We have a system at work where e-mail correspondence and other documents (Word, Excell, PDF), both sent and incoming, once they are no longer live, they should be sent by the E-mail account owner to an electronic archive in a subject based two-level folder structure. This is a manual very time consuming process which is initiated by the E-mail account owner on a per occasion basis.This structure and the software that supports it is basic and operates within XP OS. The archive file system designed to be mainly accessed from Outlook and a specially constructed team-site. The archive file structure appears in the LHS Outlook window as an appendix to the inbox/outbox structure, so E-mails can be archived by dragging and dropping from inbox or outbox directly into a particular archive folder

Trouble is, the way it is configured, using only the basic file ordering capabilities which standard XP OS offers, it is very difficult when it comes to archiving/retrieving documents with a common thread.

As it operates at the moment you find you can be in the position whereyou have multiple contributors to a subject, not all of them using the exactly the same subject line in the E-mail or identical file names in the case of Word Docs, you have unchained and chained responses to E-mails, contributors making succesive responses to the same correspondence thread and all of this spread over a long-time scale and, more importantly, at present, a discussion subject (Thread) can exist in one or more chains of correspondence because the end of a subject thread is not always co-terminous/co-incident with the end of a chain of correspondence.

Example, someone from my place of work creates and sends an E-mail on a particular subject. The e-mail is responded to immediately. If the reply is done on a new mail, the XP system will treat it as a different E-Mail because it is both incoming, a new mail and differently timed/dated and this applies even if reply is returned chained to the original. When a third party or parties are involved the problem gets worse. Your out and in-boxes and team site fill up fast with large numbers of progressively partially completed correspondence and documents until the correspondence finishes. Each successive partially completed E-Mail / document duplicates a large portion of its predecessor but obviously is distinguished from its pre-decessor by the fact that it includes the latest incoming/outgoing bit of the correspondence.

All that the OS does by default is order Outlook and the permanent archiving area by file type and date of creation. Ordering by to/from is part of the additional features provided by the standrad OS and works well, but by subject not so well, because it cannot be guarenteed that every body uses exactly the same subject line decscription in an E-mail or File name.

Its not until the account owner decides to archive material that the wheat gets sorted from the chaff.

The archiving of material from either the team site or Outlook becomes a tedious and time consuming process. It is at least a two stage process. Firstly, the e-Mail account holder has to determine whether an E-mail refers to the subject he wishes to archive to (Different users may have used slightly different descriptions to the same subject). Secondly, the account owner has to determine whether the file/E-mail should be discarded on the grounds that it is a piece of correspondence that pre-dates the conclusion of the correspondence or document development or whether it is the most recent item issued/ received and there fore should be retained and archived.

One suspects that people, when doing archiving, may not have the time to scrutinise and eliminate duplicate material so that they play safe and archive everything on a known subject. This claggs up the archive server disk space, and there's no system filter at the input side to prevent this.

Also, when other team members are copied into the correspondence they will, by definition,receive duplicated correspondence/documents. However, because they all save to the same archive, duplicated material is sent to the same destination , but even though dates, subject lines and all other details, including content, match existing archived files , the OS treats them as unique and different material because it emanates from a different source i.e. the standrad OS system discriminatory capability is over-refined in this case and militates against efficient and effective correspondence handling.

Seems to me that a possible solution to all this difficulty would be to operate the mail and document creation systems like a forum thread, with documents and e-mails which require input from more than one account owner/party being created and managed in a common area to which subscribers sign in. Of course, this might pose some difficulties with access to secure systems by people outside the organisation, but I'm sure that could be overcome with say VPN tunnelling for frequent users and proxy operation by a nominated inside user for infrequent external parties. The added advantage of this mode of operation is that it would facilitate partnering.

The default ordering system would be based on date/time, but would include an additional unique parameter for thread. . The thread would have a title, which like the number would endure for the life of the correspondence thread. The thread scope of the thread could be determined by the original author i.e. it could be limited to a single archive folder category or be noimated to span several. A list of threads could be made available to view by moving the mouse over the subject folder. Thus giving authors the ability, if they so wish, to minimise the creation of duplicate subject threads by viewing what had already been created.. Subject to author sanction, software could then operate in the background to eliminate earlier partial threads on receipt /issue of the latest version.

Can existing MS OS be configured to in any way to provide a thread-based solution ? Do any of the social networking sites operate in this way ? Or will it require a proprietry piece of software to do the job ?

Nick

Edited 25 April, 201016 yr by Clunkclick

Yes.

That sounds painful. I know they cost a fair amount, but you should really be looking at a proper archiving solution for this. Commvault Simpana, Symantec Enterprise Vault and EMC DiskXtender are the three that immediately spring to mind (figured I better put a couple of competitors products in with the one my company resells...)

Edited 26 April, 201016 yr by Raglits

What I've described is the system currently provided as the basic rendering of a contracted-out solution provided to an HMG government department by a major computing consortium. Impressively cutting edge isn't it ?

There may be more sophisticated solutions available from the provider - No doubt at a significant price. I'll check out their in-house web site.

Being government, there hasn't been the money available over the last 10 years to do it -otherwise, no doubt, it would have been done (If it hadn't all spent on those duckhouse loving S*Bs). The prognosis for raising the funds to carry this out would seem worse now.

So how the hell would an incoming government expect to make efficiency savings using a foundation like this ?

If this is the case in the dept I work in, you can bet your bottom Dracma that the same situation prevails across Govt.

Nick

Edited 27 April, 201016 yr by Clunkclick

I'd say you'd probably need to use something like EMC Diskextender, along with Centerra hardware, but that would cost a bomb.

The final solution would depend on your SLA for recovery -could it be a tape based solution, with the inevitably slow response, or do you need quicker recovery?

You obviously need something very specific, which would probably need some fairly careful configuration, possibly with some scripts to set up what goes where.

No fully automated solution will be cheap, though!

Phil

What I've described is the system currently provided as the basic rendering of a contracted-out solution provided to an HMG government department by a major computing consortium. Impressively cutting edge isn't it ?

There may be more sophisticated solutions available from the provider - No doubt at a significant price. I'll check out their in-house web site.

Being government, there hasn't been the money available over the last 10 years to do it -otherwise, no doubt, it would have been done (If it hadn't all spent on those duckhouse loving S*Bs). The prognosis for raising the funds to carry this out would seem worse now.

So how the hell would an incoming government expect to make efficiency savings using a foundation like this ?

If this is the case in the dept I work in, you can bet your bottom Dracma that the same situation prevails across Govt.

Nick

Obviously depends on the individual department. My company has installed an pukka archiving solution in at least 2 government department/agencies... Maybe more as I'm not in the team that does that...

I do work for several local authority IT departments in the south of england, and several of them use Symantec Enterprise Vault. The product is very comprehensive and does the archiving transparently to the users. Its not cheap though, needs MS SQL 2000 or later, and has to be installed by a symantec trained consultant as its queit difficult to setup.

I do work for several local authority IT departments in the south of england, and several of them use Symantec Enterprise Vault. The product is very comprehensive and does the archiving transparently to the users. Its not cheap though, needs MS SQL 2000 or later, and has to be installed by a symantec trained consultant as its queit difficult to setup.

You're not kidding... It's a complete b!tch to setup... But once installed is pretty solid