Archiving eMail

2007 Story Set

The laws regarding the ability to delete emails have changed (due to various lawsuits that were thwarted by suddenly deleted emails, along with the nefarious shredded documents). These two items are on a par level.
So - it behooves us all to get new software to handle the infinite storage (no kidding 99999.9 years) of email - and let's face facts. A high-tech company lasts about as long as it takes the next new thing to come out and big-foot them into the hereafter. 99999.9 years it wildly unlikely. We will have been in and out of several ice ages by then! Not that anyone already alive will care!
But I went to the training - Symantec - Enterprise Vault. I even have a button. I am a good girl.
Why the concern?
We all keep EVERYTHING, wew are a nation of horders, so, in a business, the IN box fills up. Companies do not let you carry everything. They want you to do something with it. They limit the size of the IN box.
In the past, as a first step, I put mail in Personnel folders - this kept the email from bitching at me that my mailbox was full. (And I also bitched back that I wanted a bigger box. Sometimes I won - sometimes not.)
A second solution (rather obvious) is to put large files on the SharePoint or Documentum Server, or whatever database server you have at work, and to email a link to that location instead of the whole file (Or files.) This makes your emails very small. You should never have an email that is over 0.5 MB and most should be something under 25KB. By most I mean 99.9%.
Well - this is beyond most engineers. They are lucky they have mastered opening email and actually reading it. Database uploads are somewhat beyond most of them (You do it - no let blank do it). Why I now do all the website crap.
Here is solution #3 - software that will automatically keep your IN box to 50% of your size limit, moving your email into archive on a cheaper server. And you don't have to do a thing! (Of course, you loose control and some men go ballistic when you do this to them.)
You get a link to the archived messages - unless you are still too big for your IN box and then you don't.
You can read any email in the archive and even have sophisticated searching. Much better than Outlook 2003. You can find anything.
Here's the kicker.
You cannot delete anything from the archive.
Because that's what the law is all about - delete nothing. This is to preserve all design decisions and other data that got documented in email and nowhere else. (Which is very sloppy but nevertheless what we all do.)
So these merry men, who raided my email before I knew about this, now have my recipe for Jim Beam Drunken Little Smokies. For the next 99999.9 years.
I somehow believe they really don't need that. Or my Christmas guest list. Or a note to myself that my Truck (Tacoma TRD extended cab pickup) needs a clutch job and an air filter, and a set of front brake pads. Next month it will be new Revo Tires. Or the month after. Watching them. They finally show some wear (60,000 miles? At least!)
Or my FrameMaker template I sent to work to use to build the one for my company (the one I work for) and then sent back with updates to use in my company (the one I own). Mutual benefit society. I am now a FrameMaker Guru. Good grief! (But I LOVE the new template I built! Makes work go faster!)
Or that photo of Fabio his office sent and I use as a screen background. Or Henry the Vampire from Blood Ties. (I like distraction on my screen and like to switch images once a week just for fun.) Or how about the silver Prius I am thinking about having my company (that I own) purchase for me later this year. OR -----
You get the idea.
It behooves us therefore to run around like mad and delete delete delete before we become embedded in stone.
Somehow in the training session, they failed to mention this.

At home, I am planning to remove boxes of email to an archive. I don't think I need the last 1,000 messages from Fabio fans, or my writing group. I will keep them archived. Nor do I need massages older than 2 years. They can get off the box so to speak. Sit on the external drive. Sit in a folder on the main drive. Sit on DVD. Whatever backup I choose (I like to do more than one.)

Clean up also makes the mail program run faster. Housecleaning. This is called housecleaning. And we women do it best.

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