Town of Falmouth IT Service Desk

Often times we receive a request for archived email in order to fulfil a public records request. Typically the external requestor is not well versed in structuring a request to meet their intended goal. We ask that you help to fill in the details of the request so that we, the IT Department, can better help you fulfil that request to the fullest. 

Often we simply get something like a request "for all emails with PERSON_A regarding "SUBJECT_Y". At face value this seems like a simple search and it typically is. Normally a request like that takes just an hour or two to turn around. More complex requests that involve multiple recipients and groups of recipients with multiple possible subjects required a lot more time than it would seem. Typically we ask for a full business day to turn around complex requests. 

(see below for how to submit successful search terms to us to streamline the results to just the relevant information)

Once we export the requests we make the email available to you in a PST file format. This file is easily opened in Outlook, which you already have installed on your town computer.  (See at the bottom for how to open and manage your PST file) Save this PST to a well known folder. 

Once you have your PST open in your Outlook client you are free to browse and search the content like you would any other email. You are also encouraged to highlight and remove (delete) any correspondence that is not categorized as a public record. As the classification of a public record is not always straightforward you will need determine this on your own, for your own records. We give you everything and it is up to you to remove or redact as required by law. (i.e. pay stubs are a public record but accruals are not) We also encourage you to scan for any emails that have made it into the resulting records request that are not relevant and may have been returned as they contain a keyword or include a recipient that was part of the original request but in fact have nothing to do with the original requestors query. 

When you are satisfied with the results you simply disconnect the PST from your Outlook (see below) and take that PST and pass it along to the original requestor however you see fit. be aware that you will not be able to email this file as it is most always too large and it would need to be compressed into another format in order to be successfully attached to an email. Flash drive, burn to CD, or upload to a requestor supplied FTP/SFTP or filesharing location are all options. 

In Short

1. Submit a detailed request to IT with all terms, dates, and senders/recipients
2. Receive PST and open in Outlook
3. Parse results to remove any non-relevant and public records excluded entries
4. Close PST and Outlook
5. Copy PST to a media to be presented to the requestor

How to Submit Successful Search Terms

In general you need to think about search rems, or queries, as if you were sending an email. Emails have dates, senders, recipients, subjects, and content/body. Searching for emails require that we create a query to ask the email archive server to only return the results that best match our request. If you are too broad we will literally receive tens of thousands of results and that means hours and hours of work for you to manually parse those results. 

Keeping the above in mind we ask for, at a minimum, the following: 

• date range of the requested emails
• one or all; from and to, or just from, or just to
  • Include all names and addresses
  • We need not only full names as how they would read in the email but also the full email address. 
  • Keep in mind that not everyone corresponds with the same email address every email. Sometimes we see some senders/recipients using multiple addresses over the course of a records request date range. 
• subject is not always the best term to use in a search as not everyone uses this field to its fullest and it often not relevant to the content of the email.
• content or body is where you need to include the relevant terms. This is typically what the original requestor is thinking about when they make their request. 
  • Be specific but not so specific that we miss information. We also use logical operators in our query so we ask that you keep this in mind when making your request. 
    • "Main Street" would exclude results for "Main St" so "Main" might be a better choice. 
    • "injury OR accident" means that you will get all emails with either term but "injury AND accident" will result in only emails with both terms in the body of the email. Possibly reducing your results by a huge factor.

We also ask that you think about the above when making a request. We have to defer to you for the terms to be used when making the search as we are not liable for missing or incomplete information due to incorrect search terms. In short, you know your subject matter, we do not.

See below for a simple example:

- Date Range: 05/06/2019 through 07/22/2021

- Sender(s): "Joe Smith" jsmith@email.com OR "Kelly Walter" kelly@nomailme.org

- Recipient(s): "Pete Parker" pete.parker@falmouthma.gov

- Content Terms: ("cut tree" AND "28") OR ("tree" AND "damage") 

The above would cover any emails sent between the dates listed from Joe or Kelly to Pete regarding a cut tree on Route 28 that caused damage. This would not cover any replies from Pete though. 

Another example:

- Date Range: 11/28/2020 to present

- ALL Sender(s) AND Recipient(s): "Frank Brown" fbrown@mail.com AND "Richard Smith" rich.smith@falmouthma.gov"

- Content Terms: "permit" AND "22 Maple" OR "115987" AND "permit" AND "rejected"

The above would cover all emails from November 28, 2020 to now between Frank and Richard in both directions regarding a rejected permit #115987 for 22 Maple Street.

Here is a template that you can use for each portion of your request. Use as many times as necessary to complete your request. A single request can contain many requests like this. It would not be unusual to see a dozen entries for a single request. 

----- copy below -----

- Date Range:

- Sender(s):

- Recipient(s):

- Subject: 

- Content Terms:

----- copy above -----

Opening the Results in Outlook

This part is straight forward. You will receive information on where your export is located on the network. We will make sure that it is in a secure location where you can freely access it when needed. 

Open Outlook on your computer. This must be the desktop Outlook client and not webmail. If you are using a laptop please ensure that you are at your desk to access the file. They are sometimes quite larger and will generally fails across VPN.

You can now send that PST file to the original requestor. Any modifications that you made have been saved to that PST specifically. If you made a copy that would remain unchanged. Only the file you opened in Outlook will retain the changes.