Kansas Department of Revenue - Central Email Record Archive - Screenshots
Department of Revenue’s Central Email Record Archive
This site has been constructed to present screen shots of the Kansas Department of Revenue’s (KDOR) Central E-mail Record Archive (CERA) system. In order to comply with records laws of Kansas and guidelines on the management of electronic mail developed by the Kansas Electronic Records Committee, KDOR staff designed CERA as a module for the Department’s groupware application, Lotus Notes. Notes saves e-mail messages directly to the user’s computer rather than a networked location, so a central repository needed to be built for messages with retention requirements. These screen shots provide a view of how CERA is used in the Notes environment. For more information regarding CERA, please contact Donnita Thomas, Kansas Department of Revenue, 915 SW Harrison Street, Topeka, KS 66625-3570, Donnita_Thomas@kdor.state.ks.us.
William Shakespeare holds an administrative position in KDOR’s Division of Property Valuation. He needs to compose and send an e-mail message that should be copied to the Central E-mail Record Archive database. He creates a new memo, addresses it, adds a subject line, and types the text of the memo. (He was interrupted while typing his message, and omitted a couple of words he had intended to include.):
Bill determines that a copy of this message should be sent to the Central E-mail Record Archive database, so rather than clicking the Send button, he clicks the button identified as "Send and copy to CERA". This causes a dialog box to be displayed. Bill must supply the information requested in the dialog box before he can route his message with a copy to the CERA database. The dialog box allows Bill to identify an appropriate message category from a list that is appropriate to the area of the department where Bill works. Bill will also have the option of adding a keyword (or phrase) which may be helpful when attempting to locate the document in the CERA database:
If Bill is uncertain about the definition of any of the message categories listed, he can click on the hotspot "Click here for descriptions"; this will cause another dialog box to display:
Bill determines that the category "PVD Audit Team Reports" is appropriate for this message, and clicks on that category. This causes another field to display, because the category he selected is one that requires that the user supply a date. [This date represents the start date for the retention period. For most message categories, the required retention period starts on the day the message is sent, but for a few categories the retention period may not start until some specified future event, such as the completion of an audit or the expiration of a contract.)
Bill adds a date to the required field, and then tries to decide whether to add a value in the keyword field. He moves his cursor to the hotspot identified as "Keyword", and a help message is displayed.
Bill adds a value to the keyword field, and is ready to click the OK button in the dialog box:
Bill's personal preferences instruct Notes to ask him each time he sends a message whether or not he wants to retain a copy in his Sent Messages folder, so when he clicks the OK button in the Archiving Information dialog box, he is presented with one more dialog box:
Bill clicks the Yes button in this dialog box. The message is sent and he is returned to the point from which he composed the message. He wants to confirm that he routed a copy of the message to the CERA database, so he opens his mail database and selects the Sent folder, where he sees the "message with a padlock" icon, which indicates that the message was routed to the CERA database:
Joseph Conrad observes that he has new mail, and opens his Mail database, to find that he has received a message from Bill Shakespeare. The message displays the "message with padlock" icon to indicate that a copy was also routed to the CERA database:
Joe Conrad opens the message from Bill Shakespeare. He notes that the cc: field indicates that the CERA database received a copy of the message:
When Bill's message first reaches the CERA database, it is not visible in all views, because not all of the metadata has been added. However, the document does appear in one view (accessible only to a few users) called "Date fields not yet computed:
Bill can also find his message immediately in the "Messages I Archived" view, which will show him only the messages that he routed to the CERA database:
After a scheduled routine runs overnight to compute the retention date from the retention category, and populate other metadata, Bill Shakespeare can see his message in all standard views in the CERA database. Since he has no special role in the Access Control List, he can see only messages that he sent to the CERA. He finds his message in the "By Message Category view:
Bill also locates his message in the "By Organizational Unit" view:
Bill opens the "By Last Day to Retain" view, and sees his message there, noting that for the sake of convenience all "last day to retain" dates are set as December 31 of the year in which the retention period expires:
Since Bill added a value in the Keyword field when he sent his message, he checks the "By Keyword" view:
Although Joseph Conrad was a recipient of the message from William Shakespeare, he cannot see this message in the CERA. Individuals who are not assigned to special Roles in the Access Control List can see only messages that they sent, not messages that were sent to them:
Vernon Dursley is identified in the Access Control List for the CERA database as the Records Custodian for the organizational units Property Valuation and Property Valuation Administration. When Vernon opens the database he can see all the messages submitted by individuals associated with these organizational units:
Vernon looks in the "By Message Category" view:
When Vernon opens the "By Last Day to Retain" view he notes that some messages show a retention date of 12/31/9999. This corresponds to a retention category of "Permanent". The date used is the date farthest in the future that can currently be stored in a Notes date field.
Christopher Marlowe is identified in the Access Control List of the CERA database as the Database Administrator. This allows Christopher to see all message categories for all organizational units, and the messages they contain:
An authorized individual (the sender or the appropriate Records Custodian) can open and read (but not edit) a message in the CERA:
When Bill Shakespeare reads the message that he sent to the CERA on the previous day, he expands the section "Information used to Categorize this document in views" to display most of the metadata associated with the message:
Bill's message was not sent to any groups identified in KDOR's Name and Address Book. If it had been, the section "Membership of groups to which this message was sent" would identify the individuals comprising these groups. If these groups contained other groups, the individuals in these "nested" groups would also be identified. Individuals in any groups identified as cc recipients would also be identified:
The information used to support the process of routing a message to the CERA database is stored in a separate Support database. The screen shot below shows the Message Category view of this Support database. The unusual symbol in the entry for the Message Category "PVD Audit Team Reports" indicates that this category requires a "retention period start date". Most message categories are not relevant to all organizational units within KDOR; this view indicates which organizational units can use each message category:
A corresponding view in the support database shows the Message Categories that each organizational unit is authorized to use. This view supplied the list of message categories that appeared in the dialog box that was displayed to Will Shakespeare when he clicked the button to send his message with a copy to the CERA database:
Each message category identified in the CERA Support database contains a category description as well as a list of the organizational units which can use the category, a retention period, and information about whether a retention period start date is required for this category:
