Email Archive

A decent email archiving solution has been the Holy Grail for me for sometime. I'm going to consolidate some of my many notes here and add some new ones. {nid IET}

Brainstorm {nid IEU}

• Integration into CRM systems, or CRM-like functionality. {nid IEV}
• Store everything in mbox, with metadata in database. Possibly use eyebrowse schema. Also examine Email::Store. Storing as mbox enables me to read archives in mail clients or via IMAP. Separate into incoming and outgoing mailboxes by month. Messages only archived once. {nid IEW}
• Tags. Can be used to define project archives. Can export these as mboxes. {nid IEX}
• Archive. A proper mailing list archiver could be used for personal archives as well. {nid IEY}
• SocialNetwork analysis. Who's in my social network based on a window of time? {nid IEZ}

Features {nid IF0}

• Addressability. Every email has an address, possibly based on message-ID. Functionality probably enabled by web archives. Could potentially use XRI. Addressability lets me annotate, integrate with other PIM apps, etc. Obviously want granular addressability as well, perhaps via PurpleNumbers. {nid IF1}
• Access control via i-names. Message-by-message access policy, or if I'm really ambitious, granular access control (i.e. paragraphs in emails). Tag policy. Basically, access control is tied to addresses. So threads would have an address, tagged archives would have an address, individual emails would have an address, etc. Hence, all of these things are access controllable. {nid IF2}
• Map email addresses to individuals. A search for EugeneEricKim would turn up emails from hcs.harvard.edu, ddj.com, blueoxen.org, eekim.com, etc. {nid IF3}
• Reporting. How quickly do I respond to individuals? What times do I send email? Some of this stuff may not be appropriate for archives, because I don't archive all email. {nid IF4}

Tips and Tricks {nid IF9}

mutt searching: Use 'l' to do 'limit' searches and use ~t, ~f, and ~b in AND combinations to limit on To: From: and body of messages. It's lovely only having to look in one place! {nid IFA}

Tools {nid IF5}

• archivemail {nid IFB}
• Emailchemy -- converts different formats to RFC2822. {nid IF7}
• grepmail {nid IFC}
  • grepm {nid IFD}
• mairix {nid IFE}
• mbox2mysql {nid IF6}
• zoe {nid IFF}
• http://www.emailman.com/conversion/ -- tools for converting between mailbox formats {nid IFG}

• http://www.transend.com/ConnectorWare/index.html {nid IFH}
• http://www.gssnet.com/products/prod_mwiz.htm {nid IFI}
• http://www.compusven.com/products/shuttle.html {nid IFJ}
• http://www.comaxis.com/prices.htm {nid IFK}