What's so hard about deleting emails?

Everyone

This topic is purely political. Having spent most of my 13 years in IT in some form Messaging Systems role, I've seen just about every side of this.

The cure is policy. The biggest obstacle to reaching the cure is culture. E-mail isn't new, it's been around since before most people on this forum even thought about getting into IT. You won't find a company out there that is just now getting e-mail. They've all had it for a while, and many are stuck in their ways. They don't want change, and how dare you suggest they don't "need" an e-mail from 10 years ago.

Unfortunately there isn't a 1 size fits all policy. The policy has to fit the needs of the organization. Many organizations fall under government regulation. In the US we have regulations like HIPAA and SOX to name a couple.

Using HIPAA as an example... if an e-mail was sent between Doctor Smith and Doctor Jones that contained pediatric patient data, that e-mail has to be kept for 23 years!

Does that message have to be kept in the users mailbox that long? No.

This is why we have features like Retention Policies and Archiving.

For most regulations, e-mail is only discoverable if it falls within the retention period that is in your organizations written policy. The big thing here is if you have a policy, you have to follow it. If you say that nobody can keep e-mail past 90 days, but don't enforce it and have people out there with 10 years worth of e-mail, then EVERYTHING available becomes discoverable.

There are HUGE cost savings to having a solid E-Mail policy and actually making use of the tools available to enforce it. More and more organizations are starting to adopt them, but it is very slow moving, since people tend to treat it like pulling teeth.

My biggest piece of advice... if you believe in it, be an advocate for it! Don't hold yourself back by thinking things like "Well that's way above my pay grade" or "Management will never approve it, so what's the use?" Make a solid case for it, and keep pushing it.

CodeBlox

Sounds like the users need to be coached on mailbox sizes.

W Stewart

If they feel the need to store email, make them store it locally. The admin at my last job made everybody use pop3.

the_Grinch

It is sorta ironic that all this came about because the university sent out an email saying they would be performing an upgrade to the messaging system and will include an increase in space.