R1, R2 and Spool hanging with Outlook 2007-Exchange 2007

[DMP]

I came across an issue I have been working on for about 4+ months with Symantec. The issue is since we migrated to Windows Vista, Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2007 I would experience the queues hanging after many hours of troubleshooting, log reviewing and frustration I was finally able to reproduce it. What seem to be the problem is the Instant Search in Outlook 2007 and the Enterprise Vault Add-In Full Client, if you try to restore an item from there it seem to eventually hang first the R1 and Spool queue until what we believe eventually get all the treads servicing that same item and this will cause the R2 to hang also.

So to reproduce this just enter text in the Instant Search field in Outlook then from the drop down select Search All Mail Items, hopefully you will get some Archived items, select an archived item an click on the Restore from Vault button. You should notice the item hanging in both the R1 and Spool queue and eventually the R2 queue will also hang it could be minutes or even hours after... but it will hang.

So hopefully this can help someone else coming across this issue but most of all I’m told I’m the only one with this issue. So I’m I really the only one using Outlook 2007 with Enterprise Vault 7.5 SP3 experiencing this issue, I understand this is also an issue in Enterprise Vault 8.0 SP1.

[MichelZ]

I think this is just not a very common usage pattern, searching for mails in Instant Search and then clicking the restore button.
Most of the users will just view the items (doubleclick) which will work.

I believe what happens is that the EV Client sends a restore command to the EV Server, and it transmits the folder the item is currently in. (and this is a search folder / virtual folder in this case).  

Then, EV tries to restore the item into that search/virtual folder, which of course is not possible.

I don't know if this could be remediated by sending the correct folder to restore to to Enterprise Vault.
(Should be a no-brainer to query the item for the actual folder, I believe)

Cheers
Michel

[DMP]

Our users does use this all the time especially that the search function is right on the mail page of outlook 2007 and when you don’t find from your initial search it prompts you to search for All items. From there all restores from the Vault should be block at the EV Add-In client like it does in the basic Outlook Search Folders, this issue with search folders was first identified in version 4 (or is it 5) and then fix for the Outlook Search Folders.

The key point here is the queues should not hang to the point you need to shut down the services and purge the queue, the code should at least recognize that the folder it trying to restore does not exist then drop the request and then generate an event.

You are right there is not a lot of valid reason to do restores from there but just because you can users will do this.

Hopefully Symantec will get a hotfix quickly as this issue exists also in EV 8.0 SP2 as per Symantec support engineer.

DMP

 

[Rob_Wilcox1 · Accepted solution]

Hi DMP,

This was just recently bugged and worked on by myself and a colleague in Support.  It is now with Engineering, who will soon review some options around fixing this issue.

I've seen this in Outlook 2007, and I'm not sure whether it reproduces in Outlook 2003 or not.  It is also an issue with Outlook Web Access 2007.

If only I had seen your post before !  Contact me off list, as I guess you might be from the customer that Support have been dealing with.. but if you're not then you can perhaps get some updates on our progress.

[Rob_Wilcox1]

You can cause a slightly less concerning issue with OWA 2007.  In this case nothing hangs, but the item goes "pending" and stays like that if it is in a folder other than your current one.

So if you have :-

\Inbox
    \t1

And you're on Inbox, but you do a search, and some of the results come back from t1... if you try to archive, or restore any of those items in t1, they will go pending, and nothing will happen.

[DMP]

Just installed the Hotfix for this issue for the server 8.0 SP2 and the one for the Outlook 2007 client 8.0 SP2. Now my R1 R2 queues not longer hangs. Once more and more peoples are on Outlook 2007 they will start using the search so just keep in mind there is a fix for this bug now.