Best Practice Suggestion Needed

Hello,

I'm assuming you are using EmailXtender Full,

You could accomplish this with EmailXtender Administrator Cabinets and Rules.

The ExAdminGuide sections:

1. Configuring Message COllection > Designing Your Message Center Using Rules, Cabinets and Folders (to end of chapter)

2. Rules

Will have the information you need to set it up.

As for retaining the information for 7 years, what we would do is every month over 7 years we can remove the old indexes which will prevent searches, then literally remove the data for those months by backing them up on tape. There are also retention periods that you will read about on 3-26.  We did not use the retention because we were not able to set it up at the beginning of EX's existence in our environment.

Hope that helps.

Rob,

You would create an exclusion rule for any emails going "TO:" the specific address, the domain, or by using keywords.

The system would then simply dispose of these messages.

So do you think I could say exclude * and it would exclude everything ? It is a weird requirment.

Ah. I see what you mean. The group of users that you don't want to collect emails from are internal.

Was your point about excluding * was to block out all other users? (non VPs and directors?)

Here is what you should do in my opinion based on your original posting.

On a cabinet or folder, create collection rules (To/FROM) for every one of your VPs.  You can set the retention of this folder to 84 months, however I would leave it at zero, and when 84 months comes, remove them.  The only thing the retention does is prevent you from removing the months, it doesn't do it for you.

On a 2nd cabinet or folder, create collection rules (To) for your Directors and up to VP.

If you have two cabinets with these rules, and nothing else.  all other email will be discarded and not stored.

if you would like, you can create a 3rd cabinet and put the Unmatched collection rule on there to grab everything else.

For the above idea, you can use one cabinet and set the rules on the folders inside, or you can create many cabinets and set the rules on the cabinets... up to you.  preference thing.

Also, develop a plan where you are notified of any Director/ VP coming or going so you can adjust these rules accordingly.  Note after a person leaves the company I would leave the rule for some time to catch emails that may be useful to others.

Hope that helps.

P.S - don't use a distribution group for the rules.  each user must be created in a rule.  That's how I was taught at least...

Thanks Wisers, we are using EX Full

The rules for archiving can be accomplished for incoming emails only ? How is that setup ? This company does not want outgoing messages archived for a specific group of users. Has anyone done this ?

I would start by placing users that you want to archive everything for into a seperate mailbox database than those that you dont want to archive outgoing emails.  Set up the journaling like your suppose to for those stores.  Then how about creating (and this is in Exchange 2007) a transport rule for emails sent to users inside the organization and copy the emails to the journal mailbox.  This will bleed over into some external emails(a user CCs an internal user on their external email), but you would be cutting out the majority.