Folder Synchronization

Many organizations have historically struggled with end-user acceptance of archiving solutions, since they were initially implemented for compliance or legal reasons. But, in order to provide a better user experience and ensure they get value out of their archives, it’s important to quickly find messages or attachments of interest in the archive, using both folder- and search-based approaches.

Two Worlds: Filers and Searchers
 

In the email world, end users generally fall into one of two buckets: filers and searchers. Filers treat their inboxes as virtual file cabinets and want to preserve their folder structures in the archive. Filers often spend a tremendous amount of time managing email, but many of them view this organization as critical to the way they do their jobs. Searchers, on the other hand, are used to the Google experience and often don’t bother with folders. Instead, they leverage searches and tagging to quickly find emails of interest.

From an archiving perspective, this can prove challenging, since many archiving solutions often cater to only one of these audiences. 

For the filer, solutions need to  preserve the folder structure of the desktop client (e.g., Microsoft Outlook) in the archive. This means it synchronizes users’ existing Outlook folder structures in the archive, allowing them to seamlessly search their archives just as they would their inboxes. So as users create, delete and rename folders, and move email messages from one Outlook folder to another, the synchronization service replicates the identical folders and message locations in the archive.

Some leading archiving solutions can even give users the power to view the folder structures of legacy data (e.g., PSTs) that has been ingested into their archives. If architected properly, this allows users to perform federated searches across all legacy email and new mail stores.