GS ‘Link Warden’ was written as a cost effective solution to this, as current offerings fall short in this respect. In native systems (Exchange, Outlook and Worksite) there is no protection from users either -
deleting the email before filing into Worksite;
not filing the email and attachment; or
accidentally modifying the attachment before filing.

Firms that deploy archiving solutions, can journal every email, for proof in the case of dispute, but this is too late. Any ‘email records’ filed are not guaranteed immutable without Link Warden. Perversely, with other email archiving solutions, greater confidence can be achieved, by not filing until the attachment has been stubbed, so that the original attachment is fetched from the archive!
With Link Warden, the document is protected by being placed into Worksite as a single instance record before any user can access it. All subsequent access is then audited. The audit trail will show date received, from whom and to whom. This is much better record management.
The integrity of an email and attachment isn’t so much about the storage mechanisms, attachments will not live in Exchange if any email archiving product is used, be it Symantec EV, Zantas, Mimecast or any other system. The only difference with Link Warden, is that the true location of the attachment (i.e as a record in Worksite) is accurately given, and all access is audited. With the trend towards hosted Exchange or Archiving systems, the implications of holding multiple copies of client documents makes an even more pressing case for that single instance in Worksite.

‘Disconnected User’
Here I am talking about laptop users, that do not have iManage OffSite, and cannot get an internet connection. GS ‘Link Warden’ as of today, partially addresses this issue. Currently, if a user receives a link, and they know they need the attachment off site, they can either open the link, thus caching on local machine through recent documents, or forward to ‘DocRequest’ to get full copy emailed back. Either of these do require an explicit action on the user before leaving the though.
Some thoughts I’ve had-
Users with laptops and blackberries, should be trained on how to download and transfer attachments
Sender also sends CC to ‘DOC Request’ , this will force a full copy to be sent to recipients , with email/document title changed to something along the lines of ‘Non File Copy of…’. This has the benefit that any emails from DocRequest can be automatically expired after say one week.
Have an extra email command in Worksite as ‘Send Non File Copy’ which will send attachment internally and not link
I really do need feedback on this area, as to how much of an issue it is.

Price.
We recognise how tight budgets are, that firms cannot stand still, and need to maximise the benefits from their existing investments. That is why we have developed Link Warden. We will make it affordable, and can also offer it as a monthly subscription, avoiding large capital expenditure. ROI is of course easier to calculate on decreased storage requirement, but I believe the real value is in usability and compliance.
Respect for the audit trail, quickly locating the file copy when searching, rather than the umpteen copies as email attachments, and of course the simplification of retention management, gained from a single instance held within the DM, rather than tracking down those extra copies.

Lets hear your thoughts

Paul

Along with the fact that it will be difficult to come up with budget for these extra apps, I think some of these ideas, especially the first & third, are fairly “common sense” and should be present natively within the iManage product itself(maybe using Comms Server?). GS have done a good job of identifying and working on these shortcomings and well done to them but isn’t it time Autonomy iManage took these sort-of-standard features and developed them in? I know they (mutually) enjoy a flourishing relationship with third party app providers, but times are hard, budgets are tight and expectations are greater than ever before.

Secondly, its all very well getting these new apps but deploying them in an enterprise with other FileSite add-ins can cause problems; As we know in DLA Piper, like having to repair things in a certain order, issues with .dll’s being shared between apps and above all adding all this “bulk” on top of a poor Outlook client thats already bloated