Stampede’s TurboGold AutoZip™ Solutions for Notes Email

By: Michael Webb

April 1, 2004

I recently had a chance to take a good look at TurboGold AutoZip by Stampede Technologies.  Stampede Technologies is well known for their TurboGold Enterprise Edition that speeds up client to server access and replication.  Using their extensive knowledge of data management they have created a product that helps Domino administrators to manage file size, and disk storage by compressing attachments.  However, the product goes much farther than just zipping up attachments in order to decrease file size.

TurboGold AutoZip (“AutoZip” )comes with a client, and a server product. The AutoZip server utility allows you to compress existing attachments for all or individual databases.  This task is configurable by both the Domino administrator and\or the database owner; the product also keeps track of which databases have been converted allowing the Administrator the flexibility to complete this tasks at their own pace. 

TurboGold AutoZip Client

There are two client images that can be installed, one is the Ultra-Low Footprint and the other is the complete user interface.  Both clients work with Lotus Notes 4.62 and above and on any Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0, 2000, Me or XP operating system.  The installation is very simple; you will be prompted for name, company name and serial number.  Then the installation looks for the Notes directory, and the location of the notes.ini file, and finally asks you where you would like to install the application.  To help with deployment there is a text answer file called answer.ini where you can set the required parameters, with this file you can create a customized installation for your company.

If you are reviewing the product the documentation speaks of the gear shift in the full image client, this turns the AutoZip client on and off; here you can also see a quick synopsis of the space saved overall and during this session.

The installation of the low profile client installs two dll’s into the Notes Lotus Notes Program directory.  The options for this client are set in the answer.ini.  I can see this being a big help with large scale deployment.

 Features

In my opinion the best feature in AutoZip is that the determination as to what attachments to compress is taken out of the hands of the end users, it is completely transparent.  The receipt of a message with the compressed file is transparent to all workstations that have the AutoZip client loaded.  This patent pending transparency also  comes in to play is when a user accesses a database with auto zipped files, the end user does not see a difference in the database.

The AutoZip settings for features are set by your administrator or they can be set or changed in the full image client by the end user.  The options available are to never AutoZip files, AutoZip all email attachments, AutoZip only internal email attachments, or you can choose what to AutoZip based on a string.  An example of a string would be if all recipients are in a specific organizational unit such as OU=abc, or where there is a specific email address. The option to never AutoZip would be used if you are accessing a server and there are databases that have auto zipped attachments.  The default is set to AutoZip all internal mail attachments and would probably be the most used setting. With these set the end user doesn’t make a decision as to what files to AutoZip and what files not to.  With the default setting, the files that are going to internal mail users will automatically be zipped, and all files going to the internet will not be zipped, this way the user doesn’t have to think about what to do each time they create an email with an attachment.    

Caching is another feature that allows you faster access to documents that are repeatedly retrieved.  The setting is in the AutoZip cache configuration, you can set the size of the cache and where you would like the directory.  You can also choose what types of files you would like excluded from being AutoZip. 

Seeing statistics is quick and easy, just right click on the client and the following dialog box will appear.  The information provided to you shows you how well AutoZip is working, how much space you have saved and any faults that may occur. 

A vital function of the product is the Indexer enablement; this is standard with TurboGold AutoZip.  This allows the Lotus Notes indexer to include these compressed files in a full text index.  This feature is very important in keeping your data current and being able to access the correct information as needed.

Operation of AutoZip

Files are auto zipped when the email you created is saved, if you forward an email or copy one into your mail file that has an attachment it is not zipped.  When the attachment is zipped it is given the name of the original document tg then zip such as document1.tg.zip.  This allows users without an AutoZip client that have a standard compression utility such as WinZip or PkZip to be able to unzip the file and read the attachment. 

Role Based Database Auto Zipping

Even though you would love to reclaim as much space as possible on your server, there may be instances where you would not want a database to AutoZip attachments, that database may be accessed via the internet, or by users who do not have the AutoZip client.  AutoZip allows the database owner to choose if they want the database converted or not.  The owner can do this by setting the tgAutoZip role in the access control of the database, the AutoZip utility checks this role before performing the conversion. 

The settings when running the database auto zip utility allow for quite a bit of flexibility, for the administrator.  You can convert all the attachments in specific directory or subdirectory, specify how long you want this task to run, set minimum sizes, just to name a few. 

Conclusion

Stampede technologies has taken the time to engineer a product, that is well thought out, easy to deploy and extremely easy to use.  I highly recommend TurboGold AutoZip to both large and small companies that are struggling with ever increasing disk space requirements.  The product requires almost no training for the end user, and can start saving you money and disk space immediately upon deployment. TurboGold AutoZip allows administrators to reclaim precious disk space, decrease network traffic and reduce storage costs.  The same level of transparency, trusted reliability and Web acceleration solutions are also available with TurboGold Enterprise Edition.

Michael Webb is an Information Systems Manager with a Notes career spanning over 10 years.