Mailbox archive use cases

Mailbox archiving is based on the following operations:

Unsent e-mails (e.g. drafts) cannot be archived.

Archiving e-mails rule-based (Outlook Add-In synchronization)

Rule-based archiving means that a background process is run, which automatically archives e-mails according to the archive policy settings. The steps to archive e-mails rule-based are as follows:

  • The administrator configures archive policy settings in the AdminClient GUI. See [UM AdminClient] chapter Policy settings.

  • A background offline synchronization process of the Outlook Add-In iterates over the e-mails and qualifies them by the rules of the archive policy settings, then caches the archived items in the local archive cache.

    This background process iterates only over the available items. That means if Outlook is in cached mode, it iterates only over the items which are cached. Especially, since Outlook 2013 it must be considered that Outlook can restrict this cache with the feature “Mail to keep offline” (1, 3, 6, 12, 24 months or all):

    Figure 317: Change Outlook account

  • Alternatively, the qualification of the items by the rules can be done at the Coordinator. The Mailbox Spider iterates over “all” items of each mailbox which was not processed by the Outlook Add-In background process for <spiderTreshold> days.

    The order of expired mailboxes can be managed in the in the AdminClient: Dashboard > E-mail archiving > Mailbox Spider Queue. See chapter Mailbox Spider queue in [UM AdminClient].

  • The Coordinator web service inserts the archive e-mail jobs in the Batch Archiver job table (in the ImageMaster Content Services for E-Mail database).

  • The Batch Archiver gets the jobs from the ImageMaster Content Services for E-Mail database, archives the items and replaces them by stubs in the user’s mailbox.

Archiving e-mails interactively

The user invokes archiving for the selected e-mails, and the e-mail icons of the processed e-mails change to represent the archived state.

The steps to archive e-mails interactively are as follows:

  • The user selects an item (or multiple items) in Outlook, right-clicks and selects Archive Selection in the open context menu; for details see the service for e-mail archiving user manual [UM Mail].

  • The Coordinator web service inserts the corresponding archive e-mail jobs in the ImageMaster Content Services for E-Mail database, in the Interactive Archiver job table.

  • The Interactive Archiver gets the jobs from the ImageMaster Content Services for E-Mail database, archives the items and replaces them by stubs in the user’s mailbox.

Restoring e-mails interactively

The user invokes the action for permanently restoring an archived e-mail. The selected e-mails are transformed from archived state (marked with a stub icon) into e-mails with the usual Outlook e-mail icon, i.e. these e-mails are made available on the Exchange server.

The steps to permanently restore e-mails interactively are as follows:

  • The user selects an item (or multiple items) in Outlook, right-clicks and selects Restore in the open context menu; for details see the service for e-mail archiving user manual [UM Mail].

  • The Coordinator web service inserts the corresponding archive e-mail jobs in the ImageMaster Content Services for E-Mail database, in the Interactive Restorer job table.

  • The Interactive Restorer gets the jobs from the ImageMaster Content Services for E-Mail database, retrieves them from ImageMaster and restores the items in the mailbox.

The restoration process requires a local offline archive cache which is created automatically and located in “\AppData\Local\T-Systems\” (AppData is a user dependent shortcut, e.g. for Windows 7 it points to “C:\Users\<User>\AppData”).

Retrieving e-mails via Outlook

The user opens an archived e-mail stored in the local cache or temporarily restored in the cache. After closing the e-mail, it resides in the archived state.

The steps to temporarily retrieve e-mails are as follows:

  • The user double-clicks an archived item in Outlook; see the Content Services for E-Mail user manual [UM Mail].

  • If the item is not yet cached, the WSClientIntegrationService retrieves the items from WSCoordinator.

  • The Outlook Add-In displays the original version of the archived item either from cache or from WSCoordinator.

  • If the retrieved e-mail has multiple objects (i.e. if it was archived with Single Instancing activated, see chapter PolicySynchronizer for detail)  the Outlook Add-In composes the message file by adding the attachment files to the message stub and displays the original versions of attachment files.

Retrieving e-mails via OWA

The steps to temporarily retrieve e-mails with OWA (Exchange 2013 or later) are as follows:

  • The user clicks the MailApp of an archived item in OWA (see GUI overview for details).

  • The item will be reported to WSCoordinator (request TempRestoreInRoot), which generates a restoreId and inserts the a job in the ImageMaster Content Services for E-Mail database table for Temp Restorer jobs using DatabaseWrapper. The restoreId will be returned in the response.

  • The server-side job for the Temp Restorer will get the job from the ImageMaster Content Services for E-Mail database, retrieve it from ImageMaster and restore it in the root folder of the mailbox.

The MailApp polls the root folder of the mailbox for an item with the appropriate restoreId and displays it (the original version of this archived item).

See [UM MailApp] for the detailed description, how temporarily retrieve e-mails with the MailApp.

Full-text searching within archived e-mails

This operation is available for the ImageMaster archives that meet the following conditions:

  1. The archive is configured for full-text search.

  2. The document type used in the current policy is activated and indexed for full-text search.

The steps to execute an ImageMaster full-text search are as follows:

  • The user enters a search string in the archive search field of the Outlook Add-In and presses enter; for details see the Content Services for E-Mail user manual [UM Mail].

  • The FulltextSearch request of WSCoordinator will be called using WSClientCoordinator.

  • The WSCoordinator request calls the request query of the ImageMaster Integration Service web service using the method FulltextQuery of WSClientIntegrationService and returns the list of document IDs of the found hits for the open Outlook folder.

  • The Outlook Add-In creates a search folder to show the stubs (or permanent retrieved e-mails) with one of these document IDs.

  • Alternatively, the system administration may provide further ImageMaster search means e.g. based on the ImageMaster WorkplaceClient or via the Integration Service and a web portal integration.

Additional restrictions apply for interactive mailbox archiving and the MailApp does not support shared mailboxes at all: