Document Purpose: Restoring Personal Address Books with Reload

Introduction

About a year ago I was visiting with a customer with a large installed base of Reload. The administrator enthusiastically shared that they had used Reload 20 times that week. I was surprised, although I knew people needed to restore e-mail, I couldn't imagine they needed to restore e-mail that often.

Then the administrator explained that they had implemented the GroupWise Mobile Server. Many of the requests to use Reload had to do with personal address books. In a mobile client, without a rich desktop client, with multiple prompts etc., users were accidentally deleting entire personal address books. And fortunately, with the easily accessible "Access Mode" feature of Reload, the administrator was able to assist users in restoring their address books.

Let me explain the notion of "Access Mode". Restoring a GroupWise Address book isn't an option when using the File|Open Backup feature within the GroupWise client. You must connect to a POA that is running against a backup of the GroupWise post office.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Reload makes this easy. Reload has an "Access Mode POA" that is configured to run by default. Assuming you have Reload configured to use the Access Mode POA, here are the steps you take to restore a personal address book from the most recent backup of a GroupWise post office:

1. In Reload Web Administration select the Reload profile that represents the post office.

2. Choose the menu option "Turn on Access to Most Current Backup".

3. Log into the Access Mode POA on the Reload server^{Wikipedia.">Wikipedia." class="glossary-indicator">i} as the user who needs a personal address book or addresses restored. This is as simple as pointing the GroupWise client at the IP/DNS Address and port of the Access Mode POA running on the Reload server.

4. Open up the GroupWise Address Book.

5. Select the Address Book that you want to recover, or the addresses that need to be recovered.

6. Select File|Export and export the address book or addresses to a *.NAB file.

7. Exit GroupWise, and get back into the user's live mailbox.

8. Create the new address book ( File|New Book ) that you want to re-create addresses for, or select the address book if it is already there.

9. Select File|Import and select the *.NAB file that you created in the steps above.

Final Notes

Many customers have devised solutions that use the Restore Area within GroupWise. Reload also leverages the powerful Restore Area feature. However Restore Areas do not provide all the features necessary for a quick restore solution for GroupWise.

Restoring address books is just one of the functionalities that a Restore Area does not provide. Using the Access Mode POA is also essential for the following kinds of operations:

1. Restoring messages for a GroupWise Resource object with the archive feature.

2. Restoring messages along with folder structure. This requires using the archive feature.

3. Accessing backed up documents in a Document Management Library.

Summary

Reload's signature is Quick Recovery. And with the Reload Access Mode feature set, Quick Recovery of GroupWise Personal Address Books is just a couple of minutes away.