Using Inbox maintenance to manage mail file size

Use the Inbox maintenance feature to improve server performance by reducing the size of user Inboxes in mail files. When you enable the Inbox maintenance feature, the Administration Process periodically runs the Inbox Maintenance agent on the Notes® client users' home server, that is, the server that stores the mail files containing the user Inboxes. The Inbox Maintenance agent resides in the mail template, MAIL8.NTF. The agent removes documents from the Inbox based on settings you define in the Server document or the mail policy settings document.

The settings that are specified in the Server document override the Inbox Maintenance settings in the mail policy settings document.

You must be using the mail template, MAIL8.NTF and a Domino® Directory created with or upgraded to the Domino® 8 or later release of NAMES.NTF.

Enabling Inbox maintenance in the Server document

Enable Inbox maintenance in the Server document by specifying a value in the field Start executing Inbox Maintenance agent on, in the Server Tasks > Administration Process tab. Specify one or more days of the week on which to run the Inbox Maintenance agent and the time to begin running the agent. If a day is not specified, the feature is not enabled and the agent does not run regardless of whether the field contains a time at which to run the agent. If Inbox maintenance is enabled but the field Start executing Inbox Maintenance at is blank, the Inbox Maintenance agent runs at the default time of 00:00 AM. This feature is disabled by default.

You also use the settings in the Server document to specify whether to maintain Inboxes for selected users on the home server, or to maintain Inboxes based on policy settings. If the Server document setting Maintain inboxes based on policies is enabled, Inboxes are maintained according to the settings specified in the mail policy settings document, unless the Inbox Maintenance settings are not specified in the mail policy settings document. If the settings are not defined in the mail policy setting document, Inbox maintenance is not performed. The Server document also contains the settings that control which documents are removed from a user's Inbox by the agent and when they are removed. The settings are Remove documents older than n days from Inbox and Do not remove unread documents from Inbox.

Enabling Inbox maintenance in the mail policy settings document

If the Server document setting Maintain inboxes based on policies is selected, you can enable Inbox maintenance by enabling the option Enable mail Inbox maintenance. You can also specify which documents are removed from the user's Inbox by the agent and when they are removed.

Error logging for Inbox maintenance

If errors occur while the Inbox Maintenance agent is running, errors are logged in LOG.NSF and DDM.NSF. You can use the following NOTES.INI setting to enable additional logging:

ADMINP_VERBOSE_POLL_TASK=x 

Where x can equal 1 or 2. The larger the number the more detail is logged.