IT is all about change management. Start communicating NOW about the business drivers for this - and why IT isn't the bad guy. Develop a phased plan and tell them how you'll meet the needs of the business - not how you are shoving this down their throat. Tell them how you'll back crap up so that you can save their butts if the forget something. Make yourself look like the hero that you are.
Regards, Michael B. Smith, MCITP:SA,EMA/MCSE/Exchange MVP My blog: http://TheEssentialExchange.com/blogs/michael I'll be at TEC'2009! http://www.tec2009.com/vegas/index.php From: Brown, Larry [mailto:larry.br...@dplinc.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 3:53 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: PST data As part of our document retention policy project, two huge changes are being mandated by our legal department. 1) Emails may not be retained past 365 days. 2) PST files may no longer be used. Emails are NOT supposed to be used for any documentation that should be retained beyond 365 days (contracts, agreements to purchase, etc.) However, if there are emails with information that should be kept for some reason (and being regulated by several government entities you can bet there are a bunch), then users are responsible for getting the data out of an email format and in to an approved document format, such as .doc or .docx. (Just did a test.exporting email to an Excel spreadsheet seems to work fairly well.) That's the requirement. The reality is we have users that have been stuffing PST's full of old email for over 10 years. (Can't wait until some of them try to open old Office 97 PST's.) And of course each and every one of them is going to say that they HAVE to have ALL of it saved somehow. Limiting the age of email and disabling PST use is well understood. We're just looking for any advice or anecdotes to help us plan this process. Users are going to start screaming when IT starts telling them their PST's are going away. I am NOT looking forward to this. Exchange 2007, Outlook 2003, PST's all over the place in every flavor. Larry C. Brown ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~
