Applet Focus: Formativ - Cleanup Expired Messages

Novell Cool Solutions: Feature

Digg This - Slashdot This Posted: 16 Jan 2002

Current version: GroupWise 6

Alexander wrote: We have a group of six employees who all share one job on a shift basis. E-mails from external companies notifying them of forthcoming events (vessel arriving/departing, notifications of cargos etc) are directed in GroupWise by giving the companies a single e-mail address and using the group expansion to send it to all six shift workers as there is no easy way to tell who is on duty over next 24 hours. Its not the usual one person sees it and deals with it helpdesk style but almost.

This works well with one employee. After 24 hours the information will have been dealt with and has effectively expired. The problem arises with holidays and having hundreds of messages which have all effectively expired.

It would be nice if there was a way (rules?) of automatically deleting the e-mail from all six users mailboxes (one rule used in six clients I suppose) after approximately 24 hours have elapsed. Even a user activated rule would be fine, or a program launched regularly by ZENworks? I can write the program but unsure of how to get to GroupWise to delete e-mails. Going round in circles and perhaps missing the obvious?

Anyone think of a cool solution?

We asked our partners at Advansys if there was a Formativ Applet that would be able to do this. They have provided us with a Formativ Applet for this week's Applet Focus: Cleaning up Expired Messages.

Cleanup Expired Messages

The 'Cleanup Expired Messages' applet examines the mailbox, looking for e-mail messages that have a creation date 1 day or more prior to today. If it finds any, the applet then moves the messages to a dynamically created folder called 'Expired Messages', which is created under the Cabinet. The user may then delete or archive these messages out of the system as required.

The applet can also be modified so that it will delete messages instead of moving them to a folder. You have to make a simple modification to the source code, which is documented within the applet itself. Essentially, line 22 has to be changed from:

Const DELETE_MESSAGE = FALSE

to

Const DELETE_MESSAGE = TRUE

It's also a simple matter to change age of items before they get moved deleted. Just change all instances of:

EXPIRE_DATE = Date - 1

to

EXPIRE_DATE = Date - n

where n is the number of days that should expired before messages are moved/deleted.

This applet can be integrated into GroupWise just about anyway you like using Formativ's simple point and click integration feature. The applet includes definitions for a new button on the main GroupWise toolbar, and a hook into the GroupWise On Startup event (both are disabled by default - they can be enabled by opening the applet in Formativ and going to the Integrations tab, then uncheck the 'Disable these integrations' checkbox). If the On Startup event is used, the applet will be automatically executed each time GroupWise is started, removing old messages.

Download

Download the Cleanup Expired Messages applet here.

Additional Information

• Advansys Formativ gives you the power to make GroupWise work the way you want! To help you understand what is possible with Formativ, read the Formative Overview document.
• Previous Formativ Applet Focus: "Multiple Signatures".
• Advansys Formativ - A GroupWise Development Revolution - Press Release.

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