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Previously, in part 2 of this blog post, I discussed native electronic discovery features, retention policies, and legal holds.  In this post, the final part of this three-part post, I will present  user-specific HTML disclaimers and MailTips.

User-Specific HTML Disclaimers

Exchange 2007 allowed for basic disclaimer-type functionality with the introduction of Transport Rules.  However, this was limited to static text and it was difficult to manage.  In addition, many firms wanted to standardize the format of their e-mail signatures so that all electronic correspondence had a uniform signature block.  As a result, most firms leveraged third-party software or e-mail gateways, hosted message hygiene services (such as Google/Postini or MessageLabs), or manually-created Outlook signatures to provide this functionality.  The former two options required the management of this content outside of Exchange and the latter was difficult to update and manage since these signatures must be kept up-to-date for messages sent from Outlook, Outlook Web Access, or a handheld mobile device.

With Exchange 2010, an administrator can define dynamic signature text that leverages Active Directory-defined attributes, such as name, title, phone number, etc., in addition to HTML formatting.  As a result, a firm can define a standard format for all users that dynamically includes key information specific to each user.  In addition, administrators can include Circular 230 or other required disclosure information dynamically, based on specific needs.

MailTips

MailTips represent new functionality in Exchange 2010 that can not only prevent specific policy infractions but also help users to become more productive with e-mail.  MailTips can provide suggestions to end users about potentially unanticipated results that will occur if a message was to be sent and, in addition, they can prevent specific messages or content from being sent entirely.  Situations in which MailTips can be useful can be found below (all can be customized):

• If a user is about to send a message to a distribution list that contains more than 1,000 recipients or to a distribution list that contains an external e-mail address
• If a user is about to send a message to another user that has enabled their Out-of-Office auto-reply
• If a message exceeds the maximum configured sending/receiving size limits configured within Exchange
• If a recipient’s mailbox is full due to a storage quota
• If a user replies to all but was BCCed on the original message
• If user is attempting to send a message to a user or distribution list to which they are not allowed to send (ethical wall or defined client conflict)

All of these can help users understand the results of sending a particular message in advance and, potentially, result in fewer calls to IT to question why sending a particular message had a specific result.

As you can see, there are a number of beneficial new features in Exchange 2010 for law firms of all sizes.  Previously these features were either not available, expensive, or required an investment in third-party solutions.  With Exchange 2010, this functionality can be managed natively within the messaging platform, thereby potentially saving cost and maximizing efficiency.

Last week, ADERANT announced that they are acquiring StarLaw’s suite of ECM applications.  The following is a snippet of the official press release:

ADERANT, a global provider of business and financial management software for law firms, today announced that the Company has purchased a suite of Enterprise Content Management applications developed by StarLaw.  The acquisition adds integrated document management, records management, and email management solutions to ADERANT’s product portfolio.

ADERANT’s purchase of StarLaw’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) applications enables it to enter a market that is of growing importance to lawyers and law firms.  Importantly, the new ECM application suite is being designed with the unique needs of law firms in mind instead of trying to retrofit a more industry-generic solution with functionality required by the legal market.

The full press release from ADERANT can be read here.   They say the new ECM applications will be generally available in Q1 2010.   We don’t know exactly how this could affect the ECM landscape for the legal vertical, but Kraft Kennedy has seen and worked with StarLaw’s platform for a couple of years now.  It is one of the next generation ECM products, built to manage documents, email, and records in one interface.   And unlike Autonomy iManage and Open Text eDOCS, the ADERANT StarLaw applications are not based on a schema that was originally designed for filling out large profile cards and filing into a flat database.

As soon as we know more about this development in the ECM space, we’ll be sure to post about it!

Tuesday was a exciting day at ILTA 2009 with lots of great sessions and discussions throughout the day.  About the only part of the day that wasn’t so great was the turkey bacon served at breakfast, which had the texture of construction paper and the flavor of it as well.

The morning saw a number of really good sessions, such as the session entitled “G100 Recap: Weathering the Storm and Cloud Computing.”  A number of key points were raised, such as the acknowledgment that technology spending was sacrificed during the economic downturn during the past couple of years.  The panelists believe that IT will actually help lead firms out of the recession and allow them to complete projects to help overall productivity.  On the subject of cloud computing, it was said that most law firms will likely begin to get exposure through telephony systems where there is less of the privacy concerns of other cloud based applications.

If you’re interested in exploring cloud computing in greater detail, Kraft Kennedy’s John Tsiofas and Dave Carlson will be speaking on data center relocation and cloud computing at 11:00AM on Wednesday in the Maryland C ballroom.

Also in the morning was a great session called “From the Trenches: Office 2007 Deployment Lessons.”  Here three different firms talked about their experiences, both good and bad, in upgrading to Office 2007.  The general consensus from the panelists was that the ribbon bar, the biggest visual change in the Office 2007 suite, actually turned out to be an insignificant issue overall.  The larger concerns were around application integration with document management systems and add-ins to Office applications that cause instability and performance issues.  In fact, one panelist described the project as “The document management system project featuring Office 2007,” highlighting the importance of the integration between Office 2007 and the DMS.

Office 2010 may have some of the same challenges.  Feel free to stop by Kraft Kennedy’s booth (721/723) to get a first hand look at Office 2010 running in our VDI environment.  The VDI desktops also feature Windows 7 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, so stop by and check them out!

VDI, or virtual desktop infrastructure, seems to be a hot topic at the conference this year.  Firms are starting to recognize that there are many benefits that can come with implementing a VDI solution, both in terms of financial savings as well as ease of administration and management.  We’ve spoken with many firms at the conference already this year that are starting to look at VDI as an alternative to traditional desktop deployment strategies.  We think the release of Windows 7 is also helping to drive VDI interest and adoption, as is the acceptance of virtualization technology in general.

With cost savings in mind, firms are also talking about how to contain costs or continue to reduce them.  Technologies like virtualization are helping to reduce costs as firms work to extend their hardware investments.  Developing a sound technology strategy has also been a reoccurring topic throughout the day as firms are preparing for what is coming next and want to ensure their strategy makes good business sense.

Finally, the day ended with the “Tut After Dark” party and casino night and everyone had a great time.  Even the party is a great place to learn new things, such as this blogger learning just how quickly you can lose $25,000 at the high rollers craps table.  But hey, it sure was a fun four minutes of my life!

Please find more information at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/08/25/452095.aspx.  Please note that SP2 is a prerequisite to installing Exchange 2010 in the same AD site as Exchange 2007.  Additional changes/new features can be found below.

• Enhanced Auditing – New Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. It allows the right balance of granularity, performance, and easy access to audited events via a dedicated audit log repository. This simplifies the auditing process and makes review of audited events easier by segregating audited events in a dedicated location.
• Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup Functionality – A new backup plug-in has been added to the product that will enable customers to create Exchange backups when a backup is invoked through the Windows Server 2008 Backup tool. Exchange Server 2007 didn’t have this capability on Windows Server 2008 and additional solutions were required to perform this task.
• Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and Validation – The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed, as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema. Once this capability is deployed it will enable easier management of future schema updates and will prevent support issues when adding properties that don’t exist in the AD schema.
• Public Folder Quota Management- SP2 enables a consistent way to manage quotas by improving the current PowerShell cmdlets to perform quota management tasks.
• Centralized Organizational Settings- SP2 introduces new PowerShell option that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.
• Named Properties cmdlets – SP2 enables Exchange administrators to monitor their named property usage per database.
• New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging- SP2 enables Exchange administrators to easily configure and manage diagnostic logging from within the Exchange Management Console.

As with any major service pack or update, please be sure to test all critical functionality after updating.  There have been rumors that Exchange 2007 SP2 may adversely affect BlackBerry Enterprise Server integration (as had happened in the past with Exchange 2003 SP2) but these rumors have all been speculative.

Macs continue to gain traction in the personal computing space.  This in turn has required Windows administrators to become more familiar with Macs and the limitations they may have when connecting to a typical corporate Windows environment.  In the past, Citrix has done an OK job providing Mac support for XenApp through a basic ICA client.  Specifically, they created a functional no-frills client that supports the latest, as well as past, Mac Operating Systems.  The client primarily supported ICA connections through an ICA file.  The Program Neighborhood Agent functionality did not exist and published applications (not desktops) launched through Citrix Web Interface were presented in a kludgy window.  This changes with the release of the 11.0 plug-in (formally called client). 

Primarily, the 11.0 plug-in finally enables seamless functionality of published applications on Macs.  Seamless published applications (opposed from the desktop) present themselves to the user as if they are running locally.  This in turn allows the user to run published and local applications side-by-side for an improved experience.  More importantly, this seamless functionality opens the door for corporate environments who serve applications through the Program Neighborhood Agent or Citrix Web Interface to give Mac clients a user experience that is in line with what Windows clients have supported for years. 

Also included in this update is the introduction of Citrix’s Dazzle interface.  It looks like Citrix has larger plans for Dazzle suite, but from a client perspective, applications served through the Program Neighborhood website are presented in an iTunes like interface.  I think the logic Citrix is following is that users would be acclimated easily to an application delivery interface that mimics iTunes on the assumption that most users are already familiar with iTunes. The interface is clean, intuitive and even gives the user the ability to add the application to the OS X dock. The “Add” function threw an error for me when I was testing testing the client , but in theory it *should* work.  I’ll post the fix when I come across it, but this bug doesn’t takeaway from the huge functionality upgrade in this client.

It is unfortunate Citrix took years to finally give Macs the same support that the Windows client has had for years, but better late then never, right?  Download it here.

Dazzle interface of the 11.0 Mac plug-in:

In working with a colleague, we came across what appears to be a bug within Outlook relating to meetings disappearing from calendars after an update is sent.  This has been confirmed to affect Outlook 2007 but it may affect other versions as well.

Symptom:  A meeting for which you are the owner/organizer disappears from your calendar after sending an update to all attendees if the meeting request was sent to a distribution list or group of which you are a member.  The meeting does not disappear if you are explicitly in the attendee list.

Workaround:  Before sending a meeting request to a distribution list or group, expand the membership by clicking the “plus” sign next to the name.  Once you see all of the members expanded, you may send the meeting request or remove yourself from the attendee list so that future updates will not fall victim to this bug.  I would recommend that you remove yourself entirely as an attendee in case other issues arise as a result.

We are unclear as to whether Microsoft is aware of this bug or has a fix in development. Hopefully the above workaround will help some of you that are experiencing this problem.

Previously, in part 1 of this blog post, I introduced Exchange 2010 and discussed  large mailbox support along with native archiving features.  In this post, I will present native electronic discovery features, retention policies, and legal holds.

Native eDiscovery Features

In previous versions of Exchange, third-party tools were required for even basic multi-mailbox searching and query-based exportation of content from Exchange.  In Exchange 2010, these features are provided natively.  Designated users, for example an HR or compliance officer, can be delegated permissions to search across specific or all mailboxes based on criteria such as sender, recipient, expiration policy, message size, send/receive date, CC/BCC, regular expressions, or Information Rights Management-protected items.  These searches can be applied to e-mail, contacts, calendars, and instant message conversations (if stored in the Conversation History folder) and apply across both the primary and archive mailboxes.

Once a specific query has been defined and results obtained, the discovered content and a completion status update may be sent to either a mailbox or a specific SMTP address  The results are organized per the original folder hierarchy.  The exposure of the API for this functionality may enable robust integration with third-party software for automated processing.

Retention Policies and Legal Holds

While basic retention functionality has existed for years in the form of mailbox management policies (Exchange 2003) and Managed Folder policies (Exchange 2007), granularity of application was restricted to folders.  With Exchange 2010, retention policies exist that can apply per folder or per individual message.  In addition, these policies can be applied and managed centrally and/or users can be allowed to choose an appropriate retention policy via a convenient drop-down menu.  In addition, if a retention policy applies to a specific item, the user will be notified when the item is set to expire via a notification bar within the item itself.  These policies can be configured to, upon expiration, either delete items or move them to a user’s archive mailbox.  In addition, this functionality can be combined to provide for a true lifecycle of the item by moving it to the archive after some period of time and then deleting it from the archive after a longer period of time.

In addition to the retention functionality described above, a legal or retention hold can now be applied to specific mailboxes.  This allows for an administrator to prevent users from deleting or editing existing items in their primary or archive mailbox for a specific period of time or indefinitely.

In Part 3 of this blog post, I will discuss user-specific HTML disclaimers and MailTips.

Outlook 2003 and 2007 support a protocol called stssync, which allow SharePoint libraries to be viewed in Outlook.  Outlook 2003 allows for read-only viewing, whereas Outlook 2007 also allows for two-way synching of certain content.  The most common way of connecting to a SharePoint library is through the SharePoint Actions menu, as shown below.
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The next version of Microsoft’s enterprise messaging platform, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, is due for release in the fourth quarter of 2009.  The current version of Exchange, Exchange 2007, introduced dramatic architectural changes that made it a compelling upgrade both for law firms running previous versions of Exchange, such as Exchange 2000 or 2003, and those running alternative messaging platforms, such as Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise.  A native 64-bit architecture, granular server roles, robust native high availability and disaster recovery capabilities, and a 70% reduction in the I/O requirements for the underlying storage combined to make Exchange 2007 an attractive messaging platform for firms of all sizes.  However, given these new features, more careful planning for design and deployment of Exchange 2007 was required than with previous versions of Exchange.

Exchange 2010 presents yet more dramatic architectural changes that make Exchange more robust and flexible for firms of all sizes but, again, require very careful planning to ensure a successful deployment and seamless transition or migration.  In this three-part blog post, I will discuss a few of the key new features that have specific relevance to the legal industry, at a high level.  In future blog posts, I will discuss, at a more technical level, the specifics of these features in addition to others that are not necessarily specific to the legal industry.

Large Mailbox Support

While previous versions of Exchange could handle, theoretically, mailboxes of unlimited size, significant investments in memory and a robust storage infrastructure were required to make this a reality.  In addition, Microsoft Outlook 2007 pre-SP2 and earlier client software, in Cached Mode, saw significant and noticeable performance degradation when mailboxes grew beyond 2 GB in size or when individual folders contained more than 5,000 items.  Specific errors may be encountered as mailboxes approach 20 GB in size.  Outlook 2007 SP2 included a fundamental change in how the software handled large mailboxes so that it could efficiently support mailboxes upward of 10 GB or more in size and folders containing 10,000 to 50,000 items.  While these improvements were helpful, law firms generally have significantly larger mailboxes than what Microsoft projects for best practices.

Exchange 2010 reduces the I/O requirements of the underlying storage by another 70% over Exchange 2007, for a total of a 90% reduction over Exchange 2003.  This results in an optimization for mailboxes over 10 GB in size and folders with 100,000 items.  In addition, due to fundamental changes in Exchange’s ESE database technology, Microsoft now supports and recommends deploying Exchange on lower-cost, Tier 2 storage (such as SATA or JBOD).  This can represent a significant cost savings for firms of all sizes and can allow firms to again size Exchange for capacity instead of performance.

Native Archiving Features

With Exchange 2010, Microsoft has finally introduced basic archiving features natively within the product.  While third-party options such as Symantec Enterprise Vault, Autonomy/ZANTAZ EAS, and Mimosa NearPoint provide a much more robust feature set, the native features may be enough to provide for basic mailbox management for significantly less cost.  Essentially, the native archiving features of Exchange 2010 allow an administrator to create a secondary, archive mailbox for each user to which content can be moved automatically via back-end policies or proactively by end-users.

While each firm should perform a detailed analysis of their needs prior to choosing a solution, a few caveats about Microsoft’s native offering can be found below.

• Access to the archive is online-only
• No automated PST ingestion tools exist yet
• No ability exists yet to store archive data in a different database or on different storage than the primary mailbox
• Archiving policies may not be as granular as third-party solutions
• Stubbing functionality is not available

While there are certainly a number of significant caveats, the native offering does provide basic archiving functionality along with a unified search that queries both the primary, live mailbox and the archive mailbox simultaneously.  In addition, there is no additional software to install, as the archive mailbox is accessible natively by both Outlook 2010 and Outlook Web Access 2010.

In Part 2 of this blog post, I will discuss native electronic discovery features, retention policies, and legal holds.

In my previous post, I discussed ways of bringing the legal user community into the matter centric design process. That’s only the first battle. Once attorneys are able to visualize the concept behind the organizational folders of a matter centric WorkSpace, they may want the structures to mimic what they are used to — especially if they’ve never used a DMS before. They may want to stay within their comfort zone. And these may be the most powerful voices in the Firm.

Usually, what they are used to is an inconsistent, multi-level directory structure with custom folders containing perhaps a handful of specifically categorized documents each. This kind of structure makes sense when the only way of finding a document is by knowing which folder it’s in — as is the case without a DMS. In this scenario, you wouldn’t want to scroll through hundreds or thousands of documents in a folder. Rather, if you can limit the number of documents in a folder to a handful, then it is easier to find the document you need. This is what leads to the numerous directory levels and (in my humble opinion) overly specific classifications.

In the DMS world, there are much better ways of finding documents. The obvious option is the full-text search, which will provide efficient results (given the user properly knows how to perform a full-text search). In addition to the search, folder lists can be sorted and filtered based on any metadata column, and the WorkSite Miner is a nice utility to carve up the contents of a folder into more manageable groups.

iManage offers two levels of classification for documents — the Class (which generally corresponds to a WorkSpace folder) and it’s child Subclass. As the designer of the WorkSpace structure and metadata, you may get requests for numerous Subclasses. There are two main disadvantages of using Subclasses. First, requiring the Subclass adds dreaded extra clicks and keystrokes to each save action. If the Firm decides on using Subclasses, it is a best practice to make them required. If they are optional, they lose all value. There’d be no guarantee that searching for the “Loan Agreement” Subclass will return all loan agreements. This leads to the second key disadvantage — it will prevent the proper update of metadata when dragging-and-dropping documents from one WorkSpace folder to another, since it is up to the user to select a Subclass when saving into a folder.

So how do we get attorneys to accept not using Subclasses? Make sure they grasp all the different ways documents can be identified, sorted, filtered, and found in the system. Perhaps bring up the idea of a naming convention for the description of documents. Or perhaps make a deal — try it without Subclasses for six months, and then the issue can be re-evaluated. Chances are they will appreciate the ease of simply saving into a WorkSpace folder, and agree that there is no need for Subclasses. After all, less is more.