Situation

You have a busy help desk where a number of help desk operators process requests sent to a single mailbox. Over time, the central mailbox becomes cluttered with messages and they need to be moved out of the mailbox.

The messages still need to be accessible to all operators for reference purposes.

Solution 1: Move messages into a MS Outlook Data file (.PST file).

PST files can easily be created and messages can be moved into them however, there are some disadvantages:

• PST files can only be accessed by one person at a time.

• PST files cannot be set up as READ ONLY, therefore messages saved in PST files cannot be protected from being changed or deleted.

• Messages can be moved from one folder to another.

Solution 2: Save messages as individual files.

Messages can be dragged and dropped from MS Outlook into a folder on your hard drive or network drive. This process causes the newly created .msg files to assume the subject field as the file name. If characters exist in the subject field that are not acceptable in a filename, they are excluded from the file name.

This solution is problematic as messages with the identical subject headings cannot be saved in the same folder.

Solution 3: Install E-Rkive on each operators computer.

Message Functionality is not lost
E-Rkive allows you to archive your messages in .msg format and also allows you to share your messages with other users. You can use Windows folder permissions to determine which users are allowed to add messages (read/write permissions to the folder) to the archive as well as lock down the archive as READ ONLY (read permissions to the folder), ensuring messages are not deleted.

Respond to archived messages
When messages are opened from E-Rkive, a copy of the original message is created in a folder that the user has read/write permissions to and that message is displayed. The user can elect to Reply or Forward the message and a copy of the sent message is saved in their Sent Items folder.

Messages can be protected with folder permissions
The user can elect to delete the message they are viewing. If the user elects to delete this message, only the newly created copy of the message is deleted, not the originally archived message.