Strategies for Effective
E-mail Management
Presentation
Given by Tom Forsyth, CRM
Presentation for the ARMA
Southwest Region
CRM Conference
Dallas, TX.
April 10, 2015
Presentation Agenda
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E-mail Usage and Challenges
E-mail as a Business Record
E-mail Strategies
E-mail Best (& Worst) Practices
E-mail Retention
E-mail Classification
E-mail Strategies with ECM
Email Archiving
E-mail Policies
E-mail Management Imperatives
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Strategic imperative for many organizations.
Courts say e-mail is legitimate area of discovery.
Easy target for regulators/lawyers hunting “smoking gun”.
Company must develop e-mail policy & procedures.
Trend that impacts on the adoption of ECM.
Leverage ECM or Email Archive to manage e-mails.
Regulatory requirements for service organizations and
financial institutions to manage e-mails.
What others say...
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“Organizations need to apply the net of information
governance to capture the important data while
letting the transient data go free”
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“…smaller volumes of email coupled with better
management and organization translate directly into
smaller costs during discovery”
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Jesse Wilkins in Technology for Managing Email
John Montana, J.D., Strategies for Minimizing Litigation Risks
“Email to me is like gold mining. Given enough
email, I can sift through it and always find some
nuggets to hurt the other side”
–
Class Action Attorney
Challenge to Records Managers
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“There is a distinction between record retention
which looks at whether or not you have an obligation
to preserve a document and electronic discovery
which looks at if the document exists whether you
have an obligation to produce it.”
- Ethan A. Berghoff, Baker & McKenzie Chicago.
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Applying records management to e-mails should be
a high priority before your organization gets involved
in an e-Discovery situation.
Challenge to Records Managers
You need to keep your records long
enough to satisfy retention
requirements but no longer than
necessary to reduce costs
associated with discovery & storage
.
Components of a RM Program
Information
Security
Assess
Risk
Equipment
&
Supplies
Access
Control
Archives
Filing
Records
Classification/
Taxonomy
Appraisal
Records Inventory
Compliance
Vital
Records
Protection
Software &
Technology
Email
Storage
Business
Continuity/
Disaster
Recovery
Active &
Inactive
Records
Policy &
Procedures
Record
Destruction
Electronic
Records
Retention
Schedule
Audits &
Metrics
Employee
Awareness &
Training
Imaging
Forms &
Repts Mgmt
Business Process
Reengineering &
Workflow
Typical employee sends & receives…
25,000
E-mails Per Year (100 day / 250 days year )
Source: “A Smarter Way to Manage E-mail” at
www.clearstorysystems. com
Annual E-mail Volume Estimates
10 employees -1 year
250,000 E-mails
500 employees - 1 year
12.5 million E-mails
2,000 employees - 1 year
50 million E-mails
Corporate E-mail Usage Statistics
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An organization with:
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Emails per user per day in file size:
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16,000 mailboxes
100 e-mails day per user (current average is 160)
Creates almost 3 billion e-mails in 7 years!
18MB of e-mail a day in 2007
21 MB in 2009
28MB by 2011
Email growth at 30% per year.
That equals 6 GB per User Each Year
Entire Organization: 100 TB Year!
E-mail Usage Statistics
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70% of them use e-mails to negotiate contracts and
agreements.
84% use e-mails to describe operational and/or
product strategies.
63% to discuss HR issues.
80% of data produced for discovery, audits, FOIA
requests, etc. is email.
Yet only 45% of organizations have an e-mail policy.
Only 19% of organizations have adopted email
archiving.
The Problems
 Regular
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backups of the e-mail database,
is not a substitute for an email retention program
 Restoring
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is a long and costly process.
 Users
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don’t want to delete anything,
yet expect solid Outlook performance.
 Mailbox
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multiple tapes to find e-mail,
stores continue to grow,
requiring more storage space, faster disks, etc.
Potential Strategies
 Maintain
all emails (monolithic retention)
 Impose Mail box limits
 Deploy managed folders for temporary records or
working documents.
 Delete transitory records after 90-180 days.
 Print out emails and put them in folders.
 Allow users to archive emails to PST files.
 Set up global email archiving
 Leverage archiving of business records to content
management system.
So what are the bad strategies?
 Doing
nothing & maintaining all emails
 Imposing aggressive mail box limits
 Archiving all emails to email archive.
 Declaring there are no emails that are business records.
 Allow users to save emails to PST files, file shares or
removable media.
 Printing out emails to put in paper folders.
 Saving monthly back-up tabs of email servers.
E-mails as Business Records
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E-mail consists of record types like regular mail.
E-mail messages are official records when:
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Created or received in the transaction of business
Retained as evidence of official transactions.
Attachments can be (separate) records.
Meta-data is essential to managing your e-mails.
Content (subject) determines retention.
Many are related to your job functions.
TYPICAL HR CONTENT
RECEIVED BY E-MAIL
Cover Letters
Applications
I9’s or W-4’s
Resumes
References
Employee Profile
Worksheets
Other Types of Emails with Records
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Contracts & supporting documents
Contract negotiations
Credit & collection records via e-mail can be
official records
Vendor invoices & credits received by e-mail
Purchase requisitions
Legal Opinions or 3rd party subpoenas
Approval Documents (expenses, budgets,
projects, etc.)
Best places to start…
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Understanding E-mail itself is not a record series; it
is the content of the email that defines it is a record.
Start with a up-to-date retention schedule.
Establish policy for managing emails.
Create an email file plan.
Engage users in classifying emails.
Ensure deletion is centrally managed.
Disable PST files & storing files on hard drives.
Monthly Back-up Tapes are not for long term
retention!
Elements of Email File Plan
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ID records to be retained in email inbox vs. other
repositories (exchange server, email archive, ECM).
What records do you retain and how long?
Determine who is the record owner.
Decide if you implement on a go forward basis vs. how
you address legacy emails.
Configure email archive or Exchange server for
Folders and Retention settings.
What is your strategy for long term records?
Retention Schedules for E-mails
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Common Retention Schedules
– Complaints – 2 years
– Correspondence on program/policy development – 5 years
– Open records requests – 1 year
Consolidate your schedule.
– You don’t want 200 categories for e-mails!
– Only a small number of records are related to e-mail
– Limit choices to 5 email record types per user.
Set up categories for “working” e-mails such as:
– Reference
– Internal Projects
3 Zone E-mail Strategy Approach
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Transitory E-mails (90 days): 35-75%
Reference or Working E-mails (1-2 years): 20-40% *
Actual Business Documents: 5-15% *
If 75% of e-mails are transitory, then 37.5 million of
the e-mails in an organization with 2,000 mailboxes
can be readily disposed of!
* These are documents that would be managed
according to your retention policy.
Strategies for Managing E-mail
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Users are responsible for managing their own
e-mail.
Put reference records in managed folders.
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Apply retention to the managed folders.
Archive emails in email archive.
Transfer emails with business content & longer
term retention to email archive or ECM.
Leave non-records in messaging system.
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Delete personal (transitory) messages after 90 days.
Foundation for E-mail Solutions
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Declare & classify e-mails that need to be
retained.
Users should migrate official records to
appropriate “folders” using a secure and
accessible archive system or repository
The archives should be on a shared LAN
drive - not .PST files on your hard drive.
Foundation for E-mail Solutions
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Utilize e-mail archive/repository to preserve,
provide access and apply retention rules.
Your email appropriate retention schedule
should be applied to the records in your
archive system.
Apply record “holds” in risk management
event.
Force a user review of e-mails.
E-mail Warning Process
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Automate e-mail warnings & deletion process
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Force a user review of “up for deletion” e-mails.
Users warned at the “80th” days that e-mail will
be deleted on the “90th”.
Users browse list and either:
– Archive
– Leave to be deleted
– Delete directly
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Purge transitory e-mails.
Managed Folders for Retention
Working
Documents
(2-3 years)
Projects
Issues
Business
Records
(7 years)
Long Term
10+ years
Financial
Collection
Records
Final
Contract
Permanent
Resolutions
These Messages could go into
Email Archive or ECM system
Managing E-mail with ECM
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Ad hoc e-mail classification by user
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E-mail Archiving of all e-mails
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Within e-mail Client Desktop
Outlook, Lotus Notes, Domino
MS Exchange Server
Message Journaling
Selective Archiving of e-mails
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E-mails from specific business process “in-boxes”
Such as Resumes@YourOrg.com
An ECM Based Solution
1. Connect E-mail to the transaction.
E-mail is part of the process:
1. E-mails and attachments drive business processes.
2. E-mails and attachments are part of the transaction.
An ECM Based Solution
2. Keep user in E-mail application.
Users live in the E-mail client:
1. Access content from E-mail client application.
2. Interact with the business process transaction directly from
the E-mail client.
Specifically…
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ECM solutions offer integrations for Office Outlook
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Users can remain in preferred applications
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Leverage familiar Office/Outlook features
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Ease deployment and installation efforts
Classifying E-mails
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User declares an e-mail as a business record based
on content & relationship to the business process.
User classifies it as a record by “drag and drop” into
a folder.
The folder has been pre-configured to:
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Determine which document type the e-mail belongs to.
Assign e-mail meta-data automatically to keywords (index)
values associated with the doc type.
Retention rules in the ECM system are applied to e-mails.
A shortcut or link to the e-mail can be maintained in
your Outlook mailbox.
Outlook functionality
ECM Integration functionality
ECM Functionality Within Outlook
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Upload e-mails/attachments into ECM
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Drag/drop to Outlook folder
Click “Upload” button
Store email and attachments either as:
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Separate documents
– One document
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Retrieve/open any content stored in ECM
Leverage ECM functionality
Attach documents from ECM to e-mails
Launch and/or Execute Workflows
from the e-mail message
Upload E-mail (drag/drop)
Upload E-mail (toolbar button)
Import your e-mails and/or attachments
into your ECM system
Import Options
E-mail
(e-mail format)
.txt
.rtf
.htm/html
.msg
Attachment
(native format)
.doc/docx
.xls/xlsx
.ppt/pptx
.pdf
Or save e-mail and or attachments as TIF
images using “Print to TIF drivers”
Automate Indexing of E-mails
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MAIL System Keywords
Mapped Keywords
Static Keywords
AutoFill Keyword Sets
Keyword Data Sets
Host LOB Applications
Approach Advantages
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Content owners are involved with classifying emails.
Emails stored in ECM system can be linked to and
retrieved along with other transactional documents.
Emails managed for retention using ECM
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Date drive retention for individual document types
Event driven retention for groups of related records.
Legal Holds can be applied to email records so they are
not removed according to retention.
Emails can be full text searchable.
Emails that are business records are stored in a single
central repository.
Maximizes benefit from your ECM deployment.
Five Second Rule
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Employees will spend up to 5 seconds
manually classifying documents.
Otherwise they will use the 5 seconds
subverting the classification system.
Overall compliance drops significantly.
Mark Diamond CEO of Contoural at ARMA 2012
“Email Classification Strategies that Actually Work”
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E-mail Archiving with ECM
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Store both e-mails & attachments
Create special collections based on meta-data criteria
Search archive for messages
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E-mail meta-data
Full Text Search
Recover e-mails even if deleted from Exchange.
Original messages can be replaced with “stub”.
Purge messages after retention period fulfilled.
MS Exchange Platforms
Microsoft Exchange
2000 SP3 August roll-up
2004
Microsoft Exchange
2003 SP1 or greater
Microsoft Exchange 2007
Incoming
E-mail
ARCHIVE ALL E-MAILS FROM EXCHANGE
SERVER TO E-MAIL ARCHIVE USING
MESSAGE JOURNALING
E-mail Database
& Disk Groups
Exchange
Server
ECM
User
Journal Mailbox
& E-mail Archive Services
Incoming
E-mail
ARCHIVE EXISTING E-MAILS FROM
EXCHANGE SERVER OR YOUR PST
FILES USING WEB CRAWLERS
Exchange
Crawler
E-mail Database
& Disk Groups
Exchange
Server
ECM
User
Workstation
Crawler
Journal Mailbox
& E-mail Archive Services
Stubbing Service
 Provides
direct access to e-mail in the
archive via Outlook client
 Connection
made to the archive via a “stub”
of the e-mail in Exchange
 Reduces
the size of e-mail messages
stored in Exchange
Email Archiving Advantages
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All emails are archived in a central repository outside of
Exchange; it could be in the cloud.
Retention can be applied to the emails such as emails
can be managed for a monolithic period (2 to 5 years).
Emails are full text searchable.
Special collections can be created for eDiscovery
purposes.
Ideal for organizations that require all emails to be
archived (i.e. banking institutions, brokerage firms).
Selective E-mail Archiving
 Specific
e-mails/attachments imported as
ECM documents based on rules
 Allows select content to participate in
business processes as it makes sense
 Documents stored in ECM, cross-referenced
to related content and/or sent to a Workflow
jcustomer@9secondfoods.com
kirk@chefco.com
PO
attached
for project
Supplied
Purchase
Order
Tues
Thurs5/5/2009
5/7/2009
Weds
5/6/2009
E-mail Database
& Disk Groups
Exchange
Server
Stubbing
Service
ECM
User
Journal Mailbox
& E-mail Archive Services
Organizational Value
E-mail Recovery
 Automatically capture and archive e-mail
 Recover e-mail via a single interface
 Support compliance initiatives
Exchange Performance
 Reduce cost of Exchange administration
 Eliminate the misuse of e-mail in-boxes/clients
 Keep e-mail administrators and users happy
Archiving Vs. Outlook Integration
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Enterprise E-mail
Exchange Server Journal
Auto Capture/Index E-mails
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All or selective groups
Full Text Searching
Ability to build sub-sets
Audit Logs
E-mail Retention
Where there is need to
archive all e-mails for
regulatory
compliance/discovery
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Outlook/Notes/Groupwise
Desktop, Role-based
User Defines Content
Capture Content Tied to
Business Function
Auto Indexing with ability to
index other criteria
Native Format
E-mail & Attachment stored
together or separately
E-mail exists along with other
records that are part of process
Manage email for retention:
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Date based
Event based
Comparison - Email Options with ECM
E-mail Technologies
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Messaging Applications
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Messages stored in inbox; difficult for others to access
Not designed to handle growing volumes of emails.
Does not provide litigation holds except for entire mailboxes.
Archiving Solutions
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Move or copy messages to a central, separate repository
Uses defined rules to archive emails:
 Age, size, attachments, sender/recipient, content, etc.
Indexed to provide faster search
May provide de-duplication or single instance storage.
Facilitate retention & disposition
Tamper proof storage.
Replace message with stub in Messaging System.
E-mail Technologies
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E-mail Management Solutions
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Set up walls between groups like banking & consulting
Scan for inappropriate content, sensitive or confidential data
Address proliferation of PST files on user desktops
 Scour archives for messages to de-duplicate & send to
archiving.
Classification by message content or metadata
Apply tags or labels to emails
Compliance Solutions
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Address specific compliance requirements
May include archiving component.
Email monitoring & notification
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Block messages or sent alerts
E-mail Technologies
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Discovery Solutions
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Streamline message discovery & litigation support
Apply litigation holds & ability to lift holds.
Email archiving component.
Searching tools to find responsive messages.
Add metadata like bates # to messages
Redaction & Exporting
Security Solutions
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Scan for threats (incoming or outgoing)
Assert control over mobile deivces.
Centralize encryption methods.
Managing Emails in the Cloud
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Does the cloud solution support managed folders
and retention?
Does the cloud solution enable legal holds?
How do you get large amounts of emails back when
you have that eDiscovery project?
What are the security issues relating to Cloud
storage? Are the emails stored in your jurisdiction?
Will the cloud solution allow me to put emails in my
ECM Solution?
How does the cost increase over time?
Program Costs
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In her Webinar titled “Email Archiving: Avoiding
an ‘End-Run’ Around RIM”, Deborah Juhnke,
CRM, provides this analysis for an Email
Archiving program:
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$6 per user per month and 5K users = $30K per month
Program cost to organization is $360K in year one.
With 30% growth, cost goes up to $468K in the 2nd year
Cost is $1.34 million after 5 years.
E-mail Policy Elements
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State the principles of your e-mail policy
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E-mail belongs to organization and not the user
E-mail management adheres to regulatory requirements
E-mail usage: what is acceptable, what is effective
Retention and Disposition, Archival Issues
Back-ups
Legal Issues (holds, discovery)
Privacy, Monitoring, Security and/or Technology
Mobile & Remote email like web-based email
Procedures & Responsibilities for Compliance
Training
Audit
Effective E-mail Usage
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E-mails should always be professional.
Use an appropriate content-based subject line
Be careful on what you send/forward.
Copy only those who need the information.
Don’t automatically “reply to all” on e-mails.
Is e-mail always the best way to communicate?
Use collaborative tools like IM, Blogs, SP, ECM, Wiki,
RSS, especially for one way communication.
Do you need to send attachments? Send a link instead!
Email Charter
(www.emailcharter.org)
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Respect recipients time
Short or slow is not rude
Celebrate clarity
Quash open-ended questions?
Slash surplus CC’s
Tighten the (email) thread
Attack attachments
Give the gifts of EOM or NNTR
Cut out content-less responses
Disconnect!
Guiding Principles for Email
Management - AIIM
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E-mail belongs to the organization
E-mail is a business tool.
E-mail should be used appropriately.
E-mail must be managed according to its content and
value to the organization.
E-mail should be stored appropriately.
E-mail is not a record series by itself.
Users must be trained on your email policy and file plan.
User participation is based on their roles.
E-mail policies have to be enforced & applied equally.
ROI
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ECM offer a strong payback on your organization’s
investment.
50% of ECM adopters report an ROI of 1 year or less
while almost 30% report they were able to recover their
investments in less than 5 years
AIIM provides an e-mail ROI calculator which can help
you to develop an ROI for e-mail management solution.
The calculator can be accessed at:
http://www.aiim.org/Shop/Product/1743
AIIM Professional Members can access it at:
http://www.aiim.org/Membership/ROICalculator.aspx
Where to Start?
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Be proactive in reducing the volume of emails
Address emails from a policy perpective
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Usage, Retention & Disposition, Privacy, etc.
This will reduce the amount of email to be managed.
Framework to ensure your EMM meets legal, regulatory &
operational requirements.
Implement policy with training
Use technology as a tool for compliance
Audit your program for effectiveness & user compliance.
ARMA & AIIM Resources
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ARMA International: Requirements for Managing
Electronic Messages as Records (ANSI/ARMA 92004)
AIIM International: Performance Guideline for the
Legal Acceptance of Records Produced by
Information Technology (ANSI/AIIM TR31).
ARMA International: Vital Records Programs:
Identifying, Managing, and Recovering BusinessCritical Records (ANSI/ARMA 5-2003).
ARMA Webinars
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A Case Study: Establishing an Effective Email
Program by John Annuziello
Email Classification Strategies that Work by Mark
Diamond, Founder & CEO of Contoural.
Email Archiving: Avoiding an “End-Run” Around
RIM by Deborah H. Juhnke, CRM
Halt the Hoarding of Email & Other Documents
by Mark Diamond of Contoural.
Other Resources:
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Contoural White Papers:
– 10 Best Practices for Archiving
– Email Archiving ROI & Business Case
– What IT Can Do If You’re Going To Be Sued
Technologies for Managing Emails
– by Jesse Wilkins, CRM, CDIA+
The Risks of Email Mismanagement:
– http://www.continuitycentral.com/feature0104.htm
Acknowledgements
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Lois Dillard, CRM
Pat Dixon, CRM
Karen Harris, CRM
Susan Hubbard, CRM
Angie Fares, CRM
Jesse Wilkins, CRM
Mark Diamond, CEO, Contoural, Inc.
Hyland Software, Developers of OnBase
Questions?
Thank you!
Tom Forsyth, CRM
Account Executive
DataBank IMX LLC
1421 Patton Place, Suite 200
Carrollton, TX. 75007
Phone: 469-521-0570
Cell: 214-616-027
E-mail: tforsyth@databankimx.com