Is it possible to set a shortcut to "read-only"?

[salvatorik]

I'm currently working on a migration for a customer that is moving from Exchange 2007 and SEV v.8.0 SP5 to Exchange 2010 and Exchange's Personal Archive. SEV archiving has been disabled so no new mail is being archived but users still have access to their old mail. Due to cost contstraints, the SEV's native Export Archive Wizard will be used to extract the archive to PST. Testing has shown that we can reliably run 8 export threads on a single SEV server. With that said, this is still a slow export rate.

It would be ideal if the PST extracts could occur in advance of the actual migration. Since SEV archiving has already been disabled, the only real concern are the changes that can be made by the end user between the time the SEV extract occurs and when the migration transpires. For example, the export runs in advance, the user subsequently deletes a shortcut which removes the archived item, then the import adds that item back to the user's mailbox.

The question I have: Is it possible to set a shortcut to "read-only"? If yes, then the process might be something like:
  - Disable users in EV so they have read-only access to their archives.
  - Use EVAC to export archives to PST.
  - Create a Mailbox Archiving Policy to:
      Archive items older than 99,999 years
      Remove shortcuts older than 1 day
      Remove orphaned shortcuts
  - Create a Desktop Policy to:
      Remove EV menu options from the client
  - Create a Provisioning Group
      Uncheck "archive mailboxes in this provisioning group"
      Set this group to use the Mailbox Archiving and Desktop Policies
      Move the Provisioning Group to the top so it is preferred
      Set the scope using an AD attribute as a filter
  - Use EVPM to "ZAP" metadata and purge EV shortcuts from the mailboxes that are migrating
  - Move the mailboxes to E2010 (New-MoveRequest)
  - Enable E2010 Personal Archive (Enable-Mailbox)
  - Import the PST file (New-MailboxImportRequest)

If not, does anyone have an alternate recommendation?

[AndrewB]

shortcuts are messages in the mailbox and can't be prevented from being deleted. what you could do is set the desktop policy to delete the archive item when the shortcut is deleted. other than that, just make sure the customer is aware of this "risk"

[salvatorik]

That's actually how the desktop policy is setup today. Unfortunately, if the export occurs before the migration, this won't help. The user may delete the shortcut and the archive item but it won't be reflected in the export that would be used to ingest the SEV archive to the user's new E2010 mailbox.

[AndrewB]

it sounds you're doing the best you can here withih the constraints of a manual export process. it's just one of those things with the overlapping timelines and disparate systems you cant control. if you were to use a migration tool like TransVault then each user could be syncronized and the shortcuts matched up to the archived items before the migration takes place. but that's not an option so you've identified the risk and that's pretty much it.

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

Maybe your best bet is just to restore directly to the mailbox??