Collection filter for email collectors

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By using filtering, you can define which documents a collector includes or excludes when it searches the collection source for documents to collect. You can use a combination of different filtering criteria.

For automatic archiving, the criteria can be the age or the size of a document, or whether a document is in a certain folder. You can also specify a custom search expression to select the documents that you want.

Tip: To reduce processing overhead, define a collection filter instead of adding decision points to your task route to ignore specific documents. That way, you can avoid that the same documents are selected and processed by the task route over and over again.

Message constraints

You can combine the following options:

Table 1. Message constraints
Option	Description
Filter email by age	Filter on the basis of the document age: Select the reference date and time for the age calculation: The date and time when the document was created, such as the time when the document was saved, sent by a user (sender side) or received by a user (recipient side). The date and time when the document was last modified, such as the time when the document was last edited or, for Microsoft Exchange documents, also last opened or moved to a different folder in the mailbox. The date and time when the document was received by a user. Specify an interval or a fixed date: Older than An interval that uses the reference date and time as the starting point and the current date and time as the end point. For example, selecting modified date and Older than 3 months will collect documents whose last modification is at least three months in the past. On or before A fixed date to be associated with the reference date. For example, selecting modified and On or before Saturday, August 9, 2008 will collect documents whose last modification occurred on or before that day.
Filter email by size	Filter on the basis of the document size. A document will be collected only if its size is above the specified limit.
Ignore encrypted items	Exclude encrypted documents from the collection.
Ignore items previously processed	Exclude documents from the collection that were already marked as processed by a collector. You must also specify whether this option applies only to documents that were marked as processed by the current collector or whether it applies to all documents that were marked as processed by any collector. Important: This setting is considered only in task routes that process email documents (for example, move them to specific folders or store documents in the repository for Business Process Management) but do not archive the documents. Only in processing task routes, email documents should be marked as processed in the EC Prepare Email for Stubbing task. In archiving task routes, email documents are not marked as processed. Therefore, do not select the Ignore items previously processed option.
Lotus® Notes® only: Custom search expression	Use a custom search expression to select the documents to process. Type the expression in the field under the check box. The query must be defined as a Notes formula in Notes formula language. This language is case sensitive. Therefore, make sure to use the proper case when you define the query. For example, to select only documents of the form Memo or Reply for processing, use the following formula in your custom search expression: `Form="Memo" \| Form="Reply"`

Managed Folder constraints (Microsoft Exchange only)

Select the folders for collection:

Collect from folders managed by Exchange: All the managed folders are added to the list of folders that are included in the collection. If the Include subfolders option is selected in Exchange, the sub folders of any managed folder are included. You can exclude any of the sub folders by adding them to the list of monitored folders.

Collect from folders not managed by Exchange: Content Collector collects documents from folders other than managed folders. You can exclude folders from collection. Unless you select Collect from folders managed by Exchange, you can also specify a list of folders to be included instead.

Note:

Microsoft Exchange Online: Collection based on Managed Exchange folders is not supported for mailboxes, because the retention policies and settings in Azure Active Directory are not available for Content Collector.
Microsoft Exchange Hybrid: Collection based on Managed Exchange folders is supported only for On-premises mailboxes, because the required information about retention policies and settings are available in Active Directory.

Monitored folders

You can exclude or include documents in specific mailbox, public, or PST-file folders in the collection. To do so, select Exclude or Include and enter the folder to exclude or include in the Folder/View name field in the Add Exclude Condition or Add Include Condition window.

If you select Exclude, some folders and their subfolders are excluded by default. You cannot remove these special folders from the list of excluded folders:

Outbox for Outlook
Drafts for both Outlook and Lotus Notes
Sync Issues for Outlook

For Microsoft Exchange, the mailbox management task routes that are provided with the product exclude further special folders and folder types from collection, but you can always include these folders in the collection:

Special folder Trash
Special folder Junk
Special folder RSS Feeds
Folder type Calendar
Folder type Contact
Folder type InfoPath Form
Folder type Journal
Folder type Note
Folder type Task

If you select to collect from folders that are not managed by Microsoft Exchange (either as the only option or in addition to collection from Exchange managed folders), you can define a folder inclusion list instead of an exclusion list. For Lotus Notes, you can always define a folder inclusion list instead of an exclusion list.

If you select Include and you do not specify any folders in the list, the following folders and their subfolders are included:

All folders for Outlook
All folders except for the Drafts folder for Lotus Notes

Important: You should never archive documents from the Drafts folder. Archived draft documents are not archived again after they have been sent, and as a result, they cannot be retrieved. The only context to archive from the Drafts folder is PST Migration, where it is required to archive all content. In Lotus Notes, draft documents (and tasks without a due date, which are also considered drafts) are always excluded from archiving. In Outlook, if you select Include, make sure that you do not explicitly add the Drafts folder and do not leave the folder list empty to include all folders.

When you add folders to the list, enter the following placeholders so that the correct folder is identified for both supported email clients, no matter which language the client is set to:

/%OUTBOX% for the folder serving as the Outbox folder in Outlook
/%SENT% for the folder serving as the Sent Items folder in Outlook or as the Sent folder in Lotus Notes
/%DRAFTS% for the folder serving as the Drafts folder in Outlook
/%TRASH% for the folder serving as the Deleted Items folder in Outlook
/%JUNK% for the folder serving as the Junk E-mail folder in Outlook or as the Junk Mail folder in Lotus Notes
/%RSS_FEEDS% for the folder serving as the RSS Feeds folder in Outlook
/%SYNC_ISSUES% for the folder serving as the Sync Issues folder in Outlook
/%INBOX% for the folder serving as the Inbox folder in Outlook or Lotus Notes.

Make sure to use a forward slash (/) with the placeholders for both Outlook and Lotus Notes. If a folder name contains a forward slash, escape the forward slash with a backslash (\). For example, if the Outlook folder is named France/Germany, use the notation France\/Germany, because Germany is not a subfolder of France but France/Germany is the name of the folder.

You can still specify folders in the format that is specific to the email client, for example, /Sent Items for Outlook or ($Sent) for Lotus Notes. However, this notation works only for one type of email client. You must use the native notation if a generic placeholder does not exist for the folder that you want to specify.

To exclude or include the subfolders of the specified folder, select Also apply to subfolders.

For example, you might not want to collect documents in the Junk E-mail and Deleted Items folders of Outlook mailboxes for archiving. In this case, you must add two excluding conditions. In one of these, you specify /%JUNK%, and in the other, you specify /%TRASH%.

For Lotus Notes, the following documents are always excluded from archiving:

Contacts and group definitions that are copied from the personal address book to the mail file
Database profile documents (such as calendar profile documents) or database management documents (such as mail rule documents)
Documents that are stored as drafts
Mail stationary documents
Truncated documents (for example documents that have been archived and truncated using the Lotus Notes archiving mechanism or truncated attachments that result from a partial replication)
Documents in the Trash folder (documents are in a state of soft deletion)

Message types

You can include or exclude documents from the collection that use certain standard Lotus Notes forms or Exchange message classes. To do so, select Exclude or Include, and select or enter the message type to exclude or include in the Add Message Type window. The message types that you can select in the Add Message Type window are related to a default list of commonly used forms and message classes. Selecting one of these will include or exclude the Lotus Notes form or Exchange message class. Alternatively, you can enter the exact name of a Lotus Notes form or Exchange message class in the display field of the list, for example:

Lotus Notes: To include or exclude the form type Person, enter Person. The name that you enter is directly translated to a Lotus Notes form type, which means that the case of the name must exactly match the case of the form type that you want to exclude. The names Person and person address different form types.
Microsoft Exchange: To include or exclude the message class for delivery reports, enter IPM.Report.

Tip: Do not add such message types to the inclusion list where the documents change over time or do not have a final state such as drafts. IBM® Content Collector archives email only once, without any versioning.

Microsoft Exchange only: If you enter a message-class name, the radio buttons under the Message type list are enabled. To include or exclude just the specified class, but not its child classes, select Only base message type. To include or exclude just the children, select All message types derived from the specified base type.
For example, to exclude the custom message class IPM.Note.custom without its children, select Exclude, enter IPM.Note.custom in the Message type field and select Only base message type. To exclude the children (IPM.Note.custom.*), enter IPM.Note.custom and select All message types derived from the specified base type.

You can include or exclude more than one message type. The following message types are included or excluded by default:

Table 2. Message types
Mail system	Message types excluded by default	Message types included by default
Lotus Notes	Task TaskNotice Appointment Notice (ReplyNotice)	Memo Reply
Microsoft Exchange	Recall message Task request Task response Conflict You cannot remove these special message types from the list of excluded message types. In addition, the message types Meeting request and Meeting response are excluded from collection, but you can always remove these message types from the list.	Email message

The mailbox management task route templates that are shipped with IBM Content Collector are configured to include specific message types so that only documents of specified type are collected from the mailbox and archived, and not the entire mailbox content.