Hello everyone. Hope you are doing well. See below for my question. Thank you in advance for your time and reply.
Before I get to my questions let me note one thing. I'm assuming that this forum 'File Services and Storage' is referring to the server role on windows server. It didn't seem like there was a better choice for my question so I placed it here but... My question is more regarding just file services and storage and messing around with files and directories and etc on the server while actually sitting there and logged in on the windows server computer. I'm not talking/asking about the file services and storage role nor about serving files/directories to client computers on the active directory network.
I was wondering if someone could point me in the direction of where to look or how to figure out how to write a simple script that copies emails from the email host onto some directory on the server?
Seems simple enough but the task seems a little easier said than done for me.
I guess I'm having some problems with some gaps in knowledge and am struggling implementing what I am trying to do with regards to 'dealing with emails'.
One thing is, what exactly is an email? Not so much that, I get that it's just digits of information traveling across a network of nodes as a set of packets or whatever. But, how should I think about it in terms of the task described thus far? As just a simple text file that may or may not include lines of code, html/other? As an 'email' file (outlook saves emails to drive as *.msg)?
Another thing is, perhaps following from the first, is what file type does the email host generally serve the emails so your email client of choice can read?
Another thing is, kinda related kinda unrelated, is windows server only saves 1 copy of each file on disk, right? If I have a single file of the same exact file copied into 100 directories, windows server only saves 1 copy of the file, right? I feel like I knew the answer to this at one point but can't remember.
So, I think that's it for the questions. Now about the implementation. As of now, I'm planning on handling my archiving/storage of emails by having a simple script running somewhere on the windows server computer that simply: (1) makes a folder with the name of each respective inbox; (2) Reads the email hosting server and copies/pastes every new email that hits its respective inbox into its respective step 1 folder stored on the server; and (3) reads through the email looking for keywords and copies appropriate emails into appropriate project folders (also stored on the server) based on the keywords.
That's about it. Some final things to note:
I did do a lot of searching trying to get this figured out before posting this. When trying to do individual searches on all these individual things, I feel like I'm wasting a lot of time reading through basic stuff that I either know already or a list of basic things that I have to choose from and I'm obviously never going to find a website that tells me how to do exactly what I want to do since it's somewhat custom. I guess I'm just looking for preferably someone who is reading this who has some experience managing a windows server network for a business/client that is trying to get email archiving figured out to read this and post a thoughtful reply answering the whole of the question as best as you can. Of course, anyone who feels they know enough about this that is willing to take their time typing out an answer is welcome and appreciated as well.
Also, the reason I'm going through all this trouble is because I'm working on a system that will hopefully have people working with it one day but there will certainly be shady people doing shady things and deleting emails and whatnot. I'm trying to get a communications system set up with this in mind. Was thinking I'd just have something simple that just auto copied (and never deleted) emails onto the server and kinda tried to get different emails copied into different project folders.
I know this one was long but I had to because the world is complicated. Thank you again for your time and thanks again in advance.