General Management after adding user

[Bill_Unger]

We are currently running EV 8 against Exchange and are very slowly rolling it out at a client site.  I was walking the client through the process of adding a new user to EV, enabling the mailbox, and kicking off the archiving process and then assisting with follow-on issues.

One of the questions that arose is how to monitor that process after archiving begins to make sure it "worked?"  For example, the test user's Outlook didn't display the EV toolbar or menu option after we were finished ( and after restarting Outlook ) and we weren't getting much feedback in VAC either.

Can anyone recommend a good "general maintenance" and follow through strategy for daily use of EV ( ie., adding users, ensuring their archives are happy, etc )?

Thanks in advance,

Bill

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

Stupid question but the clients actually installed on the machine right?

Usually when the buttons dont display its because either the user isn't provisioned or enabled, or the Desktop Policy is set to hide the buttons, or the client isn't installed, or the user has outlook anywhere in use and the policy to disable when RPC over HTTP is in use.

So the very first thing you can do is ensure the user is provisioned, now you can't enable a mailbox if the user isn't provisioned, so i'm going to guess they are in fact provisioned properly.

Next you can open up the Vault Admin Console, expand out Targets and then right click "Exchange" and select "Display Policies Assigned to Mailboxes" (if you don't see this option, you may need to click exchange first and then right click)

Enter the users name making sure the Exchange servers they are on and listed ok

After you hit find you should see the provisioning group, desktop policy and exchange policy, make a note of the desktop policy assigned to them, make a note of the desktop policy and close this panel

Next in the VAC, expand out Policies -> Exchange -> Desktop and then open the desktop policy assigned to them and go to the options tab

You will have a list of all the options available to them (Store in vault, restore from vault, search vault, archive explorer, delete from vault, cancel operation, expiry report, help)

Enabled means that it will be seen on "Tools -> Enterprise Vault" menu within Outlook itself, "On Toolbar" means it will be shown on the toolbar next to the Reply, Reply To All, Forward buttons etc

If those are unchecked, check a few, press OK then synchronise the mailbox manually through the Task set to handle their mailbox.

If those are checked, then in the same desktop policy window click the "Advanced" tab and scroll down to find an option called "RPC over HTTP Restrictions", by default it's set to Disable User Extensions.

In Outlook 2007, some are default to set to "Outlook Anywhere" which is their version of RPC over HTTP, where instead of using RPC to connect to a mailbox server, it uses http or https, even if its not configured and that checkbox is checked, EV will determine its using RPC over HTTP and by default disable the client

So set it to "None" and then press OK and then OK again and synchronize the mailbox

Once synchronized go back to the end users Outlook , have them close and re-open, you should hopefully see the toolbars, if you don't you can tell if any of the outlook add in has been initialized by going to Help -> About Enterprise Vault. If you do not see that then either the client is disabled or not installed.

To see if the client is being disabled by Outlook itself, in Outlook 2007 go to Tools -> Trust Center -> Add-Ins

Enterprise Vault Add-In should be listed under Active Application Add-Ins and point to C:\Program Files\Enterprise Vault\EVClient\Valkyrie.dll,  if it is listed under Disabled Application Add-Ins then press the "Go" button at the bottom and then check the box next to "Enterprise Vault Add-In"

If it's not listed there, then check Add/Remove Programs (or Programs and Features in Windows 7) and ensure the EV Client is actually installed, if it is listed, uninstall and reinstall the client, if its not listed, then simply reinstall the client)


If Outlook Trust Center shows the Client loaded and not in the disabled list, then you can go to

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp (Outlook XP)
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\ (Windows 7)

Find a log file name "ev_client_log_yyyymmddhhmmss.txt
Open this up and have a look and see if you see anything obvious, if its RPC over HTTP restrictions it will say something to the affect of "RPC over HTTP detected, disabling client"
in which case you may have to go back up and change the RPC over HTTP Restrictions in the desktop policy and sync their mailbox or remove the Outlook Anywhere checkbox

Another possibility is that the hidden message itself just isn't being synchronized to the OST file if you are using cached mode, this can be more common than people think, but is a Microsoft Issue and not an Enterprise Vault issue.

If you go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\RepairOST.exe and tell it to fix errors, this will find the hidden message and force it to synchronize across, afterwards open up outlook and see if the buttons then show.

One other thing you can do but is really just a sledgehammer approach is to run C:\Prgram Files\Enterprise Vault\EVClient\ResetEVClient.exe

It will take the addins out of the disabled list, delete some form caches, re-register the client etc

But as far as checking users and how happy they are the best thing you can do is give a select amount of pilot users training on how to use EV, how to interact with search, archive explorer, virtual vault if you are going to use it.

How to manually archive, restore, what pending items are and not to delete them etc, let them use it for a while and try and work out any kinks that you might see and make sure they are happy with it.

If you can do this for someone who is an "Advocate" and the help desk as well and knock up some simple documentation for your environment  and then just take feedback as and when it comes in

Also note that with the Client is the documentation on how the ev client works which is pretty simple and straight forward, but you should create some of your own to discuss what features you are going to give them and how automatic archiving works etc

[Bill_Unger]

Holy smokes... that was a more-than-thorough response and I greatly appreciate all of the info!!

Thanks!