Microsoft has flagged archiving and discovery enhancements to Exchange Server 2010 with a preview of Service pack 1 (SP1) due out later in 2010.

According to a post on the Microsoft Exchange blog, the new release will enhance the integrated archiving capabilities delivered in Exchange Server 2010. This includes adding the flexibility to provision a user's Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox.

"This means your organisation can now more easily implement separate storage strategies (or tiered storage) for less frequently accessed e-mail," writes Microsoft's Michael Atalla.

"And, we didn't just stop there! We've also added new server side capabilities so you can import historical e-mail data from .PST files, directly into Exchange, as well as IT pro controls to enable delegate access to a user's Personal Archive."

"To help streamline the implementation of retention policies, SP1 updates the Exchange Management Console with new tools to create Retention Policy Tags, so you can automate the deletion and archiving of e-mail and other Exchange items. New optional Retention Policy Tags give you even more flexibility in defining your organizations retention management strategy.

"Lastly, we've made several improvements to the Multi-Mailbox Search features, which can be used to conduct e-Discovery of e-mail for legal, regulatory or other reasons. A new search preview helps with, for example, early case assessment by providing you an estimate on the number of items in the result set-with keyword statistics-before e-mail located in the search are copied to the designated discovery mailbox.

"And, you now have a new search result de-duplication option, that when checked, only copies one instance of a message to the discovery mailbox. This can help you reduce the amount of e-mail you need to review following the search. Finally, added support for annotation of reviewed items means you can make your e-Discovery workflow even more efficient and less time consuming or costly.