"Unfriendly" permission errors when perfoming basic operations such as "categories" or "mark as unread"

[AL_G]

Attempting to assign Categories on a mail in the Vault results in the following error:

"You do not have appropriate permssion to perform this opreration"

A similar message is shown when attempting to mark an item as "Unread"

"Cannot mark the item as unread. The most likley reasons are:

- You do not have permissions to modify the items
- These folders do not support marking items as read or unread
- You did not select anything to mark
- The server is unavailable"

IMHO the "goal" here is for Vault to be as "transparent" as posible for users.
To be "accepted", it should look and feel like "a giant .pst".

Messages like this result in a poor user experiance and result in unwanted calls to the helpdesk.

I "believe" these errors may be a partial result of an implementation decison (i.e. mail cannot be deleted in the archive) which leads to an EV "limitation" that meta information such as categories and read / unread state cannot be changed.

Why does this "limiation" exist?
Do Symantec plan to change it?
Is threre anything we can do to change (improve) this?

Thanks
-AL

[Mohawk_Marvin]

You could try the Idea's section:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/backup-and-archiving/ideas

More votes means it is more likely to be looked into

Or speak to your SYMC sales person..

[JesusWept3]

The error is an outlook error no? But at the end of the day I say who cares, virtual vault is still relatively new and compared to what existed before it (AE and shortcuts) it's a HUGE step forward, obviously some things could have been better however some things had to be given priority in order for it to be functional To be honest it all sounds like user edecution to me, in order for it to be accepted it should feel like a giant pst? well that's exactly what it feels like but remember that it's a view of your archive and you can't mark read/unread at will on anything else with ev

[AL_G]

re: "The error is an outlook error no?"
> Do I get this in a pst or mailbox ? - No
So I don't regard this as an "Outlook issue" per se (it happens as a result of vault policies)
 

re: "who cares"
> I do, support do, and users who get this error do! ;)

"obviously some things could have been better however some things had to be given priority in order for it to be functional"
> So you're suggesting we should stop flagging things which we regard as an issue?!
Sorry - I dont work like that.
I agree - "Virtual Vault" is a a big improvement, but there is still a significant way to go before the experiance becomes natural /  "transparent" (which IMHO is whats needed for it to become truely "accepted"). Again - I agree that every company has to prioritise efforts.

re: "sounds like user education to me"
> Disagree - thats a "workaround"
It should "just work".
If this functianlity "worked" there wouldn't be any need for "user education" on this
You have obviously not had the misfortunate to try and explain this to users
e.g. (paraphrasing)
[User] Why can't I mark an item as unread in my Vault.
[Me] good point - IMHO you "should" be able to do this, but due to archiving policy and a limitation within enterprise vault you cant.
etc etc

Best regards
-AL

[JesusWept3]

Well i worked in symantec support as an EV backline engineer for 3 years and now i work for a company with the largest user base that EV has, so I have had the "misfortune" to talk to end users with these issues, but again i just disagree.

This isn't a policy issue, there is no policy that stops you from marking an item as read or unread in a vault, you can call it a limitation if you want of EV if you want, but the fact is if you were to use shortcuts or archive explorer or search you cannot mark items as read or unread there, EV is a representation of that email at that time.

The simple answer is, Virtual vault allows for adding items, moving them from folder to folder, deleting items etc, but to modify them? you can't do it.

My suggestion would be add it to the Ideas section and see if anyone agrees, the more people that request the idea, or vote up the idea, the more likely it will be taken in to consideration to be changed.

Also what other significant changes need to be made in Virtual vault for it to be accepted?

As for the user education bit, either the user determines the limitations of what it can and cannot do, or you pull it and tell them to use Archive Explorer

[AL_G]

re: "This isn't a policy issue"

> what i meant is that by having a policy set to not allow deletions from the vault, we then hit a vault "limitation" / "feature" (as a direct result of this) - that "meta information" (such as categories, read / unread state cannot be changed either)

Therefore this behaviour is a result of a "policy" (albeit arguably indirectly!)

This is annoying for users, a support overhead and also "embaressing" to try and have to "explain".

IMHO what this results in is "crippling" what many users (myself included) regard as basic Outlook functionality.

re: "use Archive Explorer"
> Urgh ! - that would be a huge step backwards IMHO - I hope it never get to that point ;)

Best regards
-AL

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

WEll dont be embarassed trying to explain it, point them to the Help files and any resources you can find about virtual vault, at the end of the day you didn't design it, you're just giving them the best possible experience based on whats available to you.

I guess my perspective is a little different, having supported EV back from EV6 SP2 and seeing it evolve, Virtual Vault from a client perspective was such a massive leap forward, and it made it easier for end users to stomach getting rid of their PST files, because hey, heres a PST you can just drag and drop things in to.

It meant that we could then end creating shortcuts, not leaving stub files and a bunch of white space in the mailbox, that it would be in this psuedo PST file connecting in outlook, and other than Exchange 2010's "Archiving", I don't know of any other competitor that actually has any functionality that resembles virtual vault.

Also from a design and implementation perspective and creating a MAPI driver with outlook, I personally think that its one of the most complex components of Enterprise Vault and its a miracle it even works at all, so from my perspective, the fact that the limitations are pretty much limited to setting read/unread, flag status and other attributes is a small sacrifice.

And again, i'm sure some of its deliberate, because you want to limit the impact to the servers, so if everyone starts changing things on their items beyond moving them from folder to folder, changing retention etc, your server would be flooded with requests to update the physical DVS files etc.

And another thing to consider is that Enterprise Vault at its very core, is compliance software, the data that is archived is a representation of that item, from a compliance perspective you wouldn't want users editing the items because at that point your compliance is questionable.