Case study: IBM Notes – archiving at a recognized level of audit compliance

How to deal with the daily flood of e-mails and systematically archive them all amid this deluge? This is exactly the question that a great many companies are confronted with. Businesses generally face the challenge of managing an enormous number of mails. On top of that, management must give serious thought to an archiving method that not only separates business from personal correspondence, but also satisfies all the demands for legally compliant archiving and preserves the records for the prescribed retention periods.

This means that businesses must overcome the problem of making both customer and relevant project-related mails easy to find and retrieve within a central system in order to work with utmost efficiency. In doing so, the archiving should be integrated seamlessly within the IT landscape to minimize the time and effort involved on the part of the employees. What’s more, the data must remain readable for as long a time as possible.

Using n2pdf to ensure audit compliance in archiving

n2pdf provides a solution for this problem in that it saves electronic mail and all relevant documents in the standard PDF format. With n2pdf you can rely on a software in the form of an add-on tool for IBM Notes that with the mere click of a button creates PDF files from e-mails (as well as other Notes documents), so that they can be filed in a centralized system and stored in a manner that maintains their original integrity and authenticity.

n2pdf is a complete solution package for converting file attachments and documents to PDF that was specially designed for integration within IBM Notes applications. Normally users have to run external applications to generate PDF files from within IBM Notes. Besides interrupting the workflow, this can also lead to potential sources of error.

With the click of a button you can now use n2pdf to create complex PDFs without destroying the original structures, links, and cross references. Common Notes navigation elements, such as references to documents, views and databases, are adopted and supplemented by new and convenient structural features, such as a table of contents. As an extension or export filter, the tool also lets you merge and combine multiple documents and select the relevant PDF settings, including those for security (e.g. digital signatures) and data encryption.

This means that n2pdf gives companies looking for a tool they can use to systematically archive their e-mails from IBM Notes a unique capability of automatically running the conversion process to PDF. And for your employees this means no additional effort in saving and archiving e-mails and no interruption to their workflows. There is not a great deal of training required for developers and users to master using the tool. The conversion and archiving of the correspondence runs in the background, so that what is really important – providing professional service and support to customers and projects – can remain in the foreground.

Tangible benefits when used together with IBM Notes

Thanks to n2pdf, your employees can now file and quickly retrieve their mails as PDFs sorted by project within your document management system. They’ll also enjoy using the extremely helpful widget that lets them select and file specific e-mails. It also makes it easy to separate business e-mails from any personal correspondence. This all-inclusive solution package also provides developers with a number of new commands, whereby it is also possible to integrate it into any IBM Notes database using a script library or Java. The functions are then available to the user through a button on the application’s action bar. An agent can be used to do integrate PDF creation capabilities on an IBM Domino server and then use them in web applications as well.

Convenient features for optimal workflow

The current n2pdf 5.0 version can be deployed on the Notes client (32 bit) or Domino server (32/64 bit) in addition to being used via Java programming in IBM Notes/Domino or in external Domino applications. PDF/A documents can be created and digital signatures and certificates can also be attached. Time stamps from a time stamping authority (TSA) are also supported. In addition to PDFs, documents can also be exported as TIFF, JPEG, PNG or BMP graphics.

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