Introduction

Archiving is one of the most important features provided with the IBM® Notes® client. The major benefits which archiving provides are managing mail database size, referencing old mail messages or archived mails, and other benefits. For example, once the mail quota reaches a maximum limit, archiving helps users to remove mail messages, which reduces the mail database size.

This article is intended to help you understand archiving and how you can leverage the benefits provided by this feature.

What is Archiving?

Archiving helps users or server administrators to copy documents that meet specified criteria to an archive database, and then delete those documents or reduce the sizes of those documents. When documents that meet the specified criteria are deleted from the database, replica stubs remain so that deletions can replicate if there are replicas of the database. Users can access archived mail from an archive database.

Users or administrators can archive documents based on days since the documents were last read, last modified, last accessed, and/or marked as expired. From the Notes client, you enable archiving and specify settings that control what happens when a database is archived.

Advantages of archiving

               The major advantages of archiving are:

               a) It helps to avoid reaching your mail database quota that is set by your Domino server Administrator and, if the quota is reached, you can archive messages and documents to free up space in your mail database.

               b) It improves the performance of the mail server.

                c)  The archive database acts as a backup of a user’s data, e.g., mail messages and calendar entries, which the user can refer to in future

                d) If the archive database does not exist, it is automatically created and a link is added to the users mailbox for easy access.

Types of archiving

 

For archiving, either server-based archiving or client-based archiving is available. The terms “server-based” or “client-based” refer to where the archiving process occurs; either on a server or on the client’s workstation.

a) Server-based archiving—Using this option, the mail server archives to the mail server itself, or to another server that you designate as the archive server.

b) Client-based archiving—Using this option, the individual workstations process mail file archiving. Mail is archived either to the mail server, a designated archive server, or to the user’s local workstation.

In this article we will cover Notes Client-based archiving.

 

Notes Client-based Archiving

To run archiving, a User, who is the owner of the mailfile, must have atleast an "Editor" access with "Delete" rights.  A user who is not an owner of the mail file, must have 'Manager" access with "Delete" rights.

Details of each tab in Archive Settings

Manage archiving by selecting required options on the “Archive Settings” window. In order to open this window, open your mail file in the IBM Notes client and then click “Action  -> Archive  -> Settings”. In this section, you will gain familiarity with all tabs in this window.

                               

Figure 1. Launching Archive Settings window

 

Figure 2. Archive Settings window

The archive setting dialogue will be opened, with a focus on the Criteria tab.

Each tab is discussed in detail below.

Basics Tab

The Basics tab contains the below information:

1.      Information to choose the required archiving type, for example, if a user wants to archive on their local system, then they should select the ‘Notes Client Based to’ option.

2.      Allows the user to select the source and target for archiving, e.g., the below snapshot describes that archiving will be performed from the server to local.

3.      Display the recent archive history at the bottom of the window.

 

Figure 3. Basics Tab

Criteria tab

User can create or edit a set of criteria to control how mail is archived and where the archive is stored. This can be achieved from criteria tab which contains information to define the archive criteria and helps users decide which documents should get archived. User can create criteria's that apply to specific documents e.g. Documents not modified in 20 days. Users can edit, delete, or enable existing criteria from this tab.

 

Figure 4. Criteria Tab

Using buttons on the criteria tab:

2.1.2.1.  Create button

When you click on the Create button it opens the “Create Archive criteria” window. This window helps users to:

1.  Name the criteria.

2.  Detail actions to be taken on documents to be archived.

3.  Run a cleanup process for the archived documents.

4.  Choose a selection criterion for documents to be archived.

 

Figure 5. Create Archive Criteria Window

       

 

Figure 6. Selection criteria window

Details of Selection criteria

 

Option	Description
Not modified in more than	Documents that have not been edited (and then saved) for more than the length of time you specify become available for archiving.
With expiration date older than	Documents marked as expired for longer than the length of time you specify become available for archiving. Note: This option applies only to certain types of applications, such as mail and discussion, which allow you to mark a document as expired or schedule it for expiration.
Selected by user	Documents that you manually select in the current view become available for archiving. When this option is enabled, the date settings are disabled, as is the option to select a view or folder from the list box. Note: This setting applies only when Archive Selected Documents is chosen from the “Actions > Archive” menu (not when ‘Archive Now’ is selected). Note: When archiving selected documents, the Advanced archive setting “Delete a document only when the criteria can delete all responses as well” does not apply.
Older than	Documents that were created prior to the length of time you specify become available for archiving. Note: In order for this option to take effect, the application you are archiving must reside on a local computer with at least an IBM® Notes® 7 client or on a Domino® 7 server.

 

Note: If a user wants to use the archive settings only on documents in specified folders or views, then the user needs to select the option “Only in these views or folders”.

Advanced tab

This tab helps users to customize archive settings and logs. Users can configure archive settings to ensure that documents are archived together with their responses, and to keep a history of all archiving operations in all their archived applications.

The first option, ‘Delete a document only when the criteria can delete all responses as well’ will prevent orphaned response documents.

Note: This option does not apply when your document selection setting is “selected by user” and you archive by using drag-and-drop, or the menu command “Actions > Archive > Archive Now”.

The second option, ‘Log all archiving activity into a log application’, will help in setting up an archive log application. Here, users can also select ‘Include links to archived documents’ for locating documents without browsing the archive application

 

Figure 7. Advanced Tab

Schedule tab

This tab allows users to specify when documents are archived, and where the archive schedule is run.

 

Figure 8. Scheduled Tab

Archive Logs

Archive logs help users to debug and investigate issues related to archiving. This can be enabled from the Advanced tab of the Archiving settings window. After enabling this setting and archiving the documents, the Archiving Log database gets created.

                 Figure 9.  Archive log database option under Advanced tab

Once a user has set up the document archiving tool to log archiving information to an Archiving Log database, an entry is created in the Archiving Log database when the IBM Notes Client finishes archiving. To view this entry:

1. Open your mail file and go to “Actions ->Archive->Open Log” 
2. This will open the Archive Log database
3. This database contains multiple views which can be referred to for archiving details

 

 

Figure 10. Archive Log database

The Archive log database also helps in:

• Date/Time of archive operation were performed
• Number of documents were archived
• Archive statistics.

In Figure 10, we can see that one document was archived on 1st September 2014 at 02:41AM in database archive\a_tuser1.nsf.

When user open’s “Archive Statistics for: Test User1”, It will be shown as Figure 11.

 

         Figure 11. Overall Statistics Archive

It has three tabs Stats, Destination and Links. 

1. Stats - This tab shows all information about when archiving was performed, source and destination, actions taken on the archived documents.

       Figure 12. Stats Tab

2. Destination- This tab shows the database information of the documents was archived.

         Figure 13. Destination Tab

3. Links- This tab has the links to the documents were archived. On double clicking the link, archived email will be opened.

      

      

       Figure 14. Links Tab

Conclusion

You should now understand what is archiving. This document has discussed details of different tabs on the Archive setting window, their usage etc.

References

IBM Product Information Centre for Archiving

 

About the authors

Bhavana Paul is a Staff Software Engineer based at IBM’s Software Lab in Pune, India, currently working as a Quality Engineer for IBM Notes Client. She has more than 10 years of experience as Quality Engineer. You can reach her at bhavana.paul@in.ibm.com.

Reetu Sharma is a Staff Software Engineer based at IBM’s Software Lab in Pune, India, currently working as a Quality Engineer. She has extensive experience in IEI, LSXLC, DECS, Domino Server, and Notes Client. You can reach her at reesharm@in.ibm.com.