Advice - Should I use shortcuts?

[Stuck]

Hello All,

We'll be implementing EV 9.0 in the coming months and are slightly unsure whether or not to use shortcuts.  Having administered EMC EmailXtender where we used to have problems with shorcuts and recently an EV instructor said if it's possible, avoid implementing EV without using them. 

From what I understand so far.  If we do not use shortcuts our Outlook users will use Virtual Vault and everyone else Archive Explorer.  Whilst this isn't as transparent to the end user as having shortcuts amongst their regular email (bear in mind this is a new platform for the company so attitude/habits are not being changed to a certain extent) it will make IT administration easier (for example if shorttcuts aren't available then restore requests won't be necessary through accidental deletion, mailbox won't get filled up with shortcuts etc..).

Am I misinformed about shortcut stability/admin overhead?  What problems can arise through using shortcuts?  Any comments from hands on experience would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance!!!

[GertjanA]

Hello Stuck,

If this is a new implementation, and users do not have any prior experience with Enterprise Vault, I definitely would choose Virtual Vault and NO shortcuts.

As you will have to educate users anyway (and also think about manual archiving, retention categories, expiry etc), I feel it will be more benificial to implement virtual vault immediately and train your users on that, then starting with shortcuts, then take them away for VV (or co-exist with).

The advantage is that probably now they have pst files. Virtual Vault is not that different. If you will allow manual archiving, you might want to select the possibility to let your users add items to Virtual Vault manually. That way they get that 'pst-feeling', without actually getting a pst (but, what do they know)..

In the above scenario, be aware that if you move a mail to the virtual vault, it sits there waiting to be uploaded to EV. This means that if the desktop crashes, you loose mail! I'm not sure in 9, but I believe you can throttle the client so it starts an upload if there is an x-number of items in the VV.

all in all, I would go for the Virtual Vault, no shortcuts.

You CAN in your enablemailboxmesage, point the users to the links for archive explorer and search archive, but I doubt they will use this when they got used to VV.

Problems with shortcuts can be anything. Users throwing away shortcuts, sharing shortcuts, how big do you want your shortcuts to be etc. Also keep in mind that Exchange still doesn't like a lot of items in the mailbox, and a shortcut is an item...

Good luck, keep us posted!

[Stuck]

Hi GertjanA,

Thanks very much for the reply and info! 

From what we've been told by our supplier for non-Outlook users they will have to use Archive Explorer which is ok for viewing emails but not particularly great for performing additional actions such as forwarding and in most cases the user should move the email back into their mailbox.  As we have many linux/mac users I'm curious as to how other companies handle those user bases and whether there are any particular considerations for them?

With regard to your point about uploading email to be archived: we'll have a lot of users that will probably want to ingest PST files into EV.  In order to reduce any risk of data loss would you suggest they upload the PST file to a share on the EV servers (PST Collector), just drag them into VV manually or open as a regular PST in Outlook and let them be archived?

Additionally is it possible for an end user to delete items once they've been archived?  We were informed that once an item is in the Vault Store it can not be deleted??

Thanks again

[ZeRoC00L]

Please note that the Virtual Vault is only available if you enable Vault Cache, and Vault Cache can only be enabled if you are using Exchange cached mode.

[GertjanA · Accepted solution]

@ZeroCool

For Virtual Vault you do NOT need Outlook to be in cached mode.

You then set 'Does not require OST'. Works like a charm.

EV9 has Entourage support (and from what I hear it works). If you allow OWA Webmail, you can install the extentions there, and have the users restore them into their mailboxes if necessary.

If you have many PST's, use PST Locate and Migrate. If you have a few, have your users do it themselves. Make sure quota's are ok. It depends. Do get a statement from management if pst's will remain allowed or not. If not, lock it down using GPO's

Ofcourse an end-user can delete items from the archive PROVIDED you allow it. It is a site setting, and further down also.

What you see in the wild is that companies do not allow deletions by users, but they set a retention-category of 3, 5, or 7 years (depending on business needs and legal regulations), and have EV expire items automatically. That way you are safe for legal cases (produce mail concerning something in the last 3 years) Obviously, when a user deletes an email before being archived it is gone, provided you do not use journal archiving ;-))

'we were informed' I hope not by the company helping to implement setup EV? Make sure they know what they talk about, check with Symantec if possible. Initial good setup and configuration of EV is crucial. When it is running, it is time-consuming to change the configuration...

Good luck (again!)

[Judy_Glazier]

Hi, I agree with Gertjan about Virtual Vault being great.

Although, I have heard of email being lost when it doesn't get archived after being placed in Virtual Vault.

Also, Gertjan I can't think of anyway a user could migrate their pst on their own.

Just opening a pst file using Outlook would not or should not give them the ability to migrate the contents of that pst file to the archive?  Can they drag an email from the pst files and drop it in the Virtual Vault for archiving? 

Judy

[GertjanA]

Hello Judy,

Loosing email when using Virtual Vault as mechanism.

It is possible to allow manual archiving, and users can drop an email in the Virtual Vault. It should then get uploaded to EV. What can happen is that if you do NOT create shortcuts in the mailbox, the mail is dropped to the VV (effectively being removed from the Exchange mailbox), then before VV uploads the mail to EV, the desktop crashes beyond repair. That way, the mail sits in VV, not in Exchange, and not in EV. Mail gone. Theoratical possibility in my opinion, but still possible. Solution? Do not allow manual archiving, do not allow users to move messages between stores.

As for the pst's, what I did in previous job:

Used evpm to create a folder called My Archive having an archiving policy of 'archive immediately, no shortcuts.' Users could drag mails out of PST in this folder, which got archived during the night, without leaving shortcuts. USers knew that they had to use Archive Explorer to find those mails.

[JesusWept3]

Dataloss within virtual vault can be more common than you'd think due to the fact that the cache can become corrupt and if you fail to do a full sync and you are putting more and more items in to the vault then the longer it takes to upload and sync and the longer you have for anything to go wrong After all it just needs the machine to be reinaged for the profile to be deleted and recreated at this point which are common troubleshooting steps that helpdesks take There are more flexible policies in EV9 where you can specify a Certain size where it will start to sync automatically, but until they fix the warnings to the users that a sun has failed or not, I would take gertjans suggestion of not allowing move items to VV, even though it's the most useful feature Also be sure to hunt down Chris Harrisons whitepaper on VV as there are a number of optimizations that can be made