EV not creating shortcut icons in Outlook.

Double check the message class of the items. If they are IPM.Notes and not EV Shortcuts then a client trace when manually archiving may help

Is your Vault Store partition set to After Backup or Immediately After Archive?
If its set to After Backup, then the items they have just created on the EV side need to be backed up before the items would turn in to fully shortcutted items.

If they have been backed up or you use Immediately After Archive it could either be that EV is "stuck" trying to send the Post Process Message (saying "turn this item from pending and in to a shortcut), you would typically look at your MSMQ's and see if anything is in the Exchange Archiving Task For yourExchangeServer A1

The A1 queue is used to signify that an item is ready to be shortcutted (or deleted depending on your policy)

Another thing it could be as well is it could be the OST caching the changes, so it could very well be it has fully archived, but is simply not downloading the changed items back down to the OST

To eliminate this as a possibility, you can check with OWA or a mail profile that does not use Cached Exchange Mode

there's a checkbox in the dialog box when the users manually archive called "create shortcuts to stored items." if this isnt checked (client side) then shortcuts will not be created for manually archived items even if it's part of your policy.

as for the pending icons, JW and Marvin's suggestions are definitely the places to look

Thanks Guys,

@ Andrew B We have 1 policy for all our users, where do I get the checkbox about creating shortcuts on the client side? 

@ JesusWept we also have a group policy that turns off cached mode on outlook, I have tested on another mail profile and still get the pending archived icons. The backup of the vault is set to immediately after, so I will look at the A1 queue and let you know.

it depends on your configuration but if the users are using the dcom client then when they manually archive a dialog box would be presented where they can select the retention category, create shortcut, and delete original item options.

here's what it looks like:

I think you forgot something. 

hmm. it showed up in the box before i hit submit... i'll retry

sorry, i have to put the screenshot as an attachment. pasting it inline isnt working for some reason.

We don't have this type of configuration - the archiving action settings are locked so that the user cannot change it. I have checked the message queues are there are no pending messages there. This is so baffling. I did a Dtrace on 2 of the problematic mailboxes and found this statement on both problematic mailboxes but not on a "working" one

3010    17:34:47.613     [7380]    (ArchiveTask)    <8340>    EV:M    CExchangeShortcutAccessor::DeleteShortcut - Shortcuts belonging to message class "IPM.Note.EnterpriseVault.PendingArchive.ArchiveMe" are deletable