Message Executive 2003 Help

Table of Contents for Management Rules

General
Sent / Received
Management Rules
Default Rules

General Tab
The Global Settings dialog box is used to set default parameters for Message Executive users. These settings allow users to quickly configure Message Executive so they can begin organizing their mail quickly and efficiently.

Please specify the default number of hours/days a message has to be before they are moved.
This setting is used to define the typical amount of a time message resides in a folder before it is considered old and is ready to be moved.  This setting has two options: hours; or days; and applies to messages that you have created management rules for and specified the default number of days. The number of days you specify here should be the number of days old you consider the majority of messages to be when you feel they could be moved out of your inbox and into another folder. For example: You receive a number of messages from co-workers and you generally respond to them within a day or two. In this case you would probably assume that messages from them that you've already read can be filed away after a couple days or so. If you specify your default number of days to be 3, then when you create a management rule for each of your co-workers, you can select to move them after the default number of days and they will automatically be moved after they are 3 days old.  You can change this value at any time to affect any Management Rules you've used the default setting for.

* Note: If you create management rules that use the default number of days old, and you later change the default number of days old, all management rules that use the default number of days old will use the new value you've specified.

Click here for more information on Management Rules.

Default location for old messages
The default location for old messages is used to select the root folder under which you will create all sub folders for your management rules. By organizing all mail that you've already taken care of and you plan to keep for archiving purposes into subfolders under old mail, you can quickly find messages at a later date for reference purposes. If you do not select a subfolder when you create a management rule, the Old Mail folder you've specified in the global settings will be used.

Message Executive should move messages from the following folders:
Message Executive can process messages in any of your folders.  By default it will select your Inbox and Sent Items since these locations generally have mail added to them automatically by Outlook when you either receive e-mail or send it.  If you would like Message Executive to also process other folders you can use the Add and Remove buttons to the right of this window.

Create monthly sub folders when a folder has more than X messages.
When this option is turned on, Message Executive will scan all mail folders and when it finds more than the specified number of messages in a single folder, it will automatically create a sub folder for each month and move the messages to the folder in which the message was sent. For example: If you have a folder called updates and you receive a number of updates every day that eventually get moved from you inbox into this updates folder which now has 1500 messages in it. You then turn the "create monthly sub folders..." option on and specify 500 as the value...when Message Executive encounters the updates folder, it will create sub folders for every month for which a message exists. So if you received update messages in July, August, September and December. Message Executive will create the sub folders named 2002-07, 2002-08, 2002-09, and 2002-12 and automatically move the messages into these folders.

Expire rules when they have not processed any old e-mail for [ ] days.
Turning this option on ensures that Management Rules that are no longer used can be removed from the active list.  This is useful when you've subscribed to a newsgroup or something and had Message Executive moving the messages after they were so many days old.  Since you created the rule however, you stopped receiving e-mail from the newsgroup after you've unsubscribed to it.  The management rule would never be used again and therefore can be set to expire.  MADSolutions recommends turning on this option to ensure management rules get removed after a period of time.  A suggested time frame is 30 days.

Suspend the processing of all Management Rules
This option if turned on, Message Executive will stop processing messages specified in your management rules.  To have Message Executive process messages again, uncheck the "Suspend the processing of all Management Rules" check box.

Sent / Received Tab

The Send / Received determines how messages should be organized within a particular folder.  In other words if you have management rules set up for received and sent messages, you can separate these messages accordingly and also have Message Executive create corresponding rules to handle them.

When creating Management Rules, prompt me to create a rule for sent to items if the rule I'm creating is a received from type Management Rule. (Also applies to the reverse)
This option tells Message Executive that if you create a management rule to move messages received from a particular person, it should prompt you to see if you would like to have another rule created for messages you send to that person.  For example:  You decide to set up a rule to move incoming messages from Support@MADSolutions.com into a folder called MADSolutions Support.  This means messages you receive from Support@MADSolutions.com would automatically get moved by Message Executive based on your conditions of your management rule.  You would however probably like to have another rule to move messages that you send to Support@MADSolutions.com .  Turning this option on would automatically have Message Executive prompt you to confirm you'd like to create the corresponding rule and then do it for you automatically.

Automatically create "Received From" and "Sent To" subfolders for Management Rules.
This setting allows you to separate messages that were received by you or sent by you into separate containers.  For example:  You could leave both settings blank and all messages received by you and sent by you for a particular person would end up in one folder.  However you could also have it move received from messages into the folder you've specified in the rule and have it automatically create a "Sent To" folder underneath it for any messages that you sent to the person.  This option is highly recommended as it makes finding old e-mail much easier. 

Example: 
    

Management Rules Tab

Message Executive Management Rules determine when messages should be moved out of you Inbox and Sent Items to be filed away for future reference.  Using Management Rules can save you hours of clean up time every week, not to mention keep your Inbox and Sent Items clean and organized.

View [             ] rules

Management Rules are divided into 4 types:  Received, Sent, Incomplete, and Expired.  These rules are described below:

Received Rules - All rules that determine how incoming mail should be handled once it is old are considered Received rules.  If you want to see what rules are set up to move messages received by you...select "View received rules".

Sent Rules - All rules that determine how outgoing mail should be handled once it is old are considered Sent rules.  If you want to see what rules are set up to move messages sent by you...select "View sent rules".

Incomplete Rules - Incomplete rules are management rules that were created to process incoming or outgoing messages, however for some reason or other, the rule is not able to function as it is missing information.  This can happen when a management rule is set up but a destination folder is not specified or the destination folder no longer exists.  If you want to see what rules are incomplete...select "View incomplete rules".  *Note:  Once a rule is able to function again, it will be moved into either the "sent" rules or "received" rules and out of the incomplete listing.

Expired Rules - Any rules that have not processed messages in the given period of time specified in your global settings (if the check box to turn on expire rules is turned on), will be moved to Expired rules.  If you want to see what rules are expired....select "View expired rules".  *Note:  To re-activate an Expired rule, simply click on the modify button and once the modify window appears, click OK and the rule will be re-activated.

Apply Management Rules in the following order:

This window displays a list of management rules you currently have set up.  The actions you can perform on the Management Rules are described below:

--- New:  The "New" button is used to create a new Management Rule

--- Modify:  The "Modify" button allows you to make changes to the management rule you have currently selected.

--- Rename: The "Rename" button allows you to actually name your management rules if you do not like the descriptive name automatically assigned it.

--- Delete: The "Delete" button allows you to permanently delete management rules that you no longer want.

--- Move Up:  The "Move Up" button allows you to change the order in which the rules are processed by moving the currently selected management rule up in the processing order. 

--- Move Down: The "Move Down" button allows you to change the order in which the rules are processed by moving the currently selected management rule down in the processing order.

*Note about processing order:  In some cases you may have a management rule specified to move message by one criteria but also another one for another criteria and these criteria may actually fit a message...for example: You have rule set up to move message with "Update" in the subject line to a folder called "Updates", however you may also have a rule set up to move messages from Bob@here.com to a folder called "Bob".  If you want to have all messages with "Update" moved into the folder called "Updates" even if they come from Bob, then you should have that rule processed first.  This way if Bob sends you a message with "Update" in the subject it will get moved to the "Updates" folder, however if Bob sends you a message that does not have "Update" in the subject, it will get moved to the folder called "Bob".  Take note...Order is important!

Management Rule Description
The rule description window shows you what the rule will do based on the criteria you have specified.  At any time you can click on underlined sections to modify them if need be.

Default Rules Tab

There are two types of Default Management Rules.  One type is used to specify how many days old a message has to be before it is moved out of your Inbox, and the other is used to specify how many days old a message has to be before it is moved out of your Sent Items.

Default rules only have two criteria and that is the age of the message and whether or not the message has been read/unread/or either.

Default Inbox Management Rule
Turning this option on will move messages out of your Inbox into the folder you've specified based on their age and whether or not they have been read.

Default Sent Items Management Rule
Turning this option on will move messages out of your Sent Items into the folder you have specified based on their age.