On email classification and flexibility

Considering the date of my last posting – I am obviously not a blogger by nature – but I do appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts and opinions on the topic of email archiving and retention. Some time having past since I last posted, my perspective has evolved somewhat – in particular with regards to the concept of email classification and more specifically, its day-to-day implementation.

I’ve long been a proponent of user-directed classification, and I think the arguments of the customer base I’ve spent so much time with (and who in turn have refined my perspectives) still hold true. The belief that the creators and consumers of information are best equipped to make accurate decisions about its importance, and that the contextuality and elusiveness of correspondences make it a dubious distinction that a purely machine-directed tact could be wholly sufficient – these fundamental tenets often underscore custodial models to email classification.

Concurrently, the argument of content volume is difficult to deny – who truly has time to consider and deal with every single message that crosses his or her inbox, making some measured decision about its relevance? And furthermore, clearly some functional roles are better suited for such a task than others – knowledge workers like myself may find it second nature to manage information proactively, but certainly other roles within a company are bound to boast less inclination or opportunity.

Consequently, I suspect companies will increasingly look for flexibility and a middle ground in terms of email classification – combining the notion of measured decision-making on behalf of users, with the capacity to apply broad retention rules to information by default. The application of such broad rules will oftentimes be simplistic and based on reliable characteristics such as geographic location or functional role of the mailbox owner. Such a baseline approach to retention may perhaps be a necessity for certain roles with organizations, and companies may also find it effectively combined with a more granular, user-directed approach to email classification.

But always should companies take care to avoid retaining too "generously", and saving content without context. The pitfalls of arbitrary and indiscriminate retention can be devastating – as terabytes of email can accumulate both quickly and relentlessly, and without contextual retention it can become difficult – if not impossible – to ever trigger a disposition.