Configuring Policies
As a starting point to creating policies, you should review your existing email and records management policies. Then decide what kind of archiving policies you need to address the long-term records retention and records management needs of your organization. Policies should take into account industry best practices. The following are examples of policies to define within your organization:
- Email Usage Policy: An email usage policy includes code of conduct, system usage guidelines, and an email confidentiality clause.
- Email Retention Policy: An organizational policy that identifies the retention and deletion requirements for email within the organization. If end users are given the ability to delete messages, then the policy should provide a clear definition as to what constitutes a business record and what constitutes a transitory record that can be deleted.
- Email Deletion Policy: A policy that is crucial to an organization unless you plan to keep information in perpetuity. An email deletion policy takes into account that you will need to delete information when it is no longer valuable or when the regulatory requirements have been met. Your deletion policy should take into consideration all forms of email messages, including corporately archived messages, privately archived messages, and backups of messages.
- Email Archiving Policy: A policy that is critical when defining the expectations and procedures for retaining and storing electronic messages within the organization. While it is an operational policy, it should take into consideration what data will be stored in your primary messaging systems, what data will be stored on online archive systems, and what data will be stored on near-online or offline systems.
For an example of a complete policy—see Sample Policy.
Differences between Policies and Jobs
A policy is a guideline and a job is the action that enforces it. You can apply a single policy to different jobs on a regular basis, including archive jobs, Archive Lifecycle jobs, and export jobs. Therefore, when setting a policy, it is important to keep in mind the job you will execute with it. Policies and jobs exist independently of each other. You cannot execute a job without having a policy to guide it.
- Click Archiving > Policies.
- At the bottom-left of the About tab, click Create.
- In the Create a Policy dialog box, give the new policy a name that is easy distinguished from other policies. Click Create.
- The new policy is created and appears under Policies. Click on it.
- Select Archiving > Policies > your new policy> Policy Criteria.
- To use archiving to control the size of users’ mailboxes, select the Mailbox Quota option. If not, then go to the next step.
- Specify a maximum mailbox size and/or maximum number of days a message can reside in the live mail system before it is archived. If you define both criteria, then both must be met in order for messages to be archived. Click Save.
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NOTE
If you select this option, you cannot configure Message Selection, Date Properties, or Search Scope. - Under Message Selection, specify the types of messages the policy will govern. This can include mail, appointments, tasks, or notes.
- Mail is filtered according to the creation date.
- Appointments are filtered according to the appointment date. Therefore, if you want to capture all future appointments, the To date must be set sufficiently far enough ahead to enable that capture.
- Tasks are filtered according to the start date.
- Notes are filtered according to the creation date.
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NOTE
If you selected Mailbox Quota above, you cannot configure Message Selection. - Under Date Properties, specify a time period to apply to your policy criteria.
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TIP
- The Beginning option corresponds to January 1, 1970.
- To use today's date (default), leave the To field blank.
- The date format is mm/dd/yyyy. -
NOTE
If you selected Mailbox Quota above, you cannot configure Date Properties. - Since policies do not have an expiration date, you can apply to an archive job regularly or just once. If you intend to apply an archive policy regularly, use the Search Scope options.
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NOTE
If you selected Mailbox Quota above, you cannot configure Search Scope. - Process all messages results in the processing of every item in the mailbox within the specified date range, regardless of its “published” flag, a status you will later set when configuring and archive job. “Published” means archived.
- Process all unpublished messages saves time by processing only messages that have not already been archived. Items that have the “published” flag are skipped.
- Click Save.
- Select the Advanced tab.
- Most users archive all mail items although it is not always necessary. This may be useful if you plan to later execute an Archive Lifecycle or Export job using the policy at a later date.
- ARCHIVE supports the use of Regular Expression Searching (Regex) which is a way to match advanced combinations of characters.
- In the Search Properties, set parameters for your search:
-
Option
Properties
Box Type
Incoming, Outgoing, Draft, or Personal
Busy Type
Free, Blocked, Out of Office, Tentative (for appointments only)
Categories
Matches a specified string
Completed
True or False
From Text
Contains or does not contain a specified string
Message Body
Opened
True or False
Personal Subject
Contains or does not contain a specified string
Personal
True or False
Private
Read
Sender
Contains or does not contain a specified string
To
Subject
Attachment Name
Attachment Size
Compared to a specified size
- The Date-Based Filtering parameters are added to any date-based filtering you may have already configured in the Criteria tab. Therefore, it is important to make sure the date ranges correspond.
- Click Save.
- Select the Folders tab to select the folders on which the policy will apply and that will later be processed by the job. You can do this through the process of inclusion or exclusion.
- The default is to apply the policy to messages in all folders. After selecting a folder, click the plus (+) button to add the folder to the list.
- Select the Recursive option to process the subfolders of a folder.
- You can also create filter entries for non-system folders. Simply enter the name of the folder you want to create in the text field, and click the plus (+) button to add the folder to the list.
- Folder paths can be specified with leading forward slashes (\\) or without. For example:
\\Cabinet\Folder1
is the same asCabinet\Folder1
.- Using a trailing slash in the folder path indicates that only this folder is included or excluded. Not using a trailing slash implies that this folder and all of its subfolders are included or excluded. For example:
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\\Memos\Personal
will include or exclude the Personal folder within the Cabinet folder plus any of its subfolders. \\Memos\Personal\
will apply to the contents of the Personal folder only, not any subfolders.- Click Save.