Union Square launches new 'Email Vault'

Construction IT specialist, Union Square Software's Email Vault allows construction companies to unlock contractually important email trapped in personal inboxes and folders.

Union Square Software, today announces the launch of its new 'Email Vault' technology, providing construction companies with a robust and fully scaleable method for storing all inbound and outbound email communications.

Contractual details and other business-critical communication is now often being agreed and confirmed in email messages, so the growth in legal responsibilities for looking after, and being able to produce, full email audit trails has increased significantly.

Union Square's Email Vault technology intercepts all emails as they arrive at the main server and directs a copy of the message, including any attachments, into a secure storage area prior to the original message reaching the addressee's inbox.

Any outbound messages are treated in the same way, thereby ensuring that all email conversations are tracked in their entirety and stored in an environment that can be viewed, yet not tampered with.

A key feature of the new Email Vault technology is that it is available to all construction-focused organisations irrespective of whether or not they already have the full Workspace implementation.

Early adopters of Union Square's Email Vault include Grimshaw Architects, Caunton and Patton.

Jim Rea, IT consultant at Grimshaw, comments, "MS Exchange Server is not designed as a long term data storage facility".

"This creates serious liability issues should a claim ever arise because a key email was never filed or could not be recovered from a corrupted archive folder or mailbox".

"It used to be the case that important business communication took place via paper-based correspondence," Rea continues, "but as the primary method has moved away from Royal Mail to email messaging, the construction industry is having to confront the issue of whether their internal storage and retrieval capabilities are up to the task".

"By using Workspace's Email Vault we are creating an incontrovertible audit trail to protect both our staff and clients".

Will Yandell, Director of Union Square Software, comments, "Email systems were never designed to store and archive the sheer volumes they now support".

"It therefore makes more sense to store the emails outside the original email system, especially in an industry such as construction, where multiple files of huge sizes are routinely shared and distributed".

Using the Email Vault, emails can be accessed easily in their original format in a secure and timely manner, thereby removing the need for users to retain their own copies of sent or deleted items within their own inboxes, improving email management.

This in turn allows all users to be confident that should an email need to be retrieved for an audit or any disclosure process, no vital information has been lost.

Yandell continues, "The construction industry and supply chain as a whole relies upon email communication, and retention of contractually important email is fast becoming the crucial IT issue facing these organisations".

"Our Email Vault makes backing up project information substantially simpler as it specifically overcomes the difficulties associated with email servers, allowing previously 'lost' emails to be easily retrieved and forwarded to the user's inbox when required".

"In so doing, we remove the need to retain the original project-critical email in a personal inbox for potentially months, or in some cases years, and also the need to store hard copies of all email communications should they be pertinent to the contract.".

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