The following is part three of a fictional story, based on a true-to-life situation. The names of companies and people are fictitious, but the situations they face are the same as those faced by many companies. Perhaps, as you read the events unfolding at Gensui Imaging, you will see similarities to the challenges you face as well as ways to meet them.
2. “V
Valerie Wright had already been sitting in Peter's office for five minutes. She was thinking of at least
five things on her plate that she could have been doing instead. None of them included warming a
seat in her boss's office. She was about to bail on the meeting when she received his text saying
that he was ‘on his way.’
Less than two minutes later, though it felt longer to Valerie, Peter rushed into his office and closed the door.
“Sorry you were kept waiting, Val. I hate being late.” Then, as he dropped his folio down on his desk, Peter
looked up at Valerie and added, “That's why I hate these back-to-back meetings like I have had all week.”
“We live in crazy times,” Valerie observed.
“Indeed we do,” he agreed. “So, while I make an effort to get organized here, let's start with an update.”
“Okay,” Valerie began, looking down at the report in her hand. “Here's the postmortem you asked for on the e-
discovery project: Once we got our Journals decrypted, we were able to produce a results set of messages,
based on Legal's search terms, going back a little over a year.”
“Good,” Peter said.
Valerie continued, “We needed Sherpa Software's help with two things: (1) the initial decryption of over two
hundred journal databases and (2) a trial license of their e-discovery solution to do the actual search...”
“Oh, I meant to tell you,” Peter interrupted. “Brian said they found what they needed in the results you gave
them. So, well done.”
“Well, thanks. But, if it wasn't for Sherpa, we'd still be searching encrypted journals one at a time.” The memory
of the long days and weekends doing just that brought a chill to Valerie. She actually shivered.
“I think we're all glad that that is behind us.”
“Pfft. Yeah,” agreed Valerie.
“What were our 'Lessons Learned'?,” asked Peter, referring to the standard format that he had his team use for
these kinds of reports. “I'm sorry I haven't had time to look at the electronic version you posted in the Team
Room.”
“No problem. The lessons learned were….” Valerie again read from her report hard copy, “'(1) We need a better
on-going process for retaining legal copies of our email messages, (2) We need a written and enforced policy of
retention for email' and probably all of our electronically stored information,” she added, then resumed reading,
“'and (3) We need an electronic discovery solution to produce results in a timely and efficient manner.'”
“Okay, Val. Thanks,” Peter commended. “I'll read the full document today and come to you if I have any
questions.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“In the meantime, have you given any thought to what holes to fill first?”
“Well,” Valerie began. “I think we understand that our journaling solution needs work, to put it mildly.”
“Yes.”
“I see two big issues with it.”
“Let me guess - one is encryption.”
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3. “Yes. We have decrypted versions of our journals that Sherpa made for us, up to a couple weeks ago. But, since
we are still using Domino's built-in journaling, the messages we've journaled since then are encrypted.”
“So, our boat is still taking on water, even though we bailed a lot of it out.”
“Yeah. Like that.”
“Okay. And what was the second issue?” asked Peter.
“Our journals don't go back far enough.”
“Ah,” Peter realized. “But,” he paused to think, then asked, “What can be done about that now? We can't go back
in time.”
“We sort of can. Sherpa calls it 'Historical Journaling.'”
“'Historical Journaling?' That's a new one. Do you understand what that is?”
“Yes. They basically harvest messages from the existing mail files (and archives, if we had those) and make
single copies of them in Journals that go back to before we had journaling, as far back as we have mail files.”
“I see.”
“In fact, we could restore mail files from back-ups and harvest from those, too. But, now that I said that, I hope
you forget I mentioned that part. I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing restores.”
“Well, ACME has—or I guess I should say, 'had,' now that were are one company—anyhow, they had a three-
year retention policy and, since we have—or had—none, it seems likely that we will adopt that.”
“Okay. That doesn't sound too bad. I guess.”
“What would we need from Sherpa to get this going?,” Peter asked.
“The Historical Journaling?”
“Yes.”
“That's the best part. We already have the product, we would just need to buy a new license key and configure
it.”
“Compliance Attender?”
“Right. We use it for filtering, but it does journaling, too. Live and Historical and...,” Valerie paused and smiled.
“The journals are not encrypted. Yeah!”
“Can you get some pricing on that?”
“Sure. I guess we'll need licenses for the whole combined company now, right? Is that 2,200 accounts?”
“Let's start with that. These mergers always shake up the head count, so we may need to adjust later.”
“Okay. I'll call Sherpa and get a quote.” Valerie rose and left Peter's office. Upon returning to her desk, she saw
the voicemail light blinking on her phone. “Ugh! What now?”
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4. About the Author
As the Product Manager for Compliance Attender for Notes, Grant is responsible for
product research and development, pre-sales technical support (e.g., Demos), post-sales
technical support and competitive research.
Grant joined Sherpa Software in 2007 and has 17 years of experience in Information
Technology. Of those, more than 16 were spent building applications with Lotus Notes and
Domino. He worked with a wide range of company sizes and across several industries
including insurance, consulting, venture capital, manufacturing, software and more.
Grant is an IBM Certified Advanced Application Developer and an expert in email
management and compliance, LotusScript, Notes Formula Language, application design and security. He is
also skilled in C/C++ and Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Notes and Domino. Grant is
accomplished in web delivered technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
He graduated in 1995 from the Career Development Institute with a Programmer Analyst Diploma. Grant spends
his off time with his wife, Lydia, of 19 years and their three retired greyhound racers, Rio, Wavorly and Oriole.
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