What Is ReduceMail Pro Journal?

ReduceMail Pro Journal is a state-of-the-art journal management and audit system that enhances native IBM Notes R6, 7, and 8 journal functionality to provide a powerful IBM Notes management and audit tool. It helps extract IBM Notes mail for specific users and groups from the Lotus Domino journal and adds it to Journal Extract databases. It then searches those Journal Extracts for specific content. This helps the administrator in monitoring all incoming and outgoing mail regardless of how large the IBM Notes mail journal becomes.

The key to ReduceMail Pro Journal is in its ability to focus the journal and IBM Notes search process. While the native IBM Notes journal system has a copy of every single message (even including I-Spy messages), the journal content that is actually needed for particular IBM Notes searches is often limited to specific users or departments. The IBM Notes journal itself is quite large, unwieldy and encrypted, preventing effective use of this critical data.

ReduceMail Pro Journal extracts the relevant journal content only and the administrator is then free to perform a IBM Notes search on the Journal Extract. The IBM Notes search process is a high-speed keyword search of the full text index, to and from fields, relevant dates, subject lines and attachment names. A dedicated workstation of ordinary hardware is utilized to remove load from the server and provide cost-effective use of hardware resources. ReduceMail Pro Journal makes it possible for you and your compliance team to audit ever larger IBM Notes mail journals in a time efficient manner.

ReduceMail Pro Journal uses the familiar IBM Notes interface. This allows the IBM Notes administration team to utilize this powerful tool without the need to interface with other technologies which require database administrators and other staff.

ReduceMail Pro Journal is installed on a workstation of ordinary hardware which is secured from physical access. On the workstation you can set up a separate copy of ReduceMail Pro Journal for each investigator and allow the investigators to customize the extraction and IBM Notes search processes from server replicas of the ReduceMail Pro Journal system.

For those organizations that have mail that was never journaled, ReduceMail Pro Audit can be utilized to search the pre-journaled mail in IBM Notes mailfiles and server-based Lotus Domino archives.

ReduceMail Pro Journal includes the following features:

  • management of IBM Notes journal content through iterative journal extraction and IBM Notes search processes
  • decryption to make content visible
  • search coordination with anti-spam engines
  • complete full text IBM Notes search capabilities
  • assistance with responding to legal document search requests such as FOIAs, subpoenas, and IBM Notes legal discovery.
  • reduction of server space and processor cycles
  • retrieval of lost messages
  • no need for a server licenses - the process uses a workstation
  • removal of duplicate messages sent to multiple recipients at the same time
  • works with IBM Notes versions R6-R10

Product Features of ReduceMail Pro Journal

ReduceMail Pro Journal, a journal management and audit system for IBM Notes, includes the following useful features:

Management of Journal Content Through Iterative Journal Extraction & IBM Notes Search Processes
ReduceMail Pro Journal extracts mail for specific users and groups from the Lotus Domino journal and adds it to the Journal Extract database. It then searches the Journal Extracts for specific content. If the resulting Journal Extract is still too large, an iterative process can be used to create the appropriately limited Extract. Thus ReduceMail Pro Journal can be used to extract IBM Notes mail to and from a particular set of users (individuals, groups, departments, etc.), limiting the size of the Journal Extracts to include only relevant mail.

Decryption to Make Content Visible
Lotus Domino Journal content is typically encrypted and very difficult to manage from the Lotus Domino journal views. The encryption is important to protect messages from unauthorized viewing but also makes the Lotus Domino journal difficult to read. ReduceMail Pro Journal removes the encryption for the messages that you want to add to the Journal Extracts, making them useable for audit purposes.

Search Coordination with Anti-Spam Engines
ReduceMail Pro Journal can also be customized to your current anti-spam engine so that spam messages are excluded as well. Those messages can simply be segregated and ignored or searched as part of an effort to improve anti-spam performance. This can have a significant impact on your IBM Notes search and backup needs.

Complete Full Text IBM Notes Search Capabilities
ReduceMail Pro Journal creates a full text index of the Journal extracts which includes all mail fields as well as attachments. All of the Lotus Domino full text index choices can be selected for maximum flexibility and you can also use other full text index search engines such as Google or Exalead.

Assistance With Responding to Legal Document Search Requests
ReduceMail Pro Journal allows you to quickly respond to document search requests from your legal department. You copy the mail journals to the ReduceMail Pro Journal workstation and set it to work!

Reduction of Server Space & Processor Cycles
All closed Lotus Domino journals are moved off of the mail servers to the ReduceMail Pro Journal workstation of ordinary hardware leaving only the active journals on the mail servers. This will save a substantial amount of disk space (soon more than your complete mail system!) and processor cycles taken up by server tasks on the closed Lotus Domino journals.

Retrieval of Lost Messages
ReduceMail Pro Journal can also help you with a necessary but annoying mail administration task – retrieving lost messages. When a user loses a message through improper or mistaken deletion, ReduceMail Pro Journal can help you restore it from the IBM Notes Journal. Simply search for the message using the from or to fields and date range and select the identified message and click a button to restore it to the appropriate user’s IBM Notes mail file.

No Need for Server Licenses - the Process Uses a Workstation
We help you save on server licenses as well. To search the Lotus Domino journals you do not need a Lotus Domino server, just a regular Lotus Domino client license since ReduceMail Pro Journal uses a workstation of ordinary hardware.

Removal of Duplicate Messages Sent to Multiple Recipients At the Same Time
To minimize costs, it can be useful to keep only one copy of each unique message. ReduceMail Pro Journal can deduplicate the messages in each mail Journal Extract as well as in the final Search Results database.

Frequently Asked Questions About ReduceMail Pro Journal

What does ReduceMail Pro Journal do? ReduceMail Pro Journal is an IBM Notes mail management utility which helps manage the built-in Lotus Domino journalling. It creates Journal Extracts from the Lotus Domino journal for users, groups and organizational units whose incoming and outgoing mail needs to be investigated. It allows you to perform subsequent extractions to narrow down your mail storage criteria. After you have narrowed down the mail you are looking for appropriately, ReduceMail Pro Journal allows you to search the Journal Extracts and discover the particular mail messages you are interested in. You can search using a full text index, subject lines, attachment names, dates, inside and outside email addresses.

Where do you install ReduceMail Pro Journal? On a local workstation of ordinary hardware with an IBM Notes client.

Is ReduceMail Pro Journal easy to use? Yes. Our developers have made every effort to make ReduceMail Pro Journal simple and user-friendly in every way, from the interface to the selection of features. We know your time is valuable and we treat it as such.

Does ReduceMail Pro Journal use the real-time Name & Address Book? Yes. As soon as you change the person or group documents in the Name & Address Book they are available for use by ReduceMail Pro Journal.

Does ReduceMail Pro Journal run on AS/400, AIX, UNIX or Linux platforms? Yes - it is compatible with ALL platforms on which IBM Notes runs.

Is ReduceMail Pro Journal compatible with IBM Notes R9? Yes. The current version runs on IBM Notes R6-R9 and automatically adjusts its processing to the IBM Notes version.

Is ReduceMail Pro Journal compatible with clustering? Yes.

What if ReduceMail Pro Journal stops executing because I shut down the IBM Notes client? It will continue next time from where it left off until it is finished.

Can I make sure that ReduceMail Pro Journal does not affect the documents of selected users such as executives? Yes. Just specify an IBM Notes group with those users and tell ReduceMail Pro Journal you want them excluded from the processing.

What is the cost of ReduceMail Pro Journal? The cost of ReduceMail Pro Journal is based on the number of users in your IBM Notes Name & Address Book. Please call us at 1-201-773-8915 for a quote or write us at info@avabiz.com

Where do I find the instructions for installing ReduceMail Pro Journal? The instructions for installing ReduceMail Pro Journal are in the Help - Using This Database document that comes with the system.

Show Me ReduceMail Pro Journal

Below is the ReduceMail Pro Journal interface showing the view of the Control documents: ReduceMail Pro Journal allows you to extract and search journaled IBM Notes mail based on the subject line or attachment name, and on a full-text index IBM Notes search, which is useful when responding to FOIAs, subpoenas. The Control document informs ReduceMail Pro Journal what to do. You can have one or more Control documents and they can be different for different journal policies or the same for all servers. Here is a sample Control document: The Control document includes information such as

  • the server name(s) to search for journal content
  • the IBM Notes organization(s), organizational unit(s), IBM Notes group(s) and individuals whose content you want to extract from the Lotus Domino journals
  • parameters for the IBM Notes search runs such as full text query and attachment name
Once ReduceMail Pro Journal has finished a full cycle, it generates Reports. These reports include the information specified in the control documents as well as information about how many journals and documents were supposed to be processed, how many actually were, whether ReduceMail Pro Journal encountered difficulty in various mail journal databases and, if so, in which ones and why. Here is a sample Report:
In addition to Reports, ReduceMail Pro Journal also generates mail journal Individual Reports. They include the granularized information.

Technical Info For ReduceMail Pro Journal

ReduceMail Pro Journal is designed for use with a IBM Notes client on a workstation. It uses LotusScript based agents and is optimized for an environment with a multitude of Lotus Domino mail servers. It works with IBM Notes versions R6-R9 and will be compatible with future Lotus Domino software one month after gold releases.

Return on Investment Analysis for ReduceMail Pro Journal

Below are some examples of how ReduceMail Pro Journal might save your organization time and money. Some of these examples might affect the organization itself and some might affect the IBM Notes administration. Here is a possible scenarios for 10,000 users.

  • Lower cost of production of email evidence in a lawsuit. The costs of producing email evidence in the event of a lawsuit are astronomical. Typical numbers quoted are $1 per memo. A staff person who keeps all mail can cost thousands of dollars if he or she is targeted in the IBM Notes discovery process. ReduceMail Pro Journal allows you to successively limit and expand your IBM Notes searches until you get the exact data sample you need, minimizing the number of extraneous emails. If your identification of the mail is 20% more efficient, you can save $20,000 by limiting a discovery to 80,000 instead of 100,000 documents.
  • Lower storage costs. Closed Lotus Domino journals are removed from the mail servers and added to the ReduceMail Pro Journal workstation. The amount of storage saved will soon be more than your total enterprise mail system since nothing is removed from the journals. If your users each receive 0.5 megabytes of mail per day, the daily storage is 50 gigabytes. If your managed storage cost on the server is $50 per gigabyte you save a large portion of that $2,500 per day! Per year your savings are a large portion of $900,000!