Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Defragment the Exchange Information Store after MSG Conversion

If you are the system administrator for a firm using TrialWorks Case Management Software, than you may have already switched to the Save as MSG function for the TrialWorks/Outlook Add-In available since version 9.36. Well, if you have than you may need to complete a few cleanup procedures to improve performance of your Microsoft Exchange Server.

After the TrialWorks Save as MSG Conversion you should be able to export the existing Public Folder to a PST file. After the folder is copied to a PST (or exported) you can delete it from Microsoft Exchange. However, you will notice that the Exchange Public Folder Store does not decrease in size after deleting the Public Folder. By the way, the expected change in size will likely be huge.

Microsoft Exchange Public Folders will not immediately decrease in size, by design, until you complete a Defreg (defragmentation) on that specific public folder store. To do so you must budget about two hours of Public Folder downtime. When you are ready to complete procedure, you will need to dismount the Exchange Public Folder Store and trigger a defrag from Command Prompt using the ESEUTIL.EXE utility available in Exchange. For more details please review the Microsoft Documentaiton on Exchange Defragmentation.

//KJ

TrialWorks 9.37 Released

The TrialWorks 9.37a release has been available for about one week now. The majority of the changed focused on internal functions associated with the Outlook Plug-In for TrialWorks (using the new MSG functions). In addition, we have added a feature to streamline access to the TrialWorks Account Manager.

In regards to the TrialWorks/Outlook integration, 9.37 addresses several problems that affected ability to file certain types of messages. Primarily, errors that were caused by repeated opening and closing of previously filed e-mails (this item is locked error messages). In addition, it enahances the Public Folder to MSG Migration options with new procedures to verify the migration.

As far as the Account Manager is concerned, we have added a Help Menu item that automatically populates the firm's logon credentials. The Account Manager can be used to submit trouble tickets, view basic account information, and schedule/download upgrades.