Conference 7.286::digital

    We should probably start a new conference for anouncements like this

    
    
    ....resistance is futile....
    
    ;-)

    	I am reminded of a very long and detailed complaint
    during a field test of a networking product (which shall
    go nameless).  At the very end was a statement to the effect:
    "You will notice that I have sent this via interoffice
    mail - that way I know it will get there..."
    
    Cheers!
    Dave Eklund
    
    PS Yes, I use my VAX for mail, too.  Continues to be adequate
    for my needs.  And if mail is not clear text, it runs the risk of
    being summarily deleted.  If it's important, they will try
    again.
    
    Dave E
    

        It is also very easy to write a single rule using the Inbox
        Assistant (under "Tools" in Outlook) to forward any mail you
        receive anywhere else in the world (to stay within corporate
        policy, that should be the behind-the-Digital-firewall
        world).

        There is one quirk, however.  Mail forwarded this way that
        originates from Internet (SMTP) mail gets sent as if it was
        sent from the original sender (which is probably what you
        want) although you can tell from the headers that it was
        forwarded.

        Mail forwarded this way that originates within Digital's
        exchange looks as if it came from your exchange account
        (although once again from headers you can tell where it
        really came from, but you might not see a valid SMTP
        address).

        Bob

>  colleagues, and corporate memos announcing prolonged and wide-
>  spread Exchange outages.

  I heard about the outage affecting most of Digital Canada last weekend.
Have there been other Exchange outages of this magnitude?

RE: .5

	Fixed in 5.0 server.

						mike

What's fixed in the 5.0 server?

I forward all my Exchange mail to my OpenVMS system.  I'd prefer to have the
sender as seen on my OpenVMS system be the original sender, not myself.  Is that
what's fixed?

Paul

RE: .8

	Yes. In the 5.0 server and the 5.0 client, you can
	set up an Inbox rule that forwards your mail to
	another address. Part of this rule allows you to
	keep the current behavior (From:yourself) or 
	the From: field being the original sender.

	You can only enable the change from the 5.0 client
	talking to a 5.0 server. 

					mike

    re: Note 5256.0 by 2970::SCHMIDT
    
    Why was this posted...and why here? 
    
    Ken....

    Why not?  It certainly reflects Atlant's opinions on a piece
    of Digital that doesn't seem to be working (in his opinion).  
    
    				-John

Note 5256.0 is another data point demonstrating that the forced migration to
Exchange is a mistake.

Paul

    The revolt has begun?? Maybe .0 has the idea the people that make the
    decisions in this company care if he can get or read his mail. 
    After all, anybody that is anybody has an assistant to pre-screen and
    then print all their mail. I mean ....Really.  

Maybe we should start a mailing list to discuss this.

PJDM

   
    RE .13
    >After all, anybody that is anybody has an assistant to pre-screen and
    >then print all their mail. I mean ....Really.  
    
    Maybe *THAT* is one of the problems?
    
    How frustrated would B.P. get if he actually had to figure out why his
    Hi-note would talk to the Exchange server *this time*.
    
    .mike.

    r.e .9 Fixed in Exchange V5
    
    So what, CCS track record of keeping releases of anything up to date is
    abysmal.
    
    I am using Exchange client to an ALL-IN-1 server. Works great
    EXCEPT that Exchange client doesnt come with viewers like Teamlinks
    does, so to read a word attachment you have to wait for ages while word
    fires up. Teamlinks is much slower on moving about the folders but has
    Exchange beaten hands down on actually reading the messages.
    
    I'll hang off hooking up to Exchange server as long as possible.
    ALL-IN-1 is a well architected, reliable back-end to ANY mail client
    (including terminals) and has proven itself in organisations up to twice
    DIGITAL's size (including Digital when it was twice its current size.)
    
    Its simply not good business for me to use unreliable infrastructure
    and its simply not good business to make major infrastructure decisions
    based on political whim.
    
    - John

> What's fixed in the 5.0 server?
  
        Another problem I have with mail forwarded through Exchange
        is that it changes the MIME packaging for text-like
        attachments.  In particular, if you send it an HTML
        attachment (as might be sent from the Netscape browser
        mailing a page), any forwarding of the message results in the
        HTML attachment being encoded (and therefore totally
        unreadable in ASCII) even when the original attachment was
        the plain HTML text.

        (I get quite a few encoded text documents as attachments from
        Exchange users -- these are absolutely plain text.)

        Bob

    luckily for us, what with HP's recent announcment of their mail tie up
    with MS, then either:
    
     - they (HP) will benefit from the same mail pain as us
     - or if MS stuff any Openmail innards into Exchange to make it reliable,
       then we will benefit from that, won't we ?  Er, hang on....let me
       think about this one..
    
    
   ( ps I presume that the engineers in REO will retain good old RDGENG ? I
    may be able to retain my A-I-O then. So, my mail will be reliable, so I'll
    wait for yours to get to me....)

So what's wrong with Exchange other than it taking eight days to get from MKO to TAY?

Marie

>>So what's wrong with Exchange other than it taking eight days to get 
>>from MKO to TAY?

Don't you know?  Anytime you send Exchange mail, you are suppose to immediately
follow that up by interoffice mailing a hardcopy of the message!

Jim   (-:

    clearly there is a misunderstanding here.
    Exchange is being implemented as a cost saving measure - just think of
    the hours saved not reading undelivered mails which weren't important
    anyway(or they would have been resent or the sender would have called)
    Think of those stupid mails with unreadable attachments from
    unimportant people that were summarily deleted,and rightly so.
    Yep,Bob and Bill got together and decided that we spend to much time on
    BS mails(and they are probably right..) BUT they failed to reckon with
    POP clients..
    am I being dumb here or is Exchange kind of doomed to remain what its
    name implies - an exchange mechanism (aka server) for the peoples
    choice clients???

    DecPigeon

Boy, if I had a problem to be solved, I would not look for solvers in 
here.

Exchange works fine for me. Why don't you try to determine if/why it 
doesn't work for you?

Pete

                        
    likewise...
    
    for the most part, works just fine for me too.
    
    Sure, there is the occasional mail backup, server down, etc,
    just like most if not all large mail systems, but overall
    it works quite well.
    
    
    Change is good, get used to it!

RE: 16

    I am using Exchange client to an ALL-IN-1 server. Works great
    EXCEPT that Exchange client doesnt come with viewers like Teamlinks
    does, so to read a word attachment you have to wait for ages while word
    fires up. Teamlinks is much slower on moving about the folders but has
    Exchange beaten hands down on actually reading the messages.
    
Do a right-click on the attachment icon and use Quick View. No need to actually launch 
Word or Excel. It works with most file types.

As an amusing (?) point of reference...

I just received a mailing through Reader's Choice from a person I'll not name 
here detailing the Exchange migration. It included a table purporting to 
display the schedule, but somewhere along the line the table got seriously 
corrupted, and is largely useless as received. (Probably had tabs changed to 
some odd number of spaces somewhere along the line, or something.)

So I sent mail back to this person, at an Exchange ([email protected]) 
address that I cut directly from the message.

Got back a return mailing from [email protected] stating the following 
(I've x-d out the actual name to protect the guilty).

So, it seems like the people in charge of administering the migration can't 
even use it correctly.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

      To:	[email protected]
      Subject:	You might want to resend this after fixing the table
      Sent:	4/24/97 17:19:37 PM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

      [email protected] on 4/24/97 17:19:37 PM
            Recipient Not Found
            MSEXCH:IMC:Digital:AmExch1:PKOHUB1

Yeah, the table is screwed up. I wouldn't even try to reply to this message as
the From: field reads:

njmail::njmail::mrgate::"granit::sales::a1::choice.readers"@unxa.enet.dec.com

Hey, at least it fits in an 80-char colunm.

It does say in the message: 

If you  have questions, please send mail to SALES::FEEDBACK or 
[email protected]

I found out someone created an Exchange account for me three weeks ago.
Evidently, that initiated an automatic change to my WebELF entry that wiped out
my Internet address and substituted my Exchange address.  Mail must be building
up in my Exchange account since most of the voicemail I received recently
started with "I sent you three e-mails and haven't heard a thing from you....."
The problem is I won't have Exchange on my system for another three weeks. I
change my WebELF entry back to my Internet address. 

The next day when I contacted the WebELF I was told to change the Exchange
address back to my Internet address, but use lower case and the system will not
write over it. I tried to change it, but WebELF told me my password was
invalid.  This was one day after using the same password to make the previous
changes.  The WebELF help desk change the password and changed the Internet
entry to lower case, but they have no way of forwarding the mail that was
diverted to my Exchange account. 

Who can print out or forward the mail in my Exchange account?  How can I
put an automatic forward on the account to hold me until I get Exchange?
How can I remove my name from the lookup table?

Jim

    What I found on the Evil Empire's web site today at
    http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/pcdigital.htm
    
    Letter from Digital Equipment Corporation
    
    
    In the February 3rd issue of PC Week it was
    reported that Digital Equipment
    Corporation was experiencing message delivery times
    of 40 minutes with Microsoft
    Exchange. This information is inaccurate, DIGITAL
    is happy with delivery times provided by Exchange.
    
    We estimate that, within Exchange, 95% of the
    messages are delivered world-wide within 15 minutes.
    
    To date Digital has deployed over 28,000 Exchange
    users on 80 servers across 5
    continents. With the current migration of
    approximately 1000 users per week it is
    anticipated that the corporations migration to
    Exchange will be completed during the summer of 1997.
    
    Once again, we are happy with the message delivery
    times provided by Microsoft Exchange.
    
    Dan Martin,
    Director,
    Individual Computing Productivity
    Digital Equipment Corporation
    

    Yes, the information was inaccurate.  The reported delivery time was
    actually 40 HOURS.  See Pete Kaiser's note in 3107.
    
    					Steve

>    anticipated that the corporations migration to
>    Exchange will be completed during the summer of 1997.

Is that the summer at the beginning of 1997, or the summer at the end of 1997?

PJDM

    
    	Jim, why can't you load it now?
    
    	The executable should be readily available on your local server.
    
    	Maybe at \\zk3ex1 or something like that.
    

Is that summer '97 in the northern or southern hemisphere? 

Dave.

    	My exchange account existed for 3-4 weeks before I was even aware
    that it did.  When I finally logged in, I had 45 unreads. 
    
    	There seem to be more horror stories than success.  
    
    joyce

I just logged in to My Exchange account and had 746 unread messages.  There is
no way I can go through that many back messages, so I deleted them all and
asked that my Exchange account be closed.

Jim

Jim, how did you "find out"?

Where did you get the required info to access exchange (ie server name, your 
folder, your password).

Brian J.

    
    	RE: .34
    
    	Most of it was probably internet spam anyways.  8^)
    
    
    	Why did you ask that the account be closed?  Heck, you were in
    	there and all you had to do was set up a forward to send every-
    	thing to VMS.  Actually, it would have made more sense to maybe
    	USE the Exchange account, but I'm well aware of the popular pre-
    	conception that Exchange sucks so people will continue to comp-
    	lain about it.
    

>    We estimate that, within Exchange, 95% of the
>    messages are delivered world-wide within 15 minutes.

And I was hoping for the 15 seconds I get now with OpenVMS MAIL.  It must be
the different time zones and when the recipient reads their mail that accounts
for the longer times.

	mikeP

    My organization is currently making the transition from VMS/A1 to
    Exchange with VMS/A1 accounts scheduled to be turned off today.  When
    we got notification of this transition, a document was attached
    explaining how to migrate over and how to have access to things like
    TMS, IPA, etc. without a VMS account.  Included in the direcitons was
    info on installing and using Direct-TO-1 which was to allow you to
    click/drag A1 documents over into Exchange.  Found it interesting that
    I could do this to two text only documents from A1 and when I tried to
    open them in Exchange, one would be fine, the other would not open and
    I'd get an error message indicating the file was a type that was
    unreadable in Exchange.  Not a really useful tool!

>    	USE the Exchange account, but I'm well aware of the popular pre-
>    	conception that Exchange sucks so people will continue to comp-
>    	lain about it.

I think its only a popular preconception with some groups.  I personally have 
had very good results and like it.  Its very fast.  I used it during phone
conversations to move memos back and forth for edits.  Typical transfer time
of under 3 minutes.  I've had very little down time.  Its portable (kind of
hard to do VMS mail in an airplane). I don't know of any mail that was lost 
either outgoing or incoming.  Most people I talk to aren't having any trouble.
Most people I talk to seem to like it.  Its much much easier to recieve mail
from customers.  Obviouly, the mileage has a lot of variation on this one. 
Maybe its a regional thing.

ac

RE: How did I get into my account?

I called the support line and they gave me the name, password, etc.  Then I
went to another co-worker's PC and logged in.  I asked the support line if
there was anyway to forward Exchange mail to my VAXmail account temporarily and
was told there is no way.  I had no other choice but to blow everything away
since I don't know how to work Exchange yet and I don't have the time to deal
with old mail. 

Jim 

>    We estimate that, within Exchange, 95% of the
>    messages are delivered world-wide within 15 minutes.

My experience in sending from VAXmail to Exchange is it takes anywhere from a 
few hours to four weeks.  My manager sent messages out to our group and one
of my co-workers finally received it four weeks later.  It was a notice for
a meeting he obviously missed.

Jim

The biggest problem I have with MSExchange is that there are employees out 
there who are in the main directory as having an account and for whatever 
reason are not using them.  I suspect that there are several reasons for this;  
1. The owner refuses to use it (shame on you),  2 . the users Management 
signed them up but didn't tell them or give them the equipment to access 
it (shame on Management)  

  

    	I believe you can configure the inbox assistant to forward all mail
    received to your VAXmail account by leaving the "from" and other boxes
    blank and using the check for sent/copied.  I haven't tried this but it
    should work.
    
    	Sounds like the support person you spoke to didn't have much real
    world experience, but that's my opinion; I may be wrong.
    
    	Leo

    >                              ".....Its very fast.  I used it during
    >phone conversations to move memos back and forth for edits.  Typical 
    >transfer time of under 3 minutes."

    I wouldn't agree that it's exactly "fast" if you're relegated to a 28.8
    modem as a telecommuter as many of us now are.  As Atlant pointed out,
    people are starting to routinely put things in attachments that take
    forever to download and then fire up, when they could just type it in
    as a simple message.

    My message:  for heaven's sake, please have some mercy on those of us
    with dial-up links (a bunch of us). 

    --Steve

re Note 5256.43 by KYOSS1::FEDOR:

>     	I believe you can configure the inbox assistant to forward all mail
>     received to your VAXmail account by leaving the "from" and other boxes
>     blank and using the check for sent/copied.  I haven't tried this but it
>     should work.
  
        You don't even need to check the boxes.  If you do this
        (totally blank selection conditions) when you OK the rule
        the program will ask something like "you have entered a rule
        which applies to all incoming mail, do you really want to do
        this?" (at least in Outlook).  I cheerfully clicked Yes.

        Bob

    re: .41
    
    	If you utilize a gateway (US*RMC) you will get the quirky results
    of hours to weeks, depending on what type of documents and how many are
    pinging between Exchange routers and the MTS systems at any given
    moment.
    
    	Using smtp% syntax, the typical response I see is under 30 seconds
    going from VAXmail to Exchange.  I believe there is a way to use this
    in A1 rather than using the @INTERNET specification.
    
    	Going from Exchange to VMSmail, [email protected] utilizes
    smtp and will work similarly; [email protected] utilizes a gateway
    so you can expect the same delay as noted above.
    
    	Not perfect, but when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
    
    	Leo

    
    	RE: .39
    
    	Yes, I agree.  I have no problems with it at all.  I attribute
    	that to the fact that I gave it a chance before I started to whine
    	about its performance and shortcomings.
    
    
    	RE: .43
    
    	Yes, that's exactly what I did when I was forwarding from Exchange
    	to VMS.  Now I have the forward going the other way all the time.
    

>My experience in sending from VAXmail to Exchange is it takes anywhere from a 
>few hours to four weeks.  My manager sent messages out to our group and one

    In my case I was talking about VMS to VMS.  Sorry for any confusion.

    	mikeP

    Does the Inbox Assistant run its actions on the server, or are the
    actions funneled through the PC that runs the client?
    
    If the latter, it doesn't help the gentleman who had to borrow
    someone else's PC just to find the mail that was backed up in his
    inaccessible Exchange mailbox -- he would have to platform on which
    to run the client to effect the forwarding. 
    
    I'm mostly familiar with POP-based mail on my PC, so I don't know
    where the functional roles divide with Exchange and MAPI.
    
    

    Last night, one of my users called me in, she had a new problem, every
    time she started up Exchange on her Windows NT Workstation, it started
    to ask for username, domain and password. It refused to accept her
    legitimate credentials, and also refused to allow us to cancel the
    operation or exit. Her system became extremely slow and now quite
    unusable. A few minutes later, another one of my users started to
    report a similar problem, then another and another (anyone ever
    seen/read The Sorcerers Apprentice? I just love the piece where the
    brooms are multiplying and filling the well, don't you).
    
    Well, it turns out that here in KAO the Public Folders of Exchange are
    kept on a Server other than the one that failed last week, kaoexc2, and
    that there is a bug in the software that causes this server to start
    acting up every once in a while. For you folks down south of the
    border, yes, that means that if this thing does not get caught in time,
    it begins to affect all of DIGITAL1 and the Exchange users everywhere.
    
    Last weeks two day outage was a bug in Exchange, it appears that some
    filter that users could/can use to process incoming mail, if it's done
    a certain way and then mail flows often enough through the filter, then
    the Exchange server goes wonky and refuses to run, let alone start.
    Somehow, the rogue filter has to be found while the Exchange Server is
    not running and then the Exchange Server must be cleansed of this
    offending meanie. Wow, kudo's to the CCS and Microsoft folks that made
    this thing work last week without loosing our mail.
    
    Unless anyone mis-understands me, I am not Microsoft bashing per se,
    but I am highlighting some really glaring shortcomings, that someone
    should hold them up to down there in Redmond.
    
    rtt

    
    	RE: .49
    
    	Server-based.  If I set up an In-box Assistant here at work, the
    	same Assistant will be running when I fire up my laptop at the
    	house.
    

(This may be the wrong place to ask, and if so please point me to the 
right place.)

I have seen a lot of comparisons between VMS/VAX mail and Exchange, some
of it positive and some of it negative.  I don't generally use either mail
system (directly) though -- I use SMTP type mail (internet mail) either
using a direct SMTP client or via a POP3 client.  (Netscape in both cases.)

What I'm wondering is this:  are there any comparisons that can be made
between that setup and Exchange?  Are there any compelling reasons to use
one over the other?  If I move from my current setup to an Exchange setup
should I expect my life to get better/worse (easier/harder)?  (I tend to
do mostly ASCII stuff, but I really like to be able to send non-ASCII
around too.  When I need it I *really* need it.)

    You know, non-deterministic delivery times over the Internet are
    something I would expect to put up with.  But up until the advent of
    Exchange, while it might take 10 minutes, or two hours, it got there. 
    And if it didn't within a day or two I had gotten the mail bounced back
    with the delivery error.
    
    What is unforgiveable is that we have imported and compounded the worst
    aspects of mail over the Internet into our Intranet.  Now we can't even
    be assured timely delivery within our own company.
    
    Twice I have travelled to meetings to find out that they had been
    cancelled days before, only to have Exchange deliver the notice days
    later.
    
    Oh well, that's the price of progress.
    

    I am wondering why we are persisting in this changeover - is it the
    ego/job fear of someone in the hierarchy?  Is it not wanting to
    embarrass Microsoft (I didn't see Microsoft worrying about us
    when it made the HP alliance)?  It's craziness to replace a dependable
    albeit heterogenous mail system, a crucial part of a company's
    infrastructure, with one that is the opposite.
                                          

    
    
    	I took the Exchange/Schedule+ class here at ZKO yesterday.
    	I think that *maybe* if the delay-in-delivery problems can
    	be worked out, it can be a pretty useful mail product.
    
    	However, it appears from the memo the SBU received this morning,
    	CSS will be the only ones in ZKO that will be migrated over to
    	Exchange.  The rest of us will remain on VAXmail or whatever.
    	In my case, unless someone in my group takes over system mgmt
    	of GOOEY/DECWIN, it's going to be gone by the end of May.  Over
    	the next 15 months all VMS systems within the UNIX organization
    	will be taken away.  But we will still have a mail system through
    	UNIX in which to use, Netscape mail, and those folks IN the VMS
    	org. will still have their VMS systems.  That's the way I see it
    	anyway.
    
    	So, my taking that class may have been for nothing.  Unless I can
    	get the managers in my groups to WANT to use Exchange, my taking
    	the class for Schedule+ will have been for nothing.
    
    	JJ
    

    Re: all VMS systems within the UNIX organization will be taken away.
    
    Did they say why?
    

    RE: <<< Note 5256.33 by PCBUOA::DEWITT "chasing rainbows..." >>>

    	>>There seem to be more horror stories than success.  
    
        >>joyce
    
         That's human nature (at least in Western society). People are far 
    more willing to complain than to praise.
    
         In my case, exchange has worked well.  That is mainly because I 
    don't have to send mail to VMS addresses very often. When dealing with 
    other Exchange addresses and Internet addresses, I don't encounter most
    of the issues of complaint.
    
                                       Greg
    

Exchange for me has been a net plus.  Not quite the positive experience
promised by the CCS team, but a reasonably positive experience.

I agree with the extremely inconsistent delivery times: I have had mails
delivered in less than a minute through the Internet, and I have had mails
take literally days to deliver within Digital, and everything in between.
Maybe my expectations are too low, but since I only read and send mail in
the evening (which means I check my mail once/day), having it delivered in
anything less than 20 hours is adequate for my needs.

I also had the pleasure of using ExchangeLink instead of Direct-to-1.  I
have not looked at Direct-to-1, so I cannot say anything good or bad about
it, but I have absolutely nothing but glowing praise for ExchangeLink.  It
is an internal tool developed by a Digit in England, and it is marvelous.
Fast, efficient, reliable, flexible, all those good things.  And the price
was right: $0.  But of course, Digital had to go outside and spend money
when a perfectly usable Digital developed tool would have done the job :-(

My only real complaint about it is that Exchange assumes that you are 
running on a Pentium-200 with 64MB of memory which is always connected via
a 100Mb/sec Fast-Ethernet line to a blindingly fast server.  When you are
on a 486/75 with 24MB connected via the AltaVista Tunnel over a 28.8 modem
to a moderately overloaded server, I would estimate that at least half of
the functionality is grayed out and not available to you.  InBox Assisant,
Out of Office Assistant, Public Folders, Global Address List (On-line),
encryption, Schedule+ coordination, etc, are either literally not available
or are otherwise so clumsy and difficult to use that they are not worth
the hassle for the functionality they offer.

But on the plus side, I can now trivially address mail to anyone on every
mail system I have run across (VMSmail, UNIX mail, ALL-IN-1, Exchange, and
all flavors of Internet mail are simple for me to use and remember), and I
can send and receive all variety of attachments and they all just work.  I
share in the wish for people to stop sending simple text documents with
multiple colors and fonts in Word just to show that they can, but if they
do at least I can read them.

But keep in mind that my needs for mail are very few: I have never used 
any address book on any of the mail systems I have ever seen, I have never
used any of the auto-reply or filter tools for any of them, I have never
done a read receipt, I have never built a distribution list, I have never
used the group features of any scheduling package of any of them, etc.
And if you need those features, then I understand how your reaction may
differ from mine.

-- Ken Moreau

RE: .25

>Do a right-click on the attachment icon and use Quick View. No need to 
>actually launch Word or Excel. It works with most file types.

When I do this with SWB95, I get

    "There is no viewer capable of viewing Microsoft Word documents"

It is the same for every type of attachment I can find.  Do you have any 
thoughts on how to fix this?

-- Ken Moreau

    Is there still a freely distributable Word viewer from MS ? There used
    to be for Word 6, and it was much quicker to start up than the real
    thing...

    Wordpad?

    
    	RE: .58
    
    	I use most/all of the features mentioned towards the end of your
    	note and have had no problems with any of them.
    
    	I don't know what I'd do without an address book and distribution
    	lists, especially when you consider that not everybody is on Ex-
    	change and some internet addresses require a fair amount of typ-
    	ing.  Not to mention that I'm the secretary for the in-house
    	softball league and have sent numerous messages to 40+ users at
    	once.
    

> But keep in mind that my needs for mail are very few: I have never used 
> any address book on any of the mail systems I have ever seen, I have never
> used any of the auto-reply or filter tools for any of them, I have never
> done a read receipt, I have never built a distribution list, I have never
> used the group features of any scheduling package of any of them, etc.
> And if you need those features, then I understand how your reaction may
> differ from mine.
> 
> -- Ken Moreau

Ken, if your usage is as described above, you would be far better served
using a POP3 client (Netscape, Eudora, Pegasus, etc) and a POP3 server
(preferrably UNIX with Sendmail configured to do the right things to handle
mail proxies, DECnet Mail-l1, A1 MTS style addressing, etc).  I have run my
mail in similar fashion for the last 6 years, and am happy with it. Never
used All-in-one, though all my peers did; and have no plans to use
Exchange, though all my peers will.

Ram

RE: .63

>Ken, if your usage is as described above, you would be far better served
>using a POP3 client (Netscape, Eudora, Pegasus, etc) and a POP3 server

My wife uses NetScape mail from our ISP (AT&T WorldNet), and before that
used Eudora Light.  To be honest I was not impressed.  The editor is poor,
the interface is clumsy, the length restrictions are terribly restrictive,
and the handling of attachments is IMHO inadequate (it reminded me of
TeamLinks in the way it handled attachments, which in case you haven't
guessed, is not a compliment).

While I certainly don't use 1/10th of the features in Exchange, either 
because I can't or because I feel no need to do so, what I do use I like.
The editor is adequate (once I convinced it to use Times New Roman 10 point
font in Black for every type of text in any type of message), the
addressing is trivial for me to remember, it handles my 50+MB of messages
in multiple personal folders each with multiple folders inside of them,
and it handles both incoming and outgoing attachments with ease.  I don't 
ask for anything else in a mail product.

Besides, if I switched over to a POP3 server, I would either have to do my
own server management, or find some kind soul who would do it for me.  I
am on the Home Alone program, and haven't visited a Digital office on the
EasyNet in months.  It sounds like a lot of trouble to go through, for
very little increase in service.  And since my cost center is paying CCS
for the Exchange service anyway, it seems pointless.

-- Ken Moreau
   who was deeply depressed at giving up VMSmail when I moved out of
   Engineering, and hasn't seen any improvement in products in the 
   years since then...

    RE:.60
    >Is there still a freely distributable Word viewer from MS ? There used
    >to be for Word 6, and it was much quicker to start up than the real
    >thing...
    
    	A small problem with the Word 97.  With Microsoft Word 97 the
    format of the .DOC file is now .RTF.  There is a converter that lets
    Word95 read a Word97 doc.  Available on the Word97 and Office97 CDROMs
    or for free on Microsoft web site.  You can't even trust a file
    extension these days.

    re .65:
    
    I though the format is RTF only if you save in "Word 95" format...
    which Word95 can read of course.
    

    Re .64:
    
    >>Ken, if your usage is as described above, you would be far better served
    >>using a POP3 client (Netscape, Eudora, Pegasus, etc) and a POP3 server
    >
    > My wife uses NetScape mail from our ISP (AT&T WorldNet), and before
    > that used Eudora Light.  To be honest I was not impressed.  The editor
    > is poor, the interface is clumsy, the length restrictions are terribly
    > restrictive, and the handling of attachments is IMHO inadequate ...
    
    You mention two POP clients and then go on to rail about "the editor",
    "the interface", et cetera.  It is not clear which client you mean.  If
    you mean POP clients generally, then none of what you list is a part of
    POP.  Eudora light handles attachments quite well, and I find the
    interface fairly intuitive (with a couple of minor points I'd like to
    see changed).  I haven't found any restrictive lengths.  The editor is
    quite plain, but not a bother.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    If you have a Burns (Alpha laptop) running VMS in that airplane and use
    SLIP or PPP or the like you can perfectly well access email from an
    airplane.
    
    
    What's this non-portable nonsnse???
    
    By the same token Exchange is also not portable...or at any rate I
    suspect it will run badly under SoftWindows on said laptop.
    
    

    
    
    	re: .56  Karen
    
    	I think it's because the UNIX system admin staff doesn't want
    	to have to support the couple of VAX/VMS machines that are left.
    	So unless one of the engineers in our group volunteers to take
    	care of it, we're gonna be SOL by next summer.
    
    

re: .59

Ken,

You need to install Quick View from the Win95 CD distribution (its not on the 
floppies).  Control Panel --> Add/Remove Programs --> Accessories, Details.  
Its also available from Microsofts ftp site:

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Products/Windows/Windows95/CDRomExtras/Accessories/


I also agree with you on mail usage.  As goofy as it sounds, I'd like to see a 
character cell interface to Exchange.  Despite all the great feature, most of 
the stuff I send/recieve is text.

bob,

> As goofy as it sounds, I'd like to see a character cell interface to Exchange.

Yeah!  Maybe then we wouldn't see mail messages that look like this with
the
margins all screwed up.

Paul

> Yeah!  Maybe then we wouldn't see mail messages that look like this with
> the
> margins all screwed up.
> 
> Paul

I'm not sure I see the relationship between Exchange mail and my not
setting the margins correctly on NetNotes but I apologize anyway.


bob,

    
    	No, that wasn't aimed at you.
    
    	It's a result of a combination of different receiving fonts and
    	window widths per user, and the use of carriage returns at the
    	end of every line in Exchange.
    

RE: .70

Thanks for the pointers, I will do this when I get home from my trip...

RE: .67
    
>    You mention two POP clients and then go on to rail about "the editor",
>    "the interface", et cetera.  It is not clear which client you mean.  If

I was comparing the two (NetScape Mail and Eudora Light) which I found
similar, with similar (what I consider to be) failings, as compared to
Exchange or VMSmail.  I agree that I was not trying to rag on POP3 clients
in general. which would be like ragging on EDLIN and then saying that
all text editors are garbage.  There are many POP3 clients around, and I
have only tried these two, so I cannot speak generally about them.

I didn't think I was being that nasty.  If I offended anyone, I apologize.

I stand by my positive comments about my (very limited) use of Exchange.

-- Ken Moreau

re .73

    It was a toss up whether to use note 4961 or this one so I tossed a
    coin and this thread won.
    
    Some observations and experiences:
    
    1. I sit in the CXO facility just down the hall from the CCS folks. 
    They appear to burn up a lot of hours keeping the Exchange
    infrastructure going and, even more interesting, helping confused and
    abused users.  Having done I.T. consulting for a living, I doubt that
    anyone has done any analysis of the "fit-up" costs (including the
    significant cost of training and supporting the user community).
    2. The parts of Exchange that are most attractive are biased toward the
    "client" end.  It IS easy to point and click your way through attached
    documents. However, the dark side of all this is at tier 3 and within
    the messaging infrastructure.  The instability, unpredictable behavior,
    and poor performance are real and are costing me, my cost center and
    Digital time and money.
    3. Some examples:
    	. Prior to a recent business trip, I connected via my laptop (via
    RAS), checked mail, and allow the Exchange client to synchronize.  I
    got "synchronized" out of several dozen messages that had been in my
    inbox. Those messages no longer exist anywhere and CCS hasn't a clue
    what happened to them.
    	. I recently sent a request to members of a personal distribution
    list.  Roughly one-third of the addressees received the message.  I
    received no error messages.  Again, no clue as to the cause.  A resend
    the next day succeeded.
    	. Sharing a distribution list is a practical impossibility unless
    ALL addressees have MS Exchange addresses in the global address list. 
    If not, adding smtp or x400 addresses to a global distribution list
    requires a service call so that CCS personnel can add the addresses.
    	. I upgraded a system at home from 3.51 to 4.0 NT workstation.  The
    Exchange client began complaining, upon connection, that I did not have
    permission to update a folder.  No clue as to which folder and I
    checked my access of all folders I was aware of.  3 weeks later the
    problem literally disappeared.  Again, no guess from CCS as to what
    might have been the problem.
        . The W95 and WNT Exchange clients have some subtle differences in
    their behavior.  I use primarily NT and use W95 on my laptop under
    duress since my laptop is under-endowed for NT.  This gives me an
    unwanted front row seat to the inconsistencies.
    
    There are lots more examples of problems (many of which, I aknowledge,
    are solvable, albeit at some significant cost).  The whole point is that, 
    as many others have pointed out here, we are not involved in implementing 
    a strategy.  We are implementing a technology with only parts of the 
    strategy in place, motivated by the "alliance du jour".
    
    FWIW,
    Doug Dickerson
    Digital may "have it now" but we sure don't "get it".

RE: .75

Definitely.  Even I'm trying very hard to improve.

    Factoids
        
        We're saving a million (0r some number) dollars by turning off old
    VMS accounts that used to run Exchange.
        
        Apparently the VMS A1 account I use will be turned off at some time
    in the future
        
        Today I had 3 Exchange messages and 19 ALL-IN-1 messages when I
    came in.
        
        By .76 's stories, there may be some small cost to running
    Exchange.  
        
        
        To me, the factoids don't match, and reality isn't matching the
    stor when it comes to email at Digital.
        
    

    
    Ha, ha, ha.  Whoooeee.  Yup a million bucks.  The true cost will
    probably be several times that much.  All that's happened is the costs
    have shifted.
    
    Factoid:  I'm gonna get me a PC so I can read mail too ;-)
    

re .73,

> It's a result of a combination of different receiving fonts and window widths
> per user, and the use of carriage returns at the end of every line in
> Exchange.

re .75,

> Those old VMS habits die hard

Wanting your mail message to look presentable on the recipient's end is not an
"old VMS habit."  Using proportional fonts of different sizes is fine if mail
is sent from one user on Exchange to another, but as soon as it leaves that
Exchange system, the message becomes almost unreadable!

Having an internal message look like crap is one thing, but sending such
messages to customers, most of whom don't use Exchange, is inexcusable.  I use
a mail message format (monospaced fonts, plain text, 80 columns) that can be
easily read by everyone to whom I send a message.  TPU does that quite nicely,
thanks.  And I'm sick of having to struggle to read every message I get from an
Exchange user because of the odd line wrapping and bizarre formatting.

Why did Digital insist on using a proprietary technology instead of a mail
system that works well in the greater Internet community?

No, don't answer that.

Paul

re .76

>        . Sharing a distribution list is a practical impossibility unless
>    ALL addressees have MS Exchange addresses in the global address list. 
>    If not, adding smtp or x400 addresses to a global distribution list
>    requires a service call so that CCS personnel can add the addresses.

I think that this can be best refered to as "Job Security" by design (for CCS).

Just got this from CCS - glad we're using this wonderfully robust product as 
our corporate mail strategy..... I don't recall ever getting a message like 
this regarding ALL-IN-1 and OpenVMS:


ADVISORY:	 If you have an Exchange mail account, you may need to 
                 protect business critical messages from being inadvertently 
                 deleted or lost. Connectivity and Computing Services (CCS) 
                 has backup procedures in place for recovering MS Exchange 
                 in the event of a disaster to an Exchange server. CCS is 
                 working with Microsoft for a future enhancement that will 
                 enable the restoration of individual mailboxes in the event 
                 of content loss due to casual or erroneous deletion.  Until 
                 this ability is available, we recommend that you take an 
                 additional measure of protection by routinely copying your 
                 business critical mail messages from your MS Exchange 
                 mailbox to an MS Exchange Personal Folder located either on 
                 a CCS NT File Server that provides backup and restore 
                 capabilities, or on your desktop hard drive.  Backups of 
                 the desktop hard drive are the responsibility of the PC 
                 owner.

I always leave my mail on the server because of this.

Re: .83

So you WANT to lose your mail?  I suppose that makes for a good excuse...


				Steve

    Doesn't matter if I want to or not, I still have a backup ;-)

It's the mail on the server they're saying is at risk. I assume you mean that 
the copy on your PC is the backup?

    Its not that CCS cant recover your mail from backup, its that its
    extremely expensive to do so. The Exchange designers, and the term is a
    loose one, have designed this technical wizardry so that if you have to
    recover a mail account, you have to recover ALL the mail accounts to
    somewhere then extract the appropriate one. So, in the CCS designed big
    box infrastructure being deployed, a corresponding big disk environment
    is needed to recover you 200 message account.
    
    CCS can recover your accounts. Lets understand this correctly. If they
    are making an economic decision to not do this they have NO right to.
    The choice of infrastructure being deployed has various economic
    consequences. Devolution of service quality, or reliability, or
    recoverability was never mentioned as being  one of them.
    
    CCS have to understand that they are not just providing a computing service
    to Digital. CCS are providing, in addition at the very least, an Information
    integrity service. When we place data in their care, we expect it to be
    cost effectively recoverable. 
    
    
    - John

    Atlant wrote in .0:
    
      In general, I'm also able to
      read attachments that you include although I would certainly
      discourage you from using Microsoft Word attachments just
      to tell me something you could have said as well in a
      paragraph of ordinary text.
    
    I'm really curious how this trick is accomplished.  All non-ascii
    attachments that are sent to my VMSmail account (and some ascii
    attachments, too!) get encoded into gibberish.  Forwarding the message
    to my MSexchange mail account doesn't decode them.
    
    FYI, I am currently stuck running both Exchange and VMSmail.  I tried
    having VMSmail forwarded to exchange, but REPLYing to such messages
    failed miserably -- sometimes it wouldn't work at all and sometimes I
    would get back a warning that the message hadn't been delivered,
    whether or not it actually had been delivered.  
    
    My position is that I'm keeping my VMSmail account until NO ONE whom I
    work with uses VMSmail anymore.  Fortunately, the administrators and 
    managers in my group place a higher priority on our getting our work
    done than on turning off our VMSmail accounts, though eventually our
    VMScluster will probably go away, forcing us all off VMSmail.  It'll be
    nice to be back to a single mail system, though I sure wish it were
    more reliable.  Ah, well.
    
    	Enjoy,
    	Larry

    All Exchange accounts and messages are backed up regularly.  What they
    are saying is that in order to recover an account, they would have to
    recover the entire server to another machine, then pull the memos off
    the other system.  It can be done, but it is expensive and won't be
    done unless there is justification for it.  Depending on who was at
    fault, you might have to pay for it.  CCS has a very small staff for
    backups and restorations, often with one or two people covering several
    sites.  Most of these people could not configure an Exchange Server.  I
    imagine someone could contract for this service to be provided
    on-demand.  
    
    So backups are generally done with the idea of replacing a failed disk. 
    People are encouraged to use a personal store on a disk server, such as
    xxx-OFFICE-1, where xxx is the name of your facility.  These can be
    restored fairly easily.  The problem is that they take up a lot of disk
    space, but no more than normal Exchange.  The downside is that you need
    to connect to two systems instead of just one to read all your mail.
    
    A lot of people are making the mistake of creating a personal store on
    their hard drive, only discover that most of their mail is only
    accessible from one place.  
    
    Restoring ALL-IN-1 accounts is extremely difficult as well.  There is
    no easy way to do it.  An individual message can be retrieved fairly
    easily, but you can only get an account restored with VP approval.  The
    problem there stems from the fact that the messages files are stored
    over many shared areas, and the names are only a reflection of the date
    and time they were created.  So you have to restore the user files,
    then create a list of files used, then request restores of each file,
    which could cover dozens of disks.  Then there is the issue of system
    data, much of which can be rebuilt, but not all of it. Very few people
    get their ALL-IN-1 accounts 100% restored.
    
    Ben
    

re Note 5256.88 by WRKSYS::SEILER:

>     I'm really curious how this trick is accomplished.  All non-ascii
>     attachments that are sent to my VMSmail account (and some ascii
>     attachments, too!) get encoded into gibberish.  Forwarding the message
>     to my MSexchange mail account doesn't decode them.
  
        I've found two ways that work for me.

        One, from VMS Mail terminal interface, I extract the entire
        message to a file, and then use Wincode (running on the
        Windows side) to decode the attachments from that file (there
        are a couple of ways to make the file accessible from the
        Windows side).  Since most non-text attachments are probably
        Microsoft Office documents or Windows programs, this usually
        makes sense.

        The other is to set up the UCX POP3 server, and then access
        the VMS Newmail folder from a POP3 client (I use Netscape
        Communicator).  Works very nicely.

        I should note that almost all my mail arrives on my VMS
        system these days via SMTP mail.

        I should also note that the fine Exchange system seems to
        want to encode (and thus render gibberish to a text-only mail
        client) even text attachments.  (It gives me another reason
        not to use it!)

        Bob

WinZip will also decode MIME documents - very nicely.

On VMS, I extract out the UUENCODEd or BASE64 stuff and run a separate decoder
on it as appropriate.

				Steve

    r.e .89
    
    However, recovering an individual Exchange message is also extremely
    difficult.
    
    Storing copies of correspondence on file shares in order to get around
    an inadequately designed corporate mail system is extremely poor
    information management policy. It also points out the continued
    devaluation of mail systems as core repositories of corporate
    information. That CCS provides no guidance on appropriate management
    processes for key information except where it impacts their lack of
    backup policies is an amazing admission.
    
    These things:
    1. VP approval for recovery of mail accounts
    2. CCS staffing limitations
    3. Provision of insufficient infrastructure to allow proper information
    management
    
    are not features of either ALL-IN-1 or Microsoft Exchange. They are
    signs of insufficient investment in appropriate  infrastructure,
    processes and human resources to support the business. All of these are
    fixable with resolve and business understanding.
    
    Probably a good example of why we are failing in many ways at the front
    end. Please dont confuse what is technically possible with what needs
    to occur for the success of the business. Stating VP approval is
    required to recover an account is just stating that a policy decision
    has been made at some point in time. 
    
    The decision to move to Exchange at this point in time came at a cost. 
    That cost is more expensive recovery procedures. CCS must acknowledge this
    and provide for it.
    
    
    - John
    
    

    re .82
    On re-reading, it sound like someone more important than myself had
    some finger trouble, blew out all their mail and screamed bloody murder
    when they found out that they couldn't get their mail restored.
    
    The message does claim to be able to restore the mail server in the
    case of a "disaster", albeit not always quickly.
    
    I had a real sarcastic chuckle out of the first read, to be sure.
    
    r
    

    .93 is probably right.  :-)
    
    Maybe the memo wasn't clear enough.  An Exchange Mailbox is backed up
    and protected.  There has not been a documented case of an Exchange
    Mailbox message being destroyed without user intervention.  (That I know
    of.)  However, as with most products, the mail is not protected from
    user mistakes.  Deleting the mail and emptying the Deleted Items folder...
    and then deciding that the messages shouldn't be deleted isn't a failure.
    :-)
    
    CCS does not want to be in the business of spending most of their time
    restoring Exchange Mailbox mail for customers that have "accidentally"
    deleted their mail.  It is an expensive and time-consuming process. 
    
    I've even seen people deliver all their mail to a Personal Folder on a
    PC (NOTHING on the server) and then losing the PST file somehow... and
    then claiming all the mail disappeared on the Mailbox saying they didn't
    keep anything locally.  The person/sucker doing the server Mailbox
    restore is going to be in for a surprise... since that tedious restore
    is going to be empty no matter how far back you go.  Now that's a waste
    of time...
    
    The memo was probably just intended to be a "be careful" educational
    announcement.
    
    --Ron

    Re .94:

    > Deleting the mail and emptying the Deleted Items folder... and then
    > deciding that the messages shouldn't be deleted isn't a failure. :-)

    Actually, it is.  Two or three decades ago, the DecSystem 20 kept
    deleted files around until the disk space was needed or the files were
    explicitly expunged.  It is a design failure that modern systems do not
    keep _all_ data as long as resources permit.  Every user action should
    be as reversible as possible.

    As a side benefit, this decreases entropy, so it is ecologically
    beneficial.  :-)


    				-- edp


Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    Hmm. I wonder if one couldn't make it a Digital project (one of the
    ones Wes was talking about) to make Exchange robust somehow? That is,
    to make it possible to recover files? Or achieve timely delivery where
    it isn't timely without Digital expertise?
    
    half ;-)
    

hmmm... Sounds like we need to hire another VP!  I can only image one day 
reading about:

John Doe, VP of Exchange Mail Recovery


							-Paul

         Last Friday a coworker asked if I'd read the email he'd sent me
    via exchange about 10 min ago.. I told him I hadn't received any email
    from him... He resent it and it came through almost immediately.. It
    was later of in the day and again on Monday that I found out that some
    business related exchange mail never got through. My VMS account is
    setup to auto-forward all incoming messages.. So initially I set it
    noforward until I felt it was safe to start forwarding again.. There
    was some sort of an upgrade done last Thursday... Beats me if it's the
    reason my mail was messed up.. I figure I'll likely never get the
    messages which were lost. In my division of workstations we're on a
    different domain and the missing email came from within and outside of
    our domain. This was the first major problem I've had using exchange.
    With the timing related to my current project it was the worst possible
    time for a lapse...
    
    
    bob

    RE: .92
    
    Most backup procedures are setup to provide inexpensive backup for
    disaster recovery.  Even the archiving procedures were not quick to
    recover old documents that were stored offline.  I've supported
    ALL-IN-1 for 15 years and have never seen a decent recovery scheme. 
    The last restore I saw took about a week.  The person doing it was not
    an expert in ALL-IN-1, but she knew the basics.  Does any organization have
    all the staff it needs?
    
    People always say that they want whatever it takes, but are they
    willing to pay for it.  I used to go crazy with people using as much
    disk space as they wanted.  When we started charging for excessive disk
    quotas, people were able to put up the money or keep quiet.  At the
    prices we charged, we were happy to give them as much as they wanted.  
    
    The purpose of VP approval is simply to keep anyone who thinks he is
    important from requesting a lot of useless information be restored.  It
    is the VP of the requesting organization that has to approve it.  So
    truly important data isn't lost.  But it is amazing how many documents
    people have notifying them of canceled meetings ten years ago or
    after-work drinking parties.  You see this when you do restores. 
    
    I should stress that I don't know the policy for restores of Exchange
    memos.   
    
    I do know that it restoration lot easier if the information is stored
    on a personal share.  I believe this is stressed in training and
    documentation, at least it has been in all of mine.  
    
    Ben

    
    re: exchange backup
    
    Although a tad cumbersome for everyday usage, dragging and dropping
    important messages from your Exchange folder to a hard disk folder
    or floppy diskette is a good way to ensure your important mail messages
    are protected from accidental erasure.  
    
    Bill

This laptop only has a 512MB HD, and only 160MB of that is actually free now, so I don't 
have the room to store everything on it.  Well, I mean, I do right at the moment, but I don't 
want to waste the space if I don't have to.

The best way to do it is to point your Personal Folders on work/home systems to an NT file 
server, although you need to make sure that you can access the server from both places, 
which is the problem I have right now.  So at the moment I'm not using Personal Folders.

> The purpose of VP approval is simply to keep anyone who thinks he is
> important from requesting a lot of useless information be restored.  It
> is the VP of the requesting organization that has to approve it.

Is this really true? VP's are being asked to approve the recovery of files 
from backup tapes? Really?

re Note 5256.102 by IOSG::newdial_p12.reo.dec.com::Alffa::Merewood:

> Is this really true? VP's are being asked to approve the recovery of files 
> from backup tapes? Really?
  
        Why not?  We have a lot of them, and we can always make more
        if needed.

        Bob

  Tapes or VPs?

  Seriously, it should be a simple request to your local data center to
  restore files from backup.  If it is "mission critical" data from last
  month it may take a little longer but it has always been recoverable from
  fire storage in a few days.

  At least it always has been until now.

  	mikeP

<<< Note 5256.103 by LGP30::FLEISCHER "without vision the people perish (DTN 381-0426 ZKO1-1)" >>>

re Note 5256.102 by IOSG::newdial_p12.reo.dec.com::Alffa::Merewood:

> Is this really true? VP's are being asked to approve the recovery of files 
> from backup tapes? Really?
  
        Why not?  We have a lot of them, and we can always make more
        if needed.

        Bob

    And besides, when you ask something to be restored from the operation
    folks you expect them to be non-judgemental about it.  At least common
    courtsey dictate that they don't peek inside the content of the mail
    messages.
    
    - Vikas

    >And besides, when you ask something to be restored from the operation
    >folks you expect them to be non-judgemental about it.  At least
    >common courtsey dictate that they don't peek inside the content of the
    >mail messages.
    
    Um yes, I'll be non-judgemental about this. About 5 years ago I was
    asked to restore some files which a greenhorn had accidentally deleted.
    He assured me it was all customer critical important stuff. I was not
    responsible for doing the backups, but when I checked them it turned
    out that the person doing them had not done them properly and I spend
    about two days methodically going through a cupboard full of tapes, as
    operations people have to have a service mentality you know and the
    customer is always right.
    
    I finally found the files, restored them to the user, and gave him a
    very polite phone call. He told me that it no longer "mattered," he had
    got them elsewhere. I did not of course peek inside the files, and
    indeed regard even the names of the files as essentially confidential. 
    However as the clown I was restoring the files for is no longer with us
    and 5 years have passed, I feel I can reveal that I was a litte miffed
    to notice, as I was finally restoring the files, that they were entries
    from a JOKES notes conference. No no, you are right, the content of the
    data is strictly confidential. 
    
    ..Kevin..

>  Seriously, it should be a simple request to your local data center to
>  restore files from backup.  If it is "mission critical" data from last
>  month it may take a little longer but it has always been recoverable from
>  fire storage in a few days.
    
    Simple requests don't require any approval at all.  You deleted
    10,000 VMS files from USER$DISK1, they get restored immediately.  We
    had some NT files that were not protected, somebody deleted them and
    they were restored immediately from tape.  The work is done by
    "operators".  They have little knowledge of the operating system, and
    probably aren't paid much.  It is an entry level job, and they spend a
    lot of time loading and unloading tapes, often at night. I don't know
    for sure, but I'm sure that dozens of these are done every day with no
    questions asked.  And, you are right, sometimes the data is still in
    the building and sometimes it has to be pulled from fire storage.  
    
    For ALL-IN-1, it isn't so straightforward.  Certainly for ALL-IN-1, you
    would have to generate a list of all the documents, then figure out
    which ones still existed, and then submit a hundred restore requests
    for the individual files.  This work has to be done by a support person
    who knows what they are doing.  It is very time-consuming.  Even if you
    want one or two memos, it takes a support person to read the old
    DOCDB.DAT file and figure out what file to restore.  Even people who
    have supported VMS for years have no idea what this even means. 
    
    I once received an urgent request to delete the account of a "VP" and
    one of his subordinates who had been terminated suddenly.  Having some
    experience with this, I simply disabled both accounts.  Two weeks
    later, they asked to put back the subordinate's account.  It was easy
    since the account was still there, just disabled.  
    
    There are VP's and VP's.  The title doesn't mean much these days.  I
    don't know what level of VP you need approval of.  We have lots of VP's
    here, and they work for VP's who work for VP's who work for BP.  Some
    people even cease being a VP when they change jobs.  If you work in
    Sales, it is handy to take a VP with you on a sales call instead of a
    Regional Manager, since IBM will.
    
    Ben
    

    re .100
    copy from exchange to...
    "protected from accidental erasure"
    
    Well, the not-so-obvious advantage is that you are partially protected
    from 2-3 day exchange outages. 8^)
    r
    

Re .107

>    For ALL-IN-1, it isn't so straightforward.  Certainly for ALL-IN-1, you
>    would have to generate a list of all the documents, then figure out
>    which ones still existed, and then submit a hundred restore requests
>    for the individual files.  This work has to be done by a support person
>    who knows what they are doing.  It is very time-consuming.  Even if you
>    want one or two memos, it takes a support person to read the old
>    DOCDB.DAT file and figure out what file to restore.  Even people who
>    have supported VMS for years have no idea what this even means. 

	Ben

	I generate the list of missing files all the time.  Takes two scripts
and copies of the SDAFs from before the user was deleted (to get the missing 
attachmnts).  The whole process might take 10-15 minutes.  Give me a call
next time.

John

    RE: .109
    
>	I generate the list of missing files all the time.  Takes two scripts
>and copies of the SDAFs from before the user was deleted (to get the missing 
>attachmnts).  The whole process might take 10-15 minutes.  Give me a call
>next time.
    
    John,
    
    You still need to get get the old SDAF's, PDAF's, and DOCDB files
    restored first, and someone who can run scripts.  Yes, we have the .TMP
    files from the previous week online, but before that we don't.  After
    that, you create those hundred restore requests for the documents
    themselves.  
    
    I should have also pointed out that very few full restores are even
    requested.  But of course, I always call you first for tips on
    something like this. :-)  
    
    With memos, you can often find someone else who has the few memos the
    person is missing.  
    
    In ALL-IN-1, it may take a little work, but not that much to do a few
    memos.  To be fair, with Exchange, it probably doesn't matter how many
    you need to get restored, you have to restore the whole system.  So
    ALL-IN-1 definitely has the advantage there.  
    
    The big question with the move to Exchange is why we are giving
    salespeople the impression that ALL-IN-1 is a dead product when it is
    still in active development - not maintenance mode.  But that issue has
    been discussed at length before. 

    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Sure...EXCHANGE is ready for prime time...just back it up YOURSELF!
    
    I think that it's safe to say that anybody recommending a mail system
    for a Fortune-500 without industrial strength backup capabilities would
    likelky do well to keep the resume handy...
    
    Aarugh,
    j
    ^--who wishes those who implemented it used it remotely and needed to
    do things like print and get other support services etc...
    
    ----
    
    

                  I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O R A N D U M

                                        Date:     02-May-1997 07:23am EDT
                                        From:     Connectivity & Computing Srvs
                                                  CCS_ADVISORY@A1@SALES@PKO
                                        Dept:      
                                        Tel No:    

TO: See Below
 
Subject: Recommended Practice - Protect Critical Exchange Mail Message          

TO:		 All Connectivity and Computing Services (CCS) Exchange 
                 Customers Worldwide

SUBJECT:	 Recommended Practice to Protect Critical Exchange Mail 
                 Messages

EFFECTIVE:	 Q4 FY'97

RELEVANT SITES:	 Worldwide

ADVISORY:	 If you have an Exchange mail account, you may need to 
                 protect business critical messages from being inadvertently 
                 deleted or lost. Connectivity and Computing Services (CCS) 
                 has backup procedures in place for recovering MS Exchange 
                 in the event of a disaster to an Exchange server. CCS is 
                 working with Microsoft for a future enhancement that will 
                 enable the restoration of individual mailboxes in the event 
                 of content loss due to casual or erroneous deletion.  Until 
                 this ability is available, we recommend that you take an 
                 additional measure of protection by routinely copying your 
                 business critical mail messages from your MS Exchange 
                 mailbox to an MS Exchange Personal Folder located either on 
                 a CCS NT File Server that provides backup and restore 
                 capabilities, or on your desktop hard drive.  Backups of 
                 the desktop hard drive are the responsibility of the PC 
                 owner.

IMPACT:		 To create an MS Exchange Personal Folder, follow these 
                 steps:

		 1. From the MS Exchange window:
		    *	Select Tools/Services
		    *	Select Add
		 2. From the Add Service to Profile window:
		    *	Select Personal Folders from within the Available 
                        Information Services box
		    *	Select OK
		 3. From the Create Microsoft Personal Folders window:
		    *	(Optional) Type a name for the folder, which will be 
                    	displayed in your Exchange window
		    *	(Optional) Type in a password
		    *	Select OK
		 4. From the Services window:
		    *	Select OK

		 You may now place copies (do not move the original 
                 versions) of critical mail messages in the Personal Folder.  
                 If you routinely copy  your critical mail messages from 
                 your MS Exchange mailbox to an MS Exchange Personal Folder, 
                 you will create a backup copy of those messages. 

		 Please remember to "Exit and Log-off" Microsoft Exchange at 
                 the end of each business day so that  any  Personal Folders 
                 you have on a CCS File Share will not be Open and Locked 
                 during the nightly File Share backup operations. Personal 
                 Folders that are Open and Locked will not be copied to the 
                 backup tapes.
 
CONTACT:	 If you have any questions, please contact your local CCS 
                 Help Desk or your Client Services Representative.   The 
                 telephone numbers of the CCS Help Desks can be found on the 
                 CCS World-Wide Web Home Page at:

		 	http://www.imc.das.dec.com/ccs/


		 	          DIGITAL Internal Use Only

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