What Is ReduceMail Pro Delete?

ReduceMail Pro Delete is a mail reduction system for the IBM Notes administrator. It helps manage excessive email enterprise-wide through a controlled IBM Notes searching and deletion process. ReduceMail Pro Delete removes selected mail and calendar documents from server mail databases to help clean out the backlog of old email. ReduceMail Pro Delete continues to run on the server based on parameters that you supply, preventing old email from building up in the future and helping to enforce your organization's email retention policy. ReduceMail Pro Delete reduces the amount of old email on the server and prevents old email from building up on the system in the future. This significantly reduces back-up time, allows IBM Notes mail databases to open more quickly and makes mail systems more robust.

ReduceMail Pro Delete features:

  • control over deletion by IBM Notes organization, IBM Notes organizational unit, IBM Notes group, folder name, document age and more
  • exclusion options by IBM Notes organization, IBM Notes organizational unit, IBM Notes group and folder name
  • enforcement of legal hold that selectively disables processing when needed
  • four options as to how to process old mail
  • enforcement of email retention policies
  • control over agents, Lotus Domino quotas and owners' access control
  • continuous monitoring of the mail system
  • control over replication
  • scheduled messaging
  • optional Kill-It-Dead technology, hard deletes and removal of mail from the inbox processes.
  • works with IBM Notes versions R6-R10

Product Features of ReduceMail Pro Delete

ReduceMail Pro Delete provides a complete array of IBM Notes mail reduction options, including:

Control Over the Deletion Process
ReduceMail Pro Delete allows you to choose the IBM Notes deletion parameters by permitting deletion according to IBM Notes organization, organizational unit and group (can be as large as you want - no IBM Notes limit on here!), mail directory, folder name, document age, size of mail database and document size. It also allows you to exclude any IBM Notes group, mail directory or folder name from the deletion process for maximum flexibility. Finally, it allows you to decide during what time interval, which day(s) in the week, which week(s) in the month and which month(s) in the year the document removals and messaging will take place. Mail documents can be removed separately from calendar and to do documents.

Legal Hold
ReduceMail Pro Delete allows you to enforce legal hold that selectively disables processing when needed. It allows you to lower end user access and remove custodians from mail removal processes to preserve important e-discovery documents and prevent spoliation.

Four Deletion Options
ReduceMail Pro Delete gives you the option to decide whether to delete full documents, delete only the attachments, move the documents into the users’ trash folders or move the documents to a folder of your choice, allowing you, the administrator, and the individual users to work together to reduce email overload. It also allows you to count the number of documents that will be deleted prior to actual removal.

Enforcement of Email Retention Policies
If you choose, ReduceMail Pro Delete will notify all users on the system that old mail will be removed, giving users an opportunity to take action but at the same time keeping control over the removal process in your hands. This feature ends your reliance on user compliance to enforce your organization’s email retention policy.

Control Over Agents, Lotus Domino Quotas and Owners' Access Control
ReduceMail Pro Delete gives you control over the agents, the Lotus Domino quotas as well as the levels of owner access to the mail databases and the various parameters of that access.

Continuous Monitoring and Reporting of the Email System
By allowing ReduceMail Pro Delete to run continously on the server, ReduceMail Pro Delete helps prevent future mail build-up by monitoring your mail system and informing you about the size of your IBM Notes mail files, the number of documents over a certain age, and the average time it takes to open users’ mail documents. Then you can take corrective action. The reporting features include virtually all user mail file information, including whether the user has their own IBM Notes archiving enabled!

Control Over Replication
You control whether the deletion stubs will be replicated from the mail server, giving you the maximum flexibility in allowing users to have their own untouched local mail databases.

Scheduled Messaging
ReduceMail Pro Archive allows you to schedule messages to be sent out to the entire enterprise during the year. These include human resource messages, reminders about email user policies, and annual holiday lists. It allows you to use formula language for the messages, giving you the opportunity to have messages automatically change with time or other parameters.

Optional Kill-It-Dead Technology and Hard Deletes
For those administrators concerned about mail in local IBM Notes mailfile replicas or in mailfiles with soft deletions turned on, ReduceMail Pro Delete offers optional Kill-It-Dead technology and hard deletes to outsmart your most sophisticated users and increase the likelihood that the deleted mail is gone for good.

Frequently Asked Questions About ReduceMail Pro Delete

Is ReduceMail Pro Delete easy to use? Yes. Our developers have made every effort to make ReduceMail Pro Delete simple and user-friendly in every way, from the basic user interface to the selection of features. We know your time is valuable and we treat it as such.

Is ReduceMail Pro Delete easy to install? Yes. Common errors have been minimized using software-user interaction.

How many ways does ReduceMail Pro Delete allow you specify removals? You can move documents to the trash folder, you can remove the whole document or just the attachment. You can also use our optional Kill It Dead technology that allows you to override any user who keeps deleted mail locally by disabling replication of deletion stubs. You can specify the folders and views to remove from and the folders and views you want to protect. You can specity IBM Notes organizations, groups and individuals to remove from or to protect. You can include or exclude staff not in the office and include or exclude dormant accounts.

Does ReduceMail Pro Delete remove calendar documents? Yes. ReduceMail Pro Delete removes calendar documents separate from mail documents. The date ReduceMail Pro Delete uses for calendar document removal is the actual calendar date on the calendar. Documents with repeated dates are removed according to the last date.

Does ReduceMail Pro Delete remove to do items? Yes. ReduceMail Pro Delete removes to do list items separate from mail documents. The date ReduceMail Pro Delete uses can be either the due date or the completion date.

Which date does ReduceMail Pro Delete use to determine which mail will be removed? The date the users see in the mail database views. There is no confusion. For calendar documents it uses the last calendar date, for to do list items you have a choice of either the due date or the completion date.

Does ReduceMail Pro Delete identify dormant accounts? Yes.

Does ReduceMail Pro Delete stop running if it finds corruption? It has a new level of corruption protection that seems to take care of many instances of corruption.

Does ReduceMail Pro Delete use the real-time Name & Address Book? Yes. As soon as you change the person or group documents in the Name & Address Book they are available for use by ReduceMail Pro.

Does ReduceMail Pro Delete run on AS/400, AIX, UNIX or Linux platforms? Yes - it is compatible with ALL platforms.

Is ReduceMail Pro Delete compatible with IBM Notes R9? Yes. The current version runs on IBM Notes R6-R9 and automatically adjusts its processing to the Notes version.

Does ReduceMail Pro Delete manage the access of the mail database owners? Yes it does. It also manages the settings for replication of deletion stubs to allow users the option of keeping their old documents locally. Using our optional Kill It Dead technology you can also outsmart any users who disable local replication of deletion stubs.

Is ReduceMail Pro Delete compatible with clustering? Yes.

Can ReduceMail Pro Delete remove just certain types of files, for example, *.exe files? Yes.

Can I have ReduceMail Pro Delete run only on particular days of the week? Yes. ReduceMail Pro Delete can be set to run only on weekends or other particular weekdays. It can also be set to run on particular weeks and months during the year for maximum flexibility.

What if ReduceMail Pro Delete times out? It will continue next time where it left off until it is finished.

Does ReduceMail Pro Delete handle Shared Mail? Yes. It will remove the headers in the users' IBM Notes mail databases and, when there are no headers left corresponding to a message, its content will be removed with the Object Collect task.

Can I make sure that ReduceMail Pro Delete does not affect the documents of selected users such as executives? Yes. Just specify an IBM Notes group with those users and tell ReduceMail Pro Delete you want them excluded from the removals.

Does ReduceMail Pro Delete remove mail before it reaches users' mail databases? No. It only removes mail already present in users' mail databases.

What is the cost of ReduceMail Pro Delete? The cost of ReduceMail Pro Delete is based on the number of users in your Notes Name & Address Book. Please call us at 1-201-773-8915 for a quote or write us at info@avabiz.com

Where do I find the instructions for installing ReduceMail Pro Delete? The instructions for installing ReduceMail Pro Delete are in the Help - Using This Database document that comes with the system.

Show Me ReduceMail Pro Delete

Below is the ReduceMail Pro Delete interface showing the view of the Control documents: ReduceMail Pro Delete allows you to perform date-based removals. The date-based removals are those which continuously remove mail older than a specified number of days for a specific set of users, folders, database sizes and document sizes. The Control document informs ReduceMail Pro Delete what to do. You can have one or more Control documents and they can be different for different servers or the same for all servers. Here is a sample Control document: The Control document includes information such as

  • the server name
  • the IBM Notes organization(s), organizational unit(s), IBM Notes group(s) and individuals you want to specifically include or exclude
  • the folders you want to include or protect from IBM Notes deletions
  • the age and/or document size to include in IBM Notes deletions
  • whether to limit removals to IBM Notes mail databases larger than a certain size
  • how you want to remove the documents (delete or only the attachments or move into trash)
  • whether you want to protect IBM Notes mail databases of staff not in the office
  • when the deletion agent should run
  • if you want to send out a message to users regarding the IBM Notes deletions and what that message should say
Once ReduceMail Pro Delete has finished a full cycle, it generates Processing Reports. These reports include the information specified in the control documents as well as information about how many documents were supposed to be removed, how many actually were, whether ReduceMail Pro Delete encountered difficulty in deleting documents in various mail databases and, if so, in which ones and why. Here is a sample Processing Report:
Notice that it includes useful information such as total disk space taken up by the IBM Notes mail databases specified and how long, on average, it took the server to open up the mail databases. In addition to Processing Reports, ReduceMail Pro Delete also generates Individual Processing Reports. They include the granularized information which is useful to identify individual abberrations such as individual archives, large sized IBM Notes mail databases and errors generated when processing those databases.

Technical Info For ReduceMail Pro Delete

ReduceMail Pro Delete is designed for a multi-server Lotus Domino environment. It uses LotusScript based agents and runs on all Lotus Domino platforms. It works with IBM Notes versions R6-R9 and will be compatible with future Lotus Domino software one month after gold releases.

Upgrades typically do not involve any changes at all.

ReduceMail Pro Delete is platform independent and has been tested on Windows, Linux, Unix and AS/400 servers.

Return on Investment Analysis for ReduceMail Pro Delete

Below are some examples of how ReduceMail Pro Delete might save your organization time and money. Some of these examples might affect the organization itself and some might affect the IBM Notes administration. Here are possible scenarios for 10,000 users.

  • Avoiding users spending time on their own IBM Notes deletions every month.
    If you request users to perform their own IBM Notes deletions every month, they probably spend about 20 minutes to find the documents to delete and another 5 to wait for the mail database to reindex its views. With centralized RMP deletions you would save 300 minutes per year per user. At an hourly cost of $25 per staff member this comes out to $120 per year per user. For 10,000 users this is $1,200,000 per year.
  • Less unwanted mail to be discovered in law suits.
    This benefit is difficult to quantify. However, under the right circumstances, this could save your organization millions of dollars.
  • More judicious use of email.
    As a result of email removals, employees may start to use their email more professionally by, for example, managing projects using a project management system rather than using the folders in their mail boxes. This will result in increased efficiences in your business processes. This could result in an efficiency enhancement of say 2% per user which comes out to $10 million per year using the same salary assumptions as above.
  • Reduce software license cost by identifying dormant mailfiles. If your mail system includes 5% dormant accounts and the cost of a Notes maintenance license is $35 per year, this feature will save you $15,000 per year.
Download our ROI calculator (click on the navigator to the left) and do your own calculation!