Lotus Domino Administrator 8 Help - Creating criteria for mail archiving

USER AND SERVER CONFIGURATION

Creating criteria for mail archiving
You use an Archive Criteria policy settings document to define sets of criteria to use when archiving an IBM® Lotus® Notes® user's mail documents. You create an Archive Criteria policy settings document from within an Archive policy settings document. After you create archive criteria, you can use it in one or more archive policy settings documents.

When you specify archive criteria, you determine what to do with old documents in a user's mail file. Do you archive them (copy them to an archive database) or just delete them? If you archive them, you determine how to "clean up" the copies of the archived mail documents that remain the user's mail file. And finally, you define what an old document is.

Mail file criteria answers these questions:

How should documents be archived? Archiving can be a combination of copying old documents to an archive database and then performing clean-up tasks on the users mail file, or just deleting them
How should documents be cleaned up? Once documents have been copied to an archive database, you can either delete the copies that remain in the user's mail file, or reduce the size of the document.
Which documents should be cleaned up? You provide a definition of an "old document" by specifying age criteria, and then applying that age criteria either to all documents or all documents in specified folders.

Specifying the name and location for the Archive database

By default, the archive mail database is stored in the directory archive, located in the data directory. Archive is the default name for the archive directory. The default name format for a user's archive database file is a_xxxx.nsf, where a_ is the prefix and xxxx is the name of the mail database. The name of the archive database is based on a specified number of characters (the default is 50) from the user's mail file name. For example, for the end user John Smith, whose mail file is jsmith.nsf, the archive database name is a_jsmith.nsf.

To create archive criteria policy settings

1. From the IBM® Lotus® Domino™ Administrator, select the People & Groups tab, and then open the Settings view.

2. Do one:

Select the Archive policy settings document for which you want to create archive criteria settings, and then click "Edit Settings."
Click "Add Settings" and then select Archive to create a new Archive policy settings document.

3. Select the Selection Criteria tab, and then click "New Criteria."

4. Provide the following information on the Basics tab.

Field Action

Name Enter a name that identifies the archive criteria. When you add criteria to an archive policy settings document, this is the name that appears in the selection box. This name also appears in the user's mail folder outline under Archive.

Description Enter a description of the criteria.

Archiving is enabled Do one:

Check to enable this archive criteria.
Uncheck if you are creating archive criteria to use later.

5. For "How should documents be archived?," choose one:

Copy old documents into archive database; then clean up database -- to archive (copy) documents to the archive database and then clean up (delete or reduce those documents) from the user's mail database.
Clean up database without archiving -- to delete documents from the user's mail database without copying them into an archive database. Use this setting to enforce document-retention policies that delete all documents after a specified time.

6. If you chose to archive documents and then "clean up" the copies that remain in the user's mail file, for "How should documents be cleaned up?," choose one:

Delete older documents from the database -- to delete copies of archived documents that remain in the user's mail database.
Reduce the size of the documents in the database -- to truncate copies of the archived documents that remain in the user's mail database. Then choose one:

Leave summary -- to leave only the header information on the mail document.

Leave summary + 40KB -- to leave the header information and 40KB of the body of the mail document. This will truncate large documents and documents with attachments.

7. Under "Which documents should be cleaned up?" specify the criteria that defines an "old" document. This criteria determines which documents are candidates for archiving. Choose one:

Older than -- to specify the date the archive criteria settings document was created as the start date for the document retention period. Documents created prior to this date are eligible for archiving.
Not accessed in more than -- to specify documents not opened in the specified time frame. Do not use this option unless the database property Maintain Last Accessed is set. If this property is not set, the criteria will not locate any documents to archive. Specify a time period.
Not modified in more than -- to specify documents that have not been modified in the specified time frame (default). Then specify a time period. This is the recommended setting.
With expiration date older than -- to specify documents that have been marked expired. A document is eligible for archiving if it has an expiration date earlier than the specified cut-off date.

8. (Optional) If you use a custom mail template, complete these fields

Change template server -- select the name of the server on which your mail template is stored.
Choose template -- select the name of your custom mail template.

9. For "In views or folders" check this option to clean up all documents in the selected views and folders according to the criteria you established in the settings above.

10. (Optional) Click the Destination tab and change any of these fields if you want to change the location of the archive database.

Field Action

Archive Directory The default is archive. Enter a new name if you want to change it.

Archive Prefix The default is the letter a, followed by an underscore (_). Enter a new prefix if you want to change it.

Archive suffix The default is .NSF. Enter a different suffix for the archive database name if you want to use a suffix other than NSF.

Number of characters from original filename The default is 50. To change this, enter the number of characters to use from the user’s mail file name to create the archive database name.

11. Save the document.

Mail archiving and policies

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Field	Action
Name	Enter a name that identifies the archive criteria. When you add criteria to an archive policy settings document, this is the name that appears in the selection box. This name also appears in the user's mail folder outline under Archive.
Description	Enter a description of the criteria.
Archiving is enabled	Do one: Check to enable this archive criteria. Uncheck if you are creating archive criteria to use later.

Field	Action
Archive Directory	The default is archive. Enter a new name if you want to change it.
Archive Prefix	The default is the letter a, followed by an underscore (_). Enter a new prefix if you want to change it.
Archive suffix	The default is .NSF. Enter a different suffix for the archive database name if you want to use a suffix other than NSF.
Number of characters from original filename	The default is 50. To change this, enter the number of characters to use from the user’s mail file name to create the archive database name.