When some people start using Enterprise Vault they don't always put a lot of thought in to the types of messages that the system should archive. Many people figure email is email and Enterprise Vault just archive it all, right? Well the answer to that is no. By default only a small number of message classes are archived by Enterprise Vault by default. The message class itself gives different MAPI properties which programs like Outlook can interpret and display differently. For example an IPM.Task 'message' has additional properties on it which relate to tasks. The same holds for things like IPM.StickyNote. And so on.
The basic list of message classes can be seen here:
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Some organisation will go above and beyond this and might integrate third party applications in to the messaging infrastructure. For example voicemails. These too might have different message classes, and an Add-in installed alongside Outlook so that the 'right thing' can be done when opening such an 'email'.
So with this possibility of different types of 'built-in' message classes, and the possibility that custom ones may be added to the environment, any savvy Enterprise Vault administrator would do well to take time to study the types of message classes in use in the organization. Simply archiving IPM.Note isn't going to help to keep mailboxes nice and trim and within the mailbox quota.
There are a number of tools out there that can be used to help analyse mailboxes, such as:
QUADROtech's Mailbox Analysis -> http://www.quadrotech-it.com/products/evtools/mailbox-analysis/
Message Class Summarizer Script -> http://www.symantec.com/connect/downloads/mailbox-message-class-summariser
Whatever the outcome of this, additional message classes for archiving need to be added to Enterprise Vault in two places:
Directory Properties
The message class itself has to be added to the Directory:
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Archiving Policy
Only then it is available on the archiving policy tab:
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Flexible approach
When you think about it this is quite a flexible approach. You define the extra message classes once in your organization, and then add them to the policies as appropriate. Have you added any extra message classes? Which ones? Let me know in the comments....
