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First let me start by saying I know very little about Notes/Domino, so if I am asking something stupid, I apologize.

As a result of political details I won't get in to, and related to a current e-mail migration project from four different legacy mail systems to a new hosted environment, where no user data is being migrated and users are being actively prevented from sending mail into the new environment from the old environment, the following request has come up.

Once the new system is production, we would like to facilitate user access to the legacy environments. This will allow continuity of information contained in e-mail (e. g. day one on new system, users can send a new message as a reply to a message visible in the old system). We would like to do this in a read-only fashion, to ensure that no changes are occurring as a result of user actions in the legacy environment. (This "lock" of the old environment is related to e-discovery concerns from the legal department.)

For the purposes of this question, the legacy environments of interest are a set of distinct Domino environments, with clients ranging from 5.x to 8.x. I believe all of the Domino servers are 8.x. Most users have the Notes client although iNotes access is available.

Our first thought is just to mark the user mail NSFs as "read-only" on the server. I've seen some references online that suggest this is a workable solution, but my search-fu has failed me on finding a definitive answer.

Is there a "good" way to do this?

Thanks!

p.s. just to forestall questions on this, we don't expect 100% prevention of user information forwarding as there are too many ways for it to happen - we're just preventing as best as we can and stating as policy that they can't do it other ways. Not my decision - just following orders. The proposed migration plan is not a discussion point at this juncture - it's just finding out if one piece of it is at all reasonably doable.

p.p.s. the legacy systems include Exchange as well so I've asked the same question again with Exchange as the source. It didn't feel right to make those two into one question.

MikeBaz - MSFT
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2 Answers2

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Set the ACLs of the Mail Databases, so that the users only have "Reader" access. Given, that "Consistent ACLs" are enabled, they can read (new) mail, ... but can't reply, move, ... them and the servers can still deliver mail that is coming from somewhere.

If that is, what you are looking for.

leyrer
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  • We don't want any mail delivery at all to work in the legacy environments. – MikeBaz - MSFT Aug 25 '11 at 14:31
  • So just shut down the "router" task on the server. Keeing the server running and letting the users access their legacy mail-dbs on the server is - IMHO - easier to support than distributing the mailsfiles to the pcs and setting notes up to only run locally. The changes to the extisting infrastructure (ACL, stop router task) are minimal in comparison to setting up the local replicas of the mailfiles, ... – leyrer Aug 27 '11 at 10:09
  • Is it possible to use VBA or whatever (sorry - not Notes guy) to set the ACLs? Thinking through the effort and process involved... we have Notes resources available but they sometimes need to be told exactly what to do. – MikeBaz - MSFT Aug 29 '11 at 19:56
  • yea shutting down the router is not a bad idea, man its been a long time since I've done domino's. The only issue with this is you need to keep the server running. You don't need to create replicas at all just copy the id file and and the nsf to the persons desktop or folder then just have them double click the nsf file. If you don't mind leaving the server running then shutting down the router is the easiest thing to do. Quick question is your domino server as windows based server or something esle? – tony roth Aug 30 '11 at 03:33
  • Mike, you can use the NotesACL class to write a Lotusscript Agent to change the ACLs programatically. – leyrer Aug 30 '11 at 11:16
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you could just shut down domino services and copy the users nsf files to there home directories if needed! Leave the notes client on their desktops and point it to their home dir for nsf access.

tony roth
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  • This is an interesting idea. We then need to teach users how to get to that NSF right? (Many users don't really know how the client talks to their mail, just that it does.) This is easy enough to teach but it would be something to remember. Or is there something we could do to make that "magically" happen? – MikeBaz - MSFT Aug 25 '11 at 14:27
  • its been a long time since I've been a domino guy, so there may be better ways to do this but I'd just put the .nsf on the desktop and let them just double click that! – tony roth Aug 26 '11 at 02:54
  • Hm, and if you use domino DB encryption you will end in having some serious issues... – BastianW Nov 10 '16 at 19:55