The GroupWise mail client "Cleanup" options allows the user to specify "Auto-archive after" and specifying a number of days after which messages should be moved into the archive.

One way in which such a feature is used is that the user is attempting to "beat the post office's message retention policy", by moving messages into the archive before the server itself would have dropped/removed their messages.

Meaning as a user, I can't just set this "Auto-archive after" to a number like 180 days and assume "my archive will contain all the mail older than 180 days." Because if the server's retention period is less than 180 days, my archive won't contain anything at all. A fact I will not know or realize until after the number of days of the server's actual retention period have passed, and I put 2 + 2 together as to why my archive is empty, and data has already been lost.

The retention period of the post office needs to be known, in an obvious and visible way, to help the user decide how their Auto-Archive After setting should be configured. e.g. The UI should actually stop the user from attempting to set a higher number of days than their post office retention policy is set for, since the auto-archive is going to be useless if server's retention is for a shorter period.

by: Alan A. | over a year ago | Windows Client