HOUSECALL information technology

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently in the process of migrating to Exchange 2007. This means there are some changes coming to your email system. This post will explain the most important changes related to moving to the new email servers

1. You will have roughly 3 times the storage space on the new servers
2. Exchange Extended Mailbox comes with the new servers, and will automatically move older emails to secondary storage. This means no more “Your e-mail is over it’s size limit” emails!
3. The way accounts are created and modified will be different
4. Outlook Web Access gets a new look and gains some features
5. You can now use your House email with Apple Mail
6. There is a migration process your office will have to go through once

Storage Space

Let’s start with an easy one. Unless you had a special exemption*, you started receiving size limit warning emails when your mailbox reached 135,000 kb. On the Exchange 2007 system, that limit will be at 375,000 kb. Just think of what you can do with all that extra space!! The point where you stop being able to send and receive emails is beyond that but won’t be an issue because of Exchange Extended Mailbox (EEM)

*Note that, if you did have a special exemption previously, it will go away when you migrate and you will be assigned the default storage limit. In almost all cases, this will still be more space than you had before.

Exchange Extended Mailbox (EEM)

Let me start by saying that this is not as complicated as it sounds. It is very easy to use. The way you store old emails is about to completely change in a very good way!

When your mailbox reaches the trigger point of 375,000 kb, EEM will kick in the following night and move mail messages older than 30 days to secondary storage until your mailbox is back under the limit. This process is called moving to the vault or vaulting. If you are at a PC, using Outlook or Outlook Web Access, vaulted messages appear in your Inbox (or whichever sub-folder you left them in) just like regular messages, with the exception of having a different icon.

The highlighted messages above have been vaulted. Notice how the icon to the left is different from the non-vaulted messages below them. (In this case, the more recent messages are vaulted because I manually did so for the purpose of creating this screen shot. More on that later.)

Messages that have been vaulted no longer count against your mailbox size limits. If you are wondering when moving messages to your PSTs (or Personal Folders or Archive Folders) enters into the process, it doesn’t. You no longer have to create a secondary organizational system for old email. You can just organize your email in your Inbox and sub-folders and EEM will take care of keeping you under your mailbox size limit. There are just a few limitations to messages which have been vaulted:

1. You may have to wait an extra second for the message to open, though it is normally VERY quick
2. You will not be able to see all of very large, vaulted messages on your Blackberry or on an Apple mail client without unvaulting them. You will notice this most commonly with message attachments not being viewable, but it will also apply to the text of very long emails. Anything over 4000 characters will not be visible without unvaulting.
3. If you are exporting messages to a file, to take with you to a new job or for backup purposes, the messages that have been moved to secondary storage will not be exported in full. There are ways to deal with this issue, so just ask your Systems Administrator for help.
4. If you are running the most recent version of Mac OS, 10.6 Snow Leopard, using Apple Mail, or using Office 2010 on a PC there is currently no way to vault and unvault mail, though plug-ins are expected to released to handle this process.

Considering that these limitations will only apply to emails that are more than 30 days old and all can be quickly overcome by unvaulting the message, you will be saving all that time you previously spent archiving emails.

What do you do if you need to unvault a message? As part of the migration process, the Symantec Outlook Add-in will be automatically installed on your computer. It is a small, additional toolbar that will appear in Outlook.

You will most often use the two buttons on the right to unvault and vault messages. For example, if you wanted to sent the first message in the screen below to secondary storage, because you knew it didn’t have an attachment you needed to access from you Blackberry and you didn’t want it to count against your mailbox size limits, you would select that email, and click on the Send to Vault button

Then a window will pop up to ask you if you are sure you want to vault the message. If you do not want these messages to appear every time, click the checkbox next to “Do not show this message again”.

Once it has been sent to the vault, the message will still show up in the message list, just as it did before, but with a different icon to show that it is stored in the vault and a link to open the full message in case it was long enough that the full message is not displayed.

If you want to take the message out of the vault, so that you can view the attachment on a Blackberry, export the message, or for any other reason you will just select the message and click on the Restore from Vault button.

As before, a window will pop up to ask you if you are sure you want to unvault the message. If you do not want these messages to appear every time, click the checkbox next to “Do not show this message again”.

Now the message will have been restored in full to your mailbox. It will be fully accessible and will count against your mailbox storage limits. You are free to organize and keep your email in any way you want, but the EEM system will be the easiest and least time-consuming method.

Creating and Modifying Accounts

The method for creating and changing user accounts in Exchange 2007 is done through a different server and has a very different set of instructions. The CAO offers training on this new system. All HouseCall Systems Admistrators have been through this training and can take care of all needed changes to accounts for you. If you are used to creating and unlocking accounts yourself, you should take the training before doing so on Exchange 2007. You can sign up for the training on the House Learning Center website.

Outlook Web Access (OWA)

After your office has migrated to Exchange 2007, you will automatically see a very different screen when you log in to https://owa.house.gov. The new OWA website provides an experience that is much closer to using Outlook on your computer, and is much faster to use. It is important to note that many of the features of the new OWA are only available through Internet Explorer.

Apple Mail

If you use an Apple computer, you may be excited to learn that you can now use Apple Mail instead of Entourage to access your House email. Apple’s latest operating system, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, provides support for Exchange 2007 email accounts. Previous versions of Mac OS, do not work. If you are unsure of which OS you have or if you have questions about setting up your House email with Apple Mail, your HouseCall Systems Administrator can help you.

The Migration Process

Your HouseCall Systems Administrator can help you through the migration process*. Your office will be scheduled for migration on a certain day. That night your email will be unavailable by all methods (Outlook, Blackberry, OWA, etc) for approximately 1 hour between 10pm and 6am. The next day, all mail systems should have automatically moved over to the new servers, and you should not have to do anything but enjoy the new features. The Symantec Outlook Add-in toolbar for EEM should automatically appear in your Outlook within 2 days of your migration. As always, if you encounter any problems or need assistance, contact your HouseCall Systems Administrator.

*Many of our clients have already been migrated.  Simply ask your HouseCall Systems Administrator if you have and when you can begin using all of this added functionality.

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