Restoring Mailbox Items

With proper planning, you can assist users in retrieving accidently deleted items and items that became unavailable because of database damage.

• Setting Up a Restore Area
• Restoring a User's Mailbox Items
• Letting Users Restore Their Own Mailbox Items

Setting Up a Restore Area

A restore area is only as useful as the post office data that is backed up regularly. Make sure you are backing up every GroupWise post office regularly, as described in Backing Up a Post Office.

A restore area is a location you designate to hold a backup copy of a post office so that you or GroupWise client users can access it to retrieve mailbox items that are unavailable in your live GroupWise system.

To set up a restore area:

1. In ConsoleOne, click Tools > GroupWise System Operations > Restore Area Management.

   
   

   The Restore Area Directory Management dialog box lists any restore areas that currently exist in your GroupWise system.

2. Click Create to set up a new restore area.

   
   

3. On the Identification tab, specify a unique name for the new restore area. If desired, provide a lengthier description to further identify the restore area.

4. In the UNC Path field, browse to and select an existing directory that you want to use as a restore area.

   or

   Specify the full path to a new directory, which will be created as the restore area is set up.

5. Click Membership, click Add, select one or more post offices or users that need access to the new restore area, then click OK to add them to the membership list.

   
   

6. When the membership list is complete, click OK to create the new restore area.

   If you display the Post Office Settings page for a post office that has a restore area assigned to it, you see that the Restore Area field has been filled in.

7. Use the GroupWise Target Service Agent (GWTSA) with a supported backup program or your backup software of choice to restore a backup copy of the post office into the restore area. See GroupWise Target Service Agent (GWTSA).

8. Grant users Read and Write rights to the restore area if you want them to be able to retrieve individual items themselves.

9. Continue with Restoring a User's Mailbox Items or Letting Users Restore Their Own Mailbox Items as needed.

Restoring a User's Mailbox Items

After you have set up a restore area and placed a backup copy of a post office into it, you can restore a user's mailbox items for the user.

1. In ConsoleOne, browse to and select a User object for which you need to restore mailbox items.

2. Click Tools > GroupWise Utilities > Backup/Restore Mailbox.

   The Restore tab is automatically selected for you, with the restore area and directory location displayed for verification.

   
   

3. Click Yes to restore the selected user's mailbox items into his or her mailbox.

4. Notify the user and explain that he or she might want to delete unwanted restored items manually.

   Restored items that are not accessed in any way will remain in the mailbox for seven days. Then they will be deleted because they exceed the age limit for active mailbox items.

Letting Users Restore Their Own Mailbox Items

After you have set up a restore area and given users access to it, users can selectively restore individual items into their mailboxes. This saves you the work of restoring mailbox items for users and it also saves users the work of deleting unwanted restored items.

After a restore area has been set up:

1. In the GroupWise client > click File > Open Backup.

2. Browse to and select the restore area directory, then click OK.

3. In the Password field, type your GroupWise password, then click OK to access the backup copy of your mailbox.

4. Retrieve individual items as needed.

   The backup copy of your mailbox offers basic features such as Read, Search, and Undelete so that you can locate and retrieve the items you need.

5. When you are finished restoring items to your live mailbox, click File > Open Backup again to remove the check mark from the Open Backup option and return to your live mailbox.