Exchange Messages

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

Email from user:

Hi there,

Is it possible to set the exchange server to not send reminders of "your mailbox is over its size limit" every 15 min? I'm traveling overseas and just this weekend I have received over 100 "reminders". All this emails and making my email retrieval very slow and they also contribute to increase the amount of my mailbox.


Note, our limit on email box size is 500MB.

I want to respond something like: The main purpose of the message is to annoy you until you fix it.

I'll probably allude to that, and then tell him to clear out his deleted items and sent items, and it should stop. And tell him to go into the webmail to do it, rather than trying to use Outlook-the-Behemoth.

Yes, the message is annoying. But if we don't have it send constantly, then it means people will claim they never got it and whine even more.

Comments

[bdinger.livejournal.com]

You are much, much, MUCH less evil than I.

My users get 24 hours to delete stuff and get under their size limits on both their mail spool, and on their network folders. If not, I just go in there and start deleting stuff myself.

Oh man is it ever fun.

However, the scary part is that most of the dumb fuckers never even notice!

Oh well, more fun for me, I guess.

[servermonkey.livejournal.com]

If only I could just delete e-mails from our user accounts. Granted, most of our users are only allowed 7 Mb, but if they had 500 Mb, I mean come on. . .clean out your messages from time to time, or if, you're getting such a large volume of e-mail, use an e-mail client.

[bdinger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my users would go insane stupid if they had 500MB. As it is, we don't do anything until 100MB, or if we need space on that disk array.

Actually, I'm pro messages-staying-on-server. With clients OTHER THAN OUTLOOK this helps to eliminate most retarded virii, and also gives you control/big brother capability. I hate the big brother aspect of admin jobs, but frankly most users aren't smart enough to take care of themselves, so you have to do it.

[wyrdlinks.livejournal.com]

most users aren't smart enough to take care of themselves, so you have to do it.

Hear Hear! The poor little dears can't even understand the difference between "logged out", "turned off" or "locked" when it comes to how to leave there PC's at the end of the day.

[bdinger.livejournal.com]

Heh, don't get me started on that one ;).

Thankfully most are still used to the Windows 98 days, so telling them to hit ctrl-alt-delete and "lock computer" isn't too hard. In fact, most are getting REALLY good about it.

However, there are always bad apples...

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

Well, we do close and start bouncing their email if they don't clear things out by the time it reaches 550 MB.

I have a lot of exchange authority, but unfortunately I can't go into their boxes myself or log onto the server itself. More's the pity. I'd go 'help' sometimes.

[bdinger.livejournal.com]

550MB!? Jesus. That's insane.

I mean, I have 2.2 shit-tons of email, espescially since i was on vacation last week, and I'm only using about 28MB. Even my personal web/mail server - where i keep EVERYTHING - only is using about 180MB.

Users. I <3 them.

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

I know. I've been here for 4 years, and I have 378 MB. I need to clean out my inbox and a folder under it -- they're full of crap. But I'm the helpdesk, so I get a ton of email every day, and we reply-to-all so we can keep track of who answered what.

And if you're one of those Cover Your Ass types... that's why they invented personal folders.

We used to have a 250 MB limit, but we got complaints and finally raised it after much resistance. Mostly because the CEO needed a raise.

We do have one or two people who actually DO need that much space -- but they're engineers, and get and send lots of big attachments (and the attachment size limit is 10 MB.)

[bdinger.livejournal.com]

But I'm the helpdesk, so I get a ton of email every day, and we reply-to-all so we can keep track of who answered what.

Actually, I can see that. I used to work for an ISP, and there I would archive EVERYTHING work-related. I had something like a 300MB mail spool when i quit.

Hell, we had a huge directory on the office server for our "manager" account, and that archive was in the multiple gigabytes.

So, yeah, I can understand for types like you, and the engineers.

But, most users it's just jokes and dumb shit. Oy :)

[wyrdlinks.livejournal.com]

550MB! Fecking Hell! My lot get 64Mb each - there are two who have more, they are the regional managers, and they get 100Mb each.

Given that my lusers are recruitment consultants, and they get sh!tloads of CV's in each day, I suppose it's forcing them into good habits.

I can't go into their boxes myself

It's written into the T&C's for our users that I (or anyone else the financial director appoints) can go in, can delete stuff, can read stuff, can move stuff around. As long as I can justify it to the FD, I'm cool.

My lot get one notice every 24 hours.

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

Our users are spoiled. Our exchange admin doens't even need that much space and he keeps everything too.

I just can't fathom needing that much space. I mean, my email at /home/, with stuff that dates back to 1995 and 1996, is probably 100 MB.

[boredevilperson.livejournal.com]

We're high tech here. We use a POP3 e-mail server and Outlook Express is the supported e-mail client *retch*

But you know how stable Outlook Express can be when you get over 500-1000 messages in the inbox (dbx files tend to get huge and corrupted). I've had people who NEVER NEVER NEVER delete ANYTHING. It wouldn't be a big deal in Outlook Express at all if they'd just separate into folders since it treats each folder as a separate DBX file and it's stored locally.

So they'll have inboxes with well over 7,000 messages then all of a sudden one day they come in to OE throwing fits and wonder why . . . Can you imagine a physical inbox with over 7,000 messages in it????

Even more worthy of a Darwin award, the ones that use Deleted Items as their filing cabinet. I was at one of our plants and this guy asks me why OE is crashing. hmmmm inbox works fine Oh! You haven't purged deleted items for three years and you have 4,000 messages in it. Let me purge these for you. At which point he yelped. "NO THAT'S WHERE I FILE EVERYTHING"

*sigh* There have been others that use the virtual circular file instead of creating folders as well.

The company that's taking us over is much bigger and they have Lotus Notes. What's more is they're not planning any training on Notes. They're just going to roll it out to all of our locations and expect them to begin using it. This outta be good. I'm glad I'm not on their Notes Support Team :-)

Sorry, you triggered a rant. :-)

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

That's OK.

My manager has told me that when he first started working for the company, he was the tech at one of our production plants. (I've worked at that plant, filling in, before; stinky pipeyard, but a great place to work.)

His first day (or was it week? He was way new) he gets called to fix the division president's computer. He cheerfully cleans up.

Hey, where's all my email? It was right there in the deleted items folder....

Which, of course, he had emptied, being a good tech who was making email run better....

Fortunately, the guy had a good sense of humor and learned from it. And my manager didn't get fired :)

[boredevilperson.livejournal.com]

I had a moment like that once where I walked a controller right into deleting some important files (years ago. I spaced out while talking and forgot that she had to copy the files to her new system before deleting them hehe)

She laughed. Phew

[thebutler.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've had fairly good results with OE and large, large folders - around 30K right now, I think. Then again, it's just used for storage, and mail gets added in batches of about a thousand - it's not like there's much chance for corruption.

One of these days I'll figure out a better way of archiving my mail. One day...

[boredevilperson.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. They're using their inbox as storage so e-mails are flying in one at a time all day every day. Plus the status changes etc that's probably why the corruption. *shrugs*