Quarterbacking a PST reduction project: how to got to the end zone--no matter the opposition.

• Author: Greene, Ben

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Microsoft Outlook's capability to store e-mail as personal storage table (PST) files on users' local drives has freed space in employees' e-mail boxes and has been widely used by many organizations. But managing PST files is difficult and expensive, and many records and information management professionals are looking to reduce PST use significantly. Learn how to take the lead in this reduction effort and ensure that your team makes it to the project's end zone.

For years, organizations eagerly adopted the Microsoft-provided capability that allows Outlook users to store their messages, calendar appointments, and other items as personal storage table (PST) files, or personal folders, on their local hard drives rather than in their mailboxes. While this helped alleviate mailbox space constraints and allowed users to store their content longer, many information technology (IT) and records and information management (RIM) professionals are now eager to rid their environments of PSTs. The reasons are numerous, but two large issue are:

1. PSTs are susceptible to loss or corruption if there is a hard drive crash or malfunction unless they are backed up, which can be expensive to manage.

2. PSTs contribute to the vast amount of stored e-mail, which is the most frequently requested data in litigation proceedings, making it more difficult and expensive to find the e-mails that are responsive to the legal matter. While some organizations have already reduced their

   PST landscape through good planning and effective teamwork, many others have either just begun or have yet to begin what is a two-step process:

1. Block employees' ability to create new PSTs or save messages to existing ones.

2. Remove PSTs from the systems.

   To borrow an analogy from American football, the RIM professional is the "quarterback," or the most important player on the field, when an organization goes on the offensive to tackle the problem of reducing its PST environment by blocking PST file creation. Adopting some of the following strategies of successful quarterbacks can also help RIM professionals "win the game."

   Know When to Stay on the Bench

   A quarterback who is not ready on game day shouldn't even step on the field. Neither should those that haven't identified an alternative location for employees to store e-mails. If the ability to create PSTs or save messages to existing ones is taken away without providing an acceptable location for saving e-mail, employees will save them in "out-of-bounds" locations, defeating the initiative.

   Depending on the desired level of management over employee e-mails, an alternative location could be a records management system (RMS), a recently expanded e-mail system, or possibly even department shared drives.

   Records Management Systems

   Using a designated RMS may be the best choice from a records management perspective, but implementing it will surely have the most employee impact, possibly requiring lots of training and technology dollars. If an organization already has a designated RMS that has desktop integration and works well with its e-mail system, then by all means it should throw the ball long and go for the 80-yard touchdown.

   Expanded E-mail System

   With the advent of cloud storage and technologies and basic data storage costs overall being lower, employee mailboxes are becoming...