Outlook Exporter User Guide
Introduction
This utility was created in direct response from our customers and partners requesting the ability to conduct a bulk import of their Outlook Address Book and Sent Items from Outlook, in order to expedite elevate legitimate senders to a state that doesn’t require content filtering
If you encounter any problems with this utility, please contact your Reflexion sales or support representative via email with a description of the problem.
User Interface
When you start the Outlook Exporter, this dialog box appears first:
Please note that it IF you currently have Outlook running, you are being asked to close Outlook before proceeding. If you do not have Outlook running, then this is not a concern. In any event, click “OK” to display the Outlook Exporter and continue.
The User Interface is straightforward and convenient for the purpose intended. The user is advised to notice the Instructions at the top of the working form.
Follow the five step instructions at the top of the form to complete addresses extraction from Outlook.
Progress in marshalling data from the Outlook data store is displayed as the extraction occurs.
Once the extract has been completed, the Sent Mail addresses are de-duped in a manner that eliminates all duplicate addresses, and yields only the most recent instance of the use of each address. This is important because it provides the user with the timeliest indication of the value of an address.
Once loaded and de-duped, the Sent Mail and Contacts addresses are displayed as shown below. One can elect to include or exclude addresses from their whitelist export by simply checking or unchecking list items. All addresses default to ‘Confirmed”, (i.e. “checked”). Any of the addresses a user wishes to exclude, are then manually unchecked while browsing the lists.
The display form can be resized for easier viewing of long contact lists.
For the user’s convenience in limiting the scope of the Sent Mail Addresses result set, they can uncheck the “Include ALL of my Sent Items Addresses” checkbox. This enables the “Include ……. most recent” option. Here the user can select a period (a number of months), from a start date forward, during which used addresses are displayed for consideration. Note that the default is for ALL Sent Mail addresses to appear. If the user wishes to reduce or enlarge the recency of the selected addresses, they simply change the number of months inclusive. The number changes in 3-month increments (1 month increments below 3 months). As the start date changes, the length of the Sent Items Addresses list will change accordingly.
For the further convenience of the user, the UI is based upon a combination of recognition and recall. To convey a sense of the age-value of some addresses, the user can elect to present the view of the Sent Item addresses by Latest Date Used, and to present the view of their contacts by Contact Name.
The user can check or uncheck any address at any time. Their selections are persisted between choices of display format. After they have completed their choices, they simply enter their own email address and click the “Export Addresses…” button.
The UI validates any email address entry made, to ensure compliance with the address format standard. At times when options are not available, they are disabled. Every action a user engages in is checked for consistency, and any condition they need to correct (such as a malformed email address entry, and suggested double-checks before the actual send occurs) is expressed in user dialog boxes. The resulting whitelist is sent to Reflexion via the user’s own Outlook, and a cc is sent to the sender for future reference.
At the decision of the user’s respective system administrator, you can check the “Add to Global Whitelist” checkbox. This changes the address of the whitelist data sent to Reflexion so the data is processed accordingly.
Also at the decision of the user, you can check the “Include Users in Local Domain” checkbox. If this is left unchecked, the local domain’s users are excluded. Typically these users are already known to Reflexion.
The user must enter their respective email address prior to electing to send their data to Reflexion. When Outlook is then used to send the message, it will prompt for send authorization. The user will simply click on “Yes”. Once sent, the user is expected to Exit the Outlook Exporter. If they try to run the Exporter again, they will be reminded that their export was completed previously.