The first post in the series is here.
The next post in the series is here.
Tools To Help Do the Job
When this project started we were mandated to import over 23,000 PST files into mailboxes and get the PST files off the home shares. The important part here is "get the space cleared up off the home shares."
So each week we are given a list of names of people moved to Windows 7 OS and Office 2010. The list can have 20 names, or 120 names. So we process them. In many cases, there can be upwards to 50 PST files per person. One user had over 500. (I know! I had to double check.)
So the queue can be fat with over 1500 items at times, we found that sometimes the processing of the queue was very slow, mostly due to one person having a lot of files and most of them big.
Optimized For Speed
We needed to optimize the queue. We talked about just sorting buy the size of the file, and then decided that would make some people with only one file wait too long to be finished. We wanted to finish as many people as possible in the night. So all the people with just one PST file needed to be moved to the front of the line.Pipe the queue to group by Displayname, sort by count, then recreate the queue from the smallest to the largest. Quick and easy. This usually gets 80 - 90 % of the users done over night. We start about 7PM.
Move the PST files off.
We really struggled to get a good handle on this. People are pretty freaky about their PST files. In our final report, we ask them to disconnect the PST from their client and then move them locally. But a large majority can't do that without help, or don't care. Many never read the message at all.We had to figure out how to get the PST files off the Home shares and do this without freaking out the user.
Finally we agreed on a place to put the files. In the users "my documents" directory on their C drive. It's not the most perfect place, but it is somewhat secure. At least secure enough from the common user. We had to know the PC name, and what OS it was, just to find the correct place quickly. We also needed to know that the user is in our HQ building. a small percentage of users with Archive mailboxes are outside our HQ office. We wanted to skip those.
We agreed the PST files needed to be disconnected for 30 days. This was long enough, everyone thought, for the user to forget they had them. If a PST file has a LastWrite Timestamp of "right now" -- that PST is most likely open and connected to Outlook.
So:
If you have PST files on your home share,
And you are in the HQ office,
And those PST last write timestamp is 30 days old.
We move the file for you to ..\Documents\Outlook Files\
If there is a file there with that name already, we just add a random number to the name and keep going.
Grading Our Progress
Since moving the PSTs off the Home shares is the real ultimate goal, we started to keep track of all the PST files, creation dates and removal dates.As of this date, we had over 23,000 files to move, and we moved about 6,000. Not too bad. Not fantastic, but good. I'll post some info on our reports later on.
But there is more work to do...
I am still constantly opening the PST Import Queue in a spreadsheet and modifying it and saving it again. I am human and make many mistakes. I must figure out how to do that easier...Next time: "Set-PSTImportQueue"
Introduction: The Beginings
Part 1: Script Requirements
Part 2: Add-PSTImportQueue
Part 3: Process-PSTImportQueue
Part 4: Some Tools we added
Part 5: Set-PSTImportQueue
Part 6: About PST Capture
Part 7: More PST Import Tools
Part 8: Using RoboCopy
Part 9: Morning Status Report
Part 10: Using BITS Transfer
Part 11: Get the script / Set up
Part 12: The Functions
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