EVPM - Creating and expiring folders

[vanadasd]

Hello Everyone!

Quick question about EVPM, I haven't used it extensively before but it looks like a pretty powerful tool:

I'm looking at a scenario where we would like to create mailbox folders for a few people when a project begins.  We would like to expire and remove these folders at a user-defined time. Due to the lifespan of projects, we can't put a timeline on when we would like these folders to expire.

I'm looking for advice at a high-level for how to handle the creation and expiration of these archives. These are the options that I see so far:

1. Create the folders using EVPM, assign the folders to a retention policy that we create in the EV console, and then change that retention to a really small value when we need those items. We have hundreds of projects and this seems like a lot of overhead to have so many retention categories so that we could individually expire a project, but we're willing to deal with the overhead if this is the best solution.

2. Create the folders using EVPM, assign all of the folders to an "archive forever" retention category.  When we need to expire the projects, run EVPM again and assign the folders to a "1 day" retention category, expiry would eliminate the files.

3. Create the folders using EVPM and and assign that folder and its contents to an archive outside of the user's mailbox archive (is this even possible?). Then we can simply assign all of the folders an "archive forever" policy, and delete the archives when we're done with the project.

Thank you for your assistance!

[AndrewB]

i think option 1 is your best bet. option 2 wouldnt work since you say you have multiple projects with different retetion requirements and option 3, well, that's not really possible. you'd have to make the users move items to a shared mailbox or something but you'd still run into the different retetion requirements issue.

can the users delete their own items when the project is over?

[vanadasd]

Thanks AndrewB!

It seems that it's a requirement to keep that email for x years after the project ends, so we can't allow the users to delete their own items after the project is finished until it sits for that period of time. We allow them to delete just the shortcuts so they don't have to see it and can organize their inboxes accordingly.

I think option 2 might still work, we could keep an EVPM configuration file for each individual project and then change the retention policy on that set of folders from an "archive forever" to a "1 day policy" when we want to expire it. Does this make sense?  Either way, it seems like we either need to keep track of a couple hundred retention policies in EV or the same number of EVPM configuration files.

Here's another odd follow-up question:

Option 1 or 2 seems very feasible for new projects, but do you think that there's something I can do with my existing projects?

Right now, our users create their own Outlook folders to organize their projects.  These users are given instructions that all of their project folders must contain the project number in its name.  Is there a way that we can expire/delete those items? Although the folders weren't created by EVPM, the emails are still archived by Enterprise Vault by our default policy.

Here's the option I was considering for these existing project folders, would you guys happen to know if this was feasible?

1. In the EV Console, change the policy of the email policy and/or retention category to allow for user deletion of shortcuts to remove from the archive.

2. In Exchange Powershell, identify the project folders in user mailboxes with the project number and delete them, causing the mail to be deleted from Exchange and the EV archive.

3. In the EV Console, change the policy back to disable the user deletion.

My primary concern is that I don't know exactly how that deletion feature works. If I enable this feature, will shortucts that have already been deleted from their email be removed from the archive? Or will the user deletion feature only apply to shortcuts deleted while the user deletion option is available?

Let me know what you think, other options are greatly appreciated!

Thanks again!

[AndrewB]

i went through a 1.5 year records management project which sounds similar to yours. you have to do 2 things. first, put in place a process for users to manage existing data and some of that might require manual archiving and assignment of retention policies according to their best efforts and what they know. second, you create an automated process so that going forward, you make it easier on the users and projects with a process in place to deal with the retention requirements.

if you want to rely on retention and expiration then you need to archive different data sets with separate retention categories or to separate archives. otherwise, you wont have the granularity to modify the retention policy or to do targeted deletion of the archives you no longer need.

to answer your last question, the user deletion feature only applies to shortcuts deleted while the user deletion option is available.