Managing E-mail Sent Through Outlook as Correspondence Records

[Jacob_Morrison]

We are a local government agency and have various departments that maintain "case files".   These case files may be related to health permits, projects, etc.  Each case file is managed as a single record for the purposes of retention and public information requests.  Any correspondence related to the case is part of the official record, including e-mails.  Our users would like to have all content related to a case file managed in one location.

Question: How do you capture e-mails (especially sent mail) from an enterprise application, such as Outlook, and store them as part of the case file / record in OnBase?  Asking employees to open their Sent Items folder after sending each e-mail, open the e-mail, and save it / virtual print it into OnBase is not ideal.  In keeping with proper records management and public information laws, the stored content must represent the complete e-mail including relevant data beyond the body of the message (from, to, date), and store it in a format that is acceptable for long term public records.

I appreciate any advice or ideas.

[Lisa_Bernhardt]

I would think Outlook Integration ought to be able to handle the issue.

[Kris_Conrads]

I work for a local government as well.  Our State has very strict retention rules.  Our users are required to maintain their sent and received mail according to these rules.  I spend a few hours each month going through my sent and received items and either archiving or deleting.

Using the Outlook Integration is definitely better than opening and using the VPD.  In our state, that would be unacceptable anyway.  We are required to store electronic documents in the original format in order to maintain the metadata.  An email must be stored as an email; a Word document must be stored as a Word document.

They can achieve some automation using OnBase Folders in Outlook for some auto-indexing.  Some take it a step further and set up Outlook rules on their received items to send messages to their OnBase Folders automatically.  To my knowledge, there are no Outlook rules that will process Sent Items.  You might be able to trick it if the Sender cc's themselves.  I've never tried that.  Would definitely be an interesting trial.