Welcome back to the final post in this 2 part series, Integrating Exchange 2007 MRM with SharePoint Document Libraries. Today’s post will wrap things up by going through the process of mail enabling an existing SharePoint document library and creating a new managed content setting in Exchange 2007 providing us with the ability to journal a copy of all messages moved into our “Project XYZ” managed folder located in Outlook, into our Shared collaborative Document Library under our Project Team Site.
Recall from part 1, that the objective of integrating Exchange MRM with SharePoint is to provide us with the ability to store and centralise all emails pertaining to a specific project from multiple users into a single SharePoint document library, that can be easily accessed by the Project Team. If you missed the initial setup of Exchange MRM, you can access part 1 of this series Integrating Exchange 2007 Messaging Records Management with SharePoint 2007 Document Libraries – Part 1
We finished off our last post by having our Project XYZ Managed Folder automatically pre-created for our specified Exchange users as per the below screen shot.
This has provided all users from the Project XYZ Team site the capability of moving all email records in relation to Project XYZ into this so called “dumping ground”. At the moment, it’s fairly static and the information “dumped” into this folder isn’t going anywhere any time soon. But this will now change by creating a new “Managed Content Settings” policy in Exchange 2007. But just before we go ahead, we need to ensure we have our SharePoint Document Library ready to receive incoming emails.
To mail enable a SharePoint Document Library, navigate to the Project XYZ Document Library in question and click Settings / Document Library Settings / and click on Incoming e-mail settings under Communications.
We will then fill out the details as per the below screen shot.
This will go ahead and create the corresponding Contact address in Exchange 2007. Please note this article is assuming that your SharePoint farm has been correctly setup to receive Incoming mail. Click on the following TechNet article for further instructions on how this can be achieved; http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262947.aspx
We can now proceed with the creation of the Exchange Managed Content Setting for our Managed Folder.
To so, navigate to Mailbox / Managed Custom Folders / click on the newly created custom folder, in our case Project XYZ and then click on New Managed Content Settings.
The below wizard is invoked and we will specify the following details as per the below screen shot.
Your goal here should be defined to meet the business requirements and in this example we will want to keep items that are moved into the Project XYZ managed folder for 30 days. After the 30 day period ,the items are permanently deleted to empty the user’s Project XYZ custom folder.
Do not fear however!! In the next screen we will specify our Journaling options providing us with the capability to auto forward a copy to our SharePoint Email Enabled Document Library that we had created earlier. One of the advantages of using Managed Content Settings and Journaling with SharePoint enabled Libraries, is that you can specify the format of the email message and hence I have selected Outlook Message Format to ensure greatest compatibility.
Click New to Finish.
You will now notice that our Managed Content Settings has been applied against our Managed Custom Folder as per the below screen shot.
That’s it! Based on your Managed Folder Assistant Schedule that we configured in Integrating Exchange 2007 Messaging Records Management with SharePoint 2007 Document Libraries – Part 1, all email records that are moved into the Project XYZ Managed Folder in Outlook will be copied to the Project XYZ Document Library as well. In order to expedite the process and to ensure that it is all working, you can run the following Exchange Management Shell command;
Start-ManagedFolderAssistant
Once the Managed Folder Assistant has been initiated, it should only be a matter of a couple of minutes until you see your SharePoint Document Library populated as follows.
The Folder Assistant is intelligent enough to only copy the emails that are stored under the Managed Folder in Outlook once, avoiding any duplication. It there are emails with the exact same subject line, SharePoint is also intelligent enough to follow our settings that we configured earlier for our email enabled SharePoint Library. In my setup we set it to not overwrite and hence will append the subject with a unique number as per the below screen shot.
In summary, Exchange 2007 MRM and SharePoint Document Libraries has enabled us to control the lifespan of items that are moved into our Project XYZ Managed Folder that we have created in Exchange and the capability to journal a copy of all records that are moved into this folder to our SharePoint document library for collaborative and archival reasons.
Hope you enjoyed this two part series and am sure you will find use with integrating these two technologies together to meet your business requirements.