Integrating Exchange 2007 Messaging Records Management with SharePoint Document Libraries – Part 2

Welcome back to the final post in this 2 part series, Integrating Exchange 2007 MRM with SharePoint Document Libraries.  Today’s post will wrap things up by going through the process of mail enabling an existing SharePoint document library and creating a new managed content setting in Exchange 2007 providing us with the ability to journal a copy of all messages moved into our “Project XYZ” managed folder located in Outlook, into our Shared collaborative Document Library under our Project Team Site.

Recall from part 1, that the objective of integrating Exchange MRM with SharePoint is to provide us with the ability to store and centralise all emails pertaining to a specific project from multiple users into a single SharePoint document library, that can be easily accessed by the Project Team.  If you missed the initial setup of Exchange MRM, you can access part 1 of this series here.

We finished off our last post by having our Project XYZ Managed Folder automatically pre-created for our specified Exchange users as per the below screen shot.

This has provided all users from the Project XYZ Team site the capability of moving all email records in relation to Project XYZ into this so called “dumping ground”.  At the moment, it’s fairly static and the information “dumped” into this folder isn’t going anywhere any time soon.  But this will now change by creating a new “Managed Content Settings” policy in Exchange 2007.  But just before we go ahead, we need to ensure we have our SharePoint Document Library ready to receive incoming emails.

To mail enable a SharePoint Document Library, navigate to the Project XYZ Document Library in question and click Settings / Document Library Settings / and click on Incoming e-mail settings under Communications.

We will then fill out the details as per the below screen shot.

This will go ahead and create the corresponding Contact address in Exchange 2007.  Please note this article is assuming that your SharePoint farm has been correctly setup to receive Incoming mail.  Click on the following TechNet article for further instructions on how this can be achieved; http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262947.aspx

We can now proceed with the creation of the Exchange Managed Content Setting for our Managed Folder. 

To so, navigate to Mailbox / Managed Custom Folders / click on the newly created custom folder, in our case Project XYZ and then click on New Managed Content Settings.

The below wizard is invoked and we will specify the following details as per the below screen shot.

Your goal here should be defined to meet the business requirements and in this example we will want to keep items that are moved into the Project XYZ managed folder for 30 days. After the 30 day period ,the items are permanently deleted to empty the user’s Project XYZ custom folder.

Do not fear however!!  In the next screen we will specify our Journaling options providing us with the capability to auto forward a copy to our SharePoint Email Enabled Document Library that we had created earlier. One of the advantages of using Managed Content Settings and Journaling with SharePoint enabled Libraries, is that you can specify the format of the email message and hence I have selected Outlook Message Format to ensure greatest compatibility.

Click New to Finish.

You will now notice that our Managed Content Settings has been applied against our Managed Custom Folder as per the below screen shot.

That’s it!  Based on your Managed Folder Assistant Schedule that we configured in part 1, all email records that are moved into the Project XYZ Managed Folder in Outlook will be copied to the Project XYZ Document Library as well.  In order to expedite the process and to ensure that it is all working, you can run the following Exchange Management Shell command;

Start-ManagedFolderAssistant

Once the Managed Folder Assistant has been initiated, it should only be a matter of a couple of minutes until you see your SharePoint Document Library populated as follows.

The Folder Assistant is intelligent enough to only copy the emails that are stored under the Managed Folder in Outlook once, avoiding any duplication.  It there are emails with the exact same subject line, SharePoint is also intelligent enough to follow our settings that we configured earlier for our email enabled SharePoint Library. In my setup we set it to not overwrite and hence will append the subject with a unique number as per the below screen shot.

In summary, Exchange 2007 MRM and SharePoint Document Libraries has enabled us to control the lifespan of items that are moved into our Project XYZ Managed Folder that we have created in Exchange and the capability to journal a copy of all records that are moved into this folder to our SharePoint document library for collaborative and archival reasons.

Hope you enjoyed this two part series and am sure you will find use with integrating these two technologies together to meet your business requirements.

Integrating Exchange 2007 Messaging Records Management with SharePoint Document Libraries – Part 1/2

There are two technologies in my IT Pro life that I am very passionate about, SharePoint and Exchange, so why not incorporate both passions in a single blog post. In this two part series I will be discussing how we can manage email records from our Exchange mailboxes and archive them in SharePoint Document Libraries for compliance or collaboration reasons.  Exchange 2007 introduced a great new feature set in the name of “Messaging Records Management” or commonly referred to as MRM.  Managed Default Folders is a key component of MRM which will assist us in achieving our archiving strategy.  Exchange 2007’s MRM functionality provides organisations with the ability to set email-retention policies, the ability to manage content residing in mailboxes and to establish an archiving strategy to SharePoint Document Libraries.

This is a great feature when you want to combine email records from various users working on a particular project and have them reside under the Team SharePoint Site Document Library. In this 2 part post I will provide step by step instructions on how this can be achieved with today’s post focusing on Exchange and the creation of our managed “project” folder .

So let’s begin by firing up the Exchange Management Console and navigating to Organization Configuration / Mailbox and then click on the Managed Default Folders Tab. You will notice the system default folders listed as per the below screen shot.

In our case we will create a new Managed Custom Folder for a specific project that we will later integrate with a specific document library located under our project team site.

In order to create our Managed Custom Folder, navigate to Actions and select New Managed Custom Folder..to invoke the wizard.

Enter the Name, Display Name and Description similar to the below screen shot.

Please take note of the Exchange Enterprise CAL requirement.

After filling the details click New. Your managed folder has now been created and listed under the Managed Custom Folders Tab per the below screenshot.

If you are an Exchange Management Shell person and would like to create a managed custom folder that way, all you need to do is simply type in the below command.

New-ManagedFolder -Name Project XYZ -FolderName "Project XYZ"

Now that our Managed Custom Folder has been created, we need to create a Managed Folder Mailbox policy.   Also located under Actions, Select New Managed Folder Mailbox Policy …

Creating a managed folder mailbox policy setting is great when grouping together a set of managed folders that you can then assign to a user mailbox in the one step.

Type in your managed folder mailbox policy name and then select Add to select the Managed Custom folder that we had just created earlier.

Your newly created policy will now be listed under the Managed Folder Mailbox Policies Tab as per the below screen shot.

We now have the capability to assign this policy to our users. So let’s now do so by navigating to Recipient Configuration / Mailbox. Right click on your user and select Properties / Mailbox Settings.

Select Messaging Records Management and then click on properties. From here, click on browse and select the Policy that we have just created.

When applying the settings you will receive a warning regarding compatibility with different Outlook versions, but we can ignore this warning as we are all running Outlook 2007/10 right?

Now that we have created our custom managed folder and policy we need to ensure that our Managed Folder Assistant Schedule has been setup. To so, navigate to Server Configuration / Mailbox and right click on the top pane on your server name and select properties. Then click on the Messaging Records Management tab.

By default it will be set to “Never Run”. We will click on Customize and set a schedule for it to run during non business office hours.

Now rather than waiting for the next scheduled time we can force the process via the Exchange Management Shell by running the following command.

Start-ManagedFolderAssistant

The below entry should appear in your Windows Application Event Log when the Managed Folder Assistant routine is run.

Event Type: Information

Event Source: MSExchange Assistants

Event Category: Assistants

Event ID: 9022

Date: 16/07/2009

Time: 11:01:18 AM

User: N/A

Computer: EXCHANGESERVER

Description:

Service MSExchangeMailboxAssistants. Managed Folder Mailbox Assistant for database Users Mailbox Database/Users Mailbox Database (ed6raqeq29db3-7301-4443-8917-a3b6e7857dd1) has finished an on-demand request. 1002 out of 1002 mailboxes were successfully processed. 0 mailboxes were skipped due to errors.

I can now open up Outlook for the user we applied the policy to and see that the Project XYZ managed folder has been created and listed under Managed Folders.  Remember, this is the folder that our user can now drag emails into for compliance or archive reasons.

Now that we have successfully created and deployed our Managed Folder Project XYZ we will continue our journey in Part 2 where we will mail enable a SharePoint Document Library providing it with an SMTP address and creating a Managed Content Setting that will be applied to our manage custom folder “Project XYZ”.  This will enable us to control the lifespan of items that are moved into our Project  XYZ Managed Folder that we have created and to also enable journaling on that folder to forward a copy to an alternative address, in our case the SharePoint Document Library SMTP address for archive.

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SharePoint, My Site & Managing User Profile Properties – Part 2/2

Welcome to part 2 of My Site & Managing User Profile Properties.  In Part 1 we introduced User Profile Properties and how these can be automatically populated via Windows Active Directory (AD).   We also went into some detail regarding the Organization Hierarchy Web part.  You can access part 1 here if you missed it.  In today’s post our focus is around creating additional profile properties either by mapping to existing fields in Active Directory such as Company or creating a field which may not necessarily be mapped to Active Directory but is required to be entered by the user manually.  We will also delve into how users can populate other existing properties such Interests, Skills and Past Projects.  This is equally important for organisations of all sizes as this is where the power of social and knowledge networking come into play.  By allowing users to populate this information we are creating synergy and building a people’s database that is fully text searchable. 

One of the main driving factors for implementing My Site is the ability of connecting information seekers with information repositories.  It is usually particular skills that an end user might possess that is usually not documented that may be of business value, such as being fluent in a particular language for translation services.  By encouraging end users to profile their skills and interests you are building an effective knowledge and transfer network through social networking, automatic discovery and sharing of undocumented knowledge.

Let’s begin our first task of  creating an additional profile field that  we will map to the existing Active Directory “Company” field.  This is useful for organisations that may contain multiple subsidiaries as the information entered into the “Company” Active Directory field will automatically synchronise based on your Active Directory Import Schedule, profiling your newly created SharePoint profile property for each user.

We first need to navigate to the Shared Services Provider (SSP) home page / User Profiles and Properties.

Then click on Add profile property.

A list of the existing SharePoint user profile properties are listed with their corresponding mapped attribute.  Please note that some of the SharePoint user profile properties are not mapped and hence allow  end users to populate these manually, such as “About me”.

Click on New Property and fill out the details as per the below screen shots.  Here you will have the ability to specify Name, Type, Policy Settings and Privacy Settings (i.e. who do you want this attribute to be visible to on your My Profile “public page”, more on this later).  Here you will also have the opportunity to promote the field on My Profile page of each user and provide notifications to the colleague tracker if the information for that particular user changes.  More information on tracking colleagues through SharePoint can be found in my previous article here.

I have specified that this attribute should be indexed for faster searches and then specified the Source Data Connection, in my case the Master Connection is Windows Active Directory, and then selected the company as the Active Directory field in question.

You will now notice that the newly added Company profile property field is added under the Custom Properties section within View Profile Properties.

I will now launch Active Directory Users and Computers MMC snap in, and fill out the Company field under Organization tab for my users.

After the next incremental Import your Company field will automatically be profiled based on the company name entered for each Active Directory User.  Notice that this information cannot be edited and is published to everyone as per our initial configuration.

Let’s now focus our attention on how user’s can configure some of the “other” user profile properties on their My Site such as Interests, Skills and Past Projects.  Part of this process is to target the information to one of the five pre-set groups (Everyone, Only Me, My Workgroup, My Colleagues, My Manager).

• * Everyone - self explanatory,
  * Only Me  - (not sure why you would publish information that is only visible to yourself, and is usually not mentioned in my training, but feel free to put your suggestions forward on this one)
  * My Workgroup  - are those users that form part of your Organization Hierarchy which is automatically populated as part of the reporting hierarchy in Active Directory – as explained in Part 1 of this series.
  * My Colleagues - those users that form part of your Workgroup plus those users you add manually that are not directly part of your Workgroup.  More information of colleagues can be found in my previous article here.
  * My Manager – This is automatically picked up by what is placed in Active Directory Under Organization / Manager A.D Attribute. This was also discussed in Part 1 of this series.

Now that we have explained the different groups that can be targeted, let’s explain how users can profile their own Interests etc and target this information.

From the individual’s My Site Page, navigate to My Profile and click on Details.

The edit details form displayed below will show you both Active directory mapped fields that we discussed in part 1 and user defined fields such as About me, Responsibilities, Skills etc.   Recall our discussion regarding My Site and it’s huge potential in becoming not only a social network for the enterprise but a comprehensive people’s database that can be searched against.  A large chunk of your end user training should be around My Site and the importance of profiling your information as much as possible and as accurate as possible.

From here, end users have the ability to freely type information or can use the browse field beside some of the user profile properties to select information that is already in the database which is picked up from other users. Your end user training should focus on best practices around profiling My Site encouraging users to browse first before typing to keep as much consistency as possible.

As previously mentioned, end users also have the ability with non system defined user profile properties to target privacy information to specific groups, this is accomplished in the Show To area.

You might for instance want to publish your Home Number to your Manager only and your Mobile Number to your Colleagues.  My Site and My Profile in SharePoint provides you with this flexibility.

The rest of the form is pretty self explanatory and most users succeed in filling it out correctly the first time.

 

 

 

 

Upon successful completion of an Active Directory metadata Import and User’s having the ability to manually profile other properties, we have successfully built a framework that is beneficial for any organisation.  The example below is of a completed User Profile with most of the user profile attributes being displayed under the user’s My Profile “Public” page.

This comes to the conclusion of our 2 part series on My Site and managing user profiles.   Through careful planning and thorough end user training you will be successful in building a centralised framework where users can store and share their information.  Users will also feel more in control with the new privacy controls introduced in SharePoint 2007 providing them with the ability to target their personal information.