and files going through
the email system is critical to maintain a robust and efficient mail system
like Microsoft Exchange Server.
This document
presents you with the some key factors to consider in order to
take full advantage of the features of MADSolutions® Email
Management Server.
The best practices considerations discussed
in this document are as follows:
1. Implementing email clean up corporate policies
2. Using Email Policies to manage user’s sent items
3. Using Email Policies to manage certain types of attachments
4. Setting the schedule to Real-time to minimize remote user
synchronization time over dialup
Every company should read and consider the
information that is contained in this document.
Email
Usage Policies are Key
Before
implementing any kind of policies in Email Management Server, it is important
for the user community to understand that changes to their email are going to
be made. One of the last things any
administrator needs is for users to start complaining that things are missing
or they are in different locations. This
kind of uninformed user community can increase support calls dramatically and
leave users frustrated.
When implementing
Email Management Server, one of the best things to do before cleaning up your
servers is to send out a memo to your user community informing them of a new
clean up and maintenance initiative that will keep their email environment
working more efficiently for them.
At the end of each
section of the document you will find a sample email message you can send to
your user community so they are aware of the changes being made to their email
environment and how it will affect their mailboxes.
One of the key
items you should consider before implementing Email Management Server rules and
sending out a message to your user community is to get management buy-in. By informing senior management and informing
them of your strategy and the savings obtained through the use of the software,
you can ensure your efforts will be successful.
Showing
savings to be obtained for the benefit of senior management
When
demonstrating the need for corporate policies on email server for clean up and
maintenance, management will be concerned with cost savings and improved
efficiencies. One of the key ways of
proving how Email Management Server will save money is to demonstrate the
amount of data that can be removed safely from the server.
To do this, create
an Email Policy to provide you with a report on how much space could be
regained from eliminating either the users sent items that are 30 days old or
removing attachments of a certain type.
If expediency is your key, then by providing a report on the sent items
alone should convince them.
Be sure to include the benefits mentioned
below:
- Reduces user mailbox maintenance time and reduces mailbox size
- Reduces need for support to assist in mailbox cleanup
- Removes unnecessary attachments (but keeps record of attachments
sent)
- Reduces need for additional archiving requirements
- Users can easily retrieve attachments (access saved attachments
from email via hyperlinks)
- Reduces public folder size
- Reduces backup time
- Reduces recovery time
- Reduces mail server storage requirements
- Reduces overall Total Cost of Ownership of Exchange
A sample ROI for 500 users... (Average
hourly wage $ 15.00 per hour)
Email Management Server can
show you substantial reduction in user mailboxes by eliminating unnecessary
files that waste space.
Every time a user sends
someone an attachment, a copy of the file they sent the person stays in their
sent items. Since the file originally
came from the user that sent it, there is no good reason to keep another copy
of their file in their sent items.
When deleting files, the
file name is left in the message for reference)
If you want to reduce
database sizes to almost half, consider removing files from users sent items.
If you decide to
go this route, a corporate policy should be put in place prior to setting up a
configuration to do this. You may also
want to consider doing this for only a portion of your user base. In some cases you may be able to set up
various levels of sent item attachment retention depending on the departments
you are dealing with.
For example, HR
may want to keep copies in their sent items for a period of 1 month while other
departments such as finance are content in keeping the files in their sent
items for a period of 1 week. Here you
have to do some digging if you really want to optimize the use of Email
Management Server for each department.
Your best bet may
be to start with a standard corporate policy and then slowly approach
department by department for optimal use.
Note: Setting the Email Policy rules
to run daily will help keep databases from growing unnecessarily and reduce
clean up times.
On the next page there
is a sample memo you may want to consider using or perhaps some variation
thereof.
Sample
Memorandum
“Attention all personnel:
In our ongoing
efforts to provide you with powerful and efficient tools to assist you in
getting your job done, we have recently undertaken an initiative to ensure our email
environment is robust and efficient to meet your needs. As a result, this new system will
automatically delete your attachments in your sent items after 30 days.
Since you will
have taken these files from either your home directory or elsewhere to send to
people, removing these extra copies of the files should not be of any concern
to you. Please note that the attachment
name will remain in the message for your reference should you ever need to
verify that you did in fact send the file to someone. Your original files in your home directory or
other network location will not be affected.
Again, thank you
for your patience and cooperation in assisting us in making your networking
environment a pleasant one.”
Often companies find
themselves in a situation whereby users are exchanging non-work related files
through the corporate email system. Email
Management Server can help you identify these by using analysis rules on
particular mailboxes to search for specific attachment file types such as mpg,
mpeg, jpg, gif, avi, mov etc… To reduce
unwanted files of this nature in user mailboxes running analysis rules first
can help tremendously.
Once users have been
identified and particular attachment types deemed inappropriate for corporate
use, administrators can begin clean up by creating configuration rules to
remove unwanted attachment types.
If you decide to
go this route, a corporate policy should be put in place prior to setting up a
configuration to do this. You may also
want to consider doing this for only a portion of your user base. In some cases you may be able to set up
various levels of attachment removal depending on the departments you are
dealing with. For example, marketing may
want to keep copies of jpg files as they contain advertisement pictures. In a case like this you may want to request
that they allow you to automatically move these files to one of their network
folders.
For other
departments such as human resources, they may say these types of files are not
acceptable and should be deleted. Each
of your departments will have to let you know what file types are acceptable and
the department heads will need to make these decisions for you.
On the next page
you will find a sample memo you may want to consider using or perhaps some
variation thereof.
Sample
Memorandum
“Attention finance personnel:
It has come to
our attention that some of you may have files in your email of the type
‘jpg’. These are picture files and
according to corporate policy, the email system is to be used for corporate
business only. The finance department does
not feel any user requires files of this type and therefore has authorized the
IT department to automatically delete all files of this nature within your
email.
We have asked the
IT department to wait one week before deleting them incase they are important
to you. Please be advised that as of
next week, files of this nature found in your email will automatically be
deleted.
Again, thank you
for your cooperation by assisting us in making your working environment an
efficient one.”
Often remote users have
their Outlook profile set up to use offline stores. This can greatly increase the ability of a
remote user in doing work offline and then connecting via a dial up connection
only to send and receive email.
Unfortunately for some remote users, a 56k dialup connection can appear
to be painfully slow when users send them attachments.
In order to combat the
synchronization time over dialup, Email Management Server has a Real Time
processing scheduling option which allows Administrators the ability to have
mailboxes monitored for incoming messages.
These messages can then be scanned for attachments and the attachments
moved to a user’s file folder for easy access should the user need to look at
it.
By allowing Email Management
Server to monitor your remote user’s mailboxes, synchronization of message
becomes very quick and easy. When users
read their email, should they need to access the file they can connect and
obtain it from their network folder. At
that time they can decide whether or not the file is important enough to look
at over a dialup connection.
If you decide to
monitor remote user’s mailboxes, users should be notified of the changes. Most will likely accept these changes with
much gratitude; however they should be informed about how to go about getting
to their files that were removed.
The next page
contains a sample memo you may want to consider using or perhaps some variation
thereof.
Sample
Memorandum
“Attention remote user:
In our ongoing
efforts to provide you with powerful and efficient tools to assist you in
getting your job done, we have recently undertaken an initiative to ensure our email
environment is robust and efficient to meet your needs.
As a result, this
new initiative will automatically move your attachments to your network folder
when they arrive in your inbox. This
will greatly enhance your email experience when you are dialing in remotely as
you will no longer have the long wait times during synchronization.
When you
synchronize your mail however you may find that some messages will have a
message at the bottom of them that say it contained one or more
attachments. Directly below that it will
provide you with a link to the file. If
you are not connected to the network, you will need to connect in order to get
access to the file. The plus side is,
your mail will synchronize much faster and you can leave those attachments on
the network for the times you are in the office or actually need to deal with
them.
We hope you see
this new feature as a great benefit to you and we would like to thank you for help
us make your email experience a pleasant one.”