Hi, In order to learn more about how our customers use Enterprise Vault and to improve product reliablilty, we are considering a feature whereby summary information about your environment would be sent to Symantec. The data would be anonymous and no details like company names,individuals would be transferred. A lot of it would be summary data, like number of archive tasks, exchange tasks, numbers of archives etc. Perhaps later extended to things like performance metrics, whether the system is 'healthy' etc. We wouldn't expect it to be a large amount of data. Obviously the data would be encrypted in some form, together with some polcies to control it's behavour. For example, there may be additional data you would be happy for it to capture e.g.the event log, so we can identify commonly logged events to try and resolve. Technically speaking I imagine we may try various methods to send the data to symantec e.g. via ftp, http or email and it's something that would happen perhaps once per month. Obvioulsy more and more products are doing this kind of thing and I think this would be a great way for us to help our customers but obviously transferring any 'data' can be a sensitivive topic so want to have a debate on this. Yours, Mike Bilsborough Director, EV Engineering

Mike I think this has its merits but I think that instead of automating it you should give the customer the option of manually running the data gather so they can see it before submitting it because as you said EV does house very sensitive data. On another note to help Support understand customers environments Symantec should have a setup whereby the customer can submit detailed designs and layouts of their environment so when support get a case they have the design details of what they are working on displayed as part of the case. I think if the two were combined you may have a a solution that helps you in your understanding of the customers environment as well as your ability to help the customer better by having the design of their environments

I'm not sure how the size of the environment would really help anything, the errors and warnings i can see being of some use, but i find it hard enough to keep up with the boat load of nightly errors in our environments, it'd be interesting to see how symantec would keep up with thousands and thousands of customers worth!

Hello Mike I think that what you are proposing is an excellent idea. The Deployment Scanner that is installed on each Enterprise Vault Server prior to actual setup is a tool that could be expanded to be run on a scheduled interval. (Obviously with the consent of the customer by selecting to accept this option). The Deployment Scanner can already be run to gather additional information for Support to troubleshoot a problem. This program could be upgraded to gather whatever info you required after an implementation. Since its inception I have been promoting the Deployment Scanner to customers as a useful tool for troubleshoot problems after an implementation and with the proper information provided to customers on its use I am sure that the majority of customers would not mind this program running and sending off vital information to Symantec that could assist Symantec Support and in the long run improve product reliablity. Of course this information gathering would be an option that the customer could accept or decline by not activating it. Judy Glazier

Hello Mike, Remember all the fuzz when people found out Windows was sending out stuff (or alledgely did)? As for my previous job, that would be a nogo. I assume more companies do not want to sent 'stuff' to a software-provider. I agree with Liam, to let the customer decide. Like the 'help us improve (fill in blank, think sql, exchange, office) from MS. Very important will be for major companies (which probably will deliver the more usable info regarding size etc) WHAT is being transferred. Give them a tool they can use to check what data is being transmitted. I know I had to clean logfiles, errors etc before actually posting them here. Deployment Scanner might be an option (have sent a cab-file or two), but you want data from a running environment I guess. Also, Liam's remark on the possibility to get support details on your (customer) environment would be nice. Not only Platinum customers, but also the others. It is possible to store this in Siebel (if you still use that...) Regards

Hi Guys, Thanks for the feedback so far. When I said 'automatic' I just really meant without end user intervention. Obviously I agree on opt in/out. I agree on the deployment scanner idea as well. I kind of envisioned the feature basically being a subset of the deployment scanner but only capturing a subset of the data etc. That also gives you the option to see the contents of the 'CAB' that it created. As you know a lot of entry id's in our databases contain alias that you create. Do you think we need to remove this level of information from the data before it's transferred to Symantec? Further down the line, I like the idea of it sending the data automatically 'when something bad happens' (ie EV frenzy being one example) do you think that's a good idea too? Mike

Discuss: Automatically sending information to Symantec....

17 Replies

Rob_Wilcox1
Level 6
15 years ago
I think we should dip in to this :-

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/maintain/StartWER.mspx

All the stripping of "personal" or identifiable data is already done, and the functionality is largeable built in to Windows already.
jprknight-oldax
Level 6
15 years ago

I really wouldn't have a problem with this, however I would need to seek approval from our security management team, who would no doubt want assurances of data security and confidentiality.
Edwork
Level 4
15 years ago
I understand it may help us to resolve / prevent many case.
But I think it is very sensitive since data belong to company itself.

If EV system could capture and forward info. to Admin email system and check what information be sent.
It may provide more clear picture.
GregRountree
Level 4
15 years ago
Anything that would help to improve the product and gather data for Symantec to review is a plus. Some companies might not be able to participate but overall this would be a good solution.
Chuck_C
15 years ago
Yeah, if it's anonymous and privacy is respected - it's a trend in this industry like it or not.

Also, to get more customers to use it, if you can run a "health check" at anytime which gathers this information, and then compares it with possible solutions that would get me to sign up.

I suspect more heatlh checks will be run when there is a problem, so opening a case from this tool, and using it to mark an article that was found to fix the problem (with comments) it could actually reduce call volume and make the product more effective for my user base.

I'm for it!
Mark_Shoger
Level 4
15 years ago
My client's implementation of EV is on an isolated network with no internet connectivity. I'd actually like to have an option that I can check that would REMOVE all of the web based links from the EV admin console.

Some of our lesser experienced admins click on those and they go nowhere. If we have an option that hides all of those, problem solved.

v/r,

Mark
Rob_Wilcox1
Level 6
15 years ago
It might be worth in addition to posting here, to also post those comments on the ideas forum?

Forum Discussion

Discuss: Automatically sending information to Symantec....

17 Replies

Related Content

Symantec Information Security Products

Information Studio vs Information Map

Does information Studio replaces Information Map?

Symantec netbackup licensing information and details..

enterprise vault elastic search index snapshot automatic backup script