PMG Suggestions

[sagelike]

PMG seems to be a good spam filter based on the little testing I've done so far but I have a couple of suggestions which would make it much better:

- Change the Tracking Center feature so that it's more like the log/archive system on Barracuda which allows you to review and read all email whether Spam or HAM. Often, the only way to determine whether Passed email is spam is to look at it. You also have the benefit of being able to re-release already delivered HAM email and it's easier finding email. Being able to re-release Passed email is something clients often request.

- Add Bayesian learning so that you can tag email as Spam/Not Spam in the Tracking Center or Spam Quarantine.

In fact, I would suggest rolling Spam Quarantine, Virus Quarantine, Attachment Quarantine, Queues and Tracking Center and just have the Tracking Center with different search options.

PMG seems pretty good but I'm a little undecided. If it had the two features above, it would be an easy to decision to make the switch.

Barracuda has a well designed interface system and I would recommend just emulating them as much as possible. It would make PMG more attractive and an easier sell.

 

[Stoiko Ivanov]

PMG is a mail proxy - changing it to become a complete archiving solution is not really on our roadmap (since this would be a completely different product)

You can quite comfortably sent a BCC for each mail to a mailbox and then analyze the mails there

Add Bayesian learning so that you can tag email as Spam/Not Spam in the Tracking Center or Spam Quarantine.

In our experience Bayes filtering did not provide too much improvment (and made things rather worse if not trained properly) - and until now noone could provide us with reliable numbers of bayes actually bringing a significant improvement in their environment
Should you have some statistics of the effectiveness of bayes (and a description of how you are employing it) please share them.

In fact, I would suggest rolling Spam Quarantine, Virus Quarantine, Attachment Quarantine, Queues and Tracking Center and just have the Tracking Center with different search options.

All of these do serve quite different purposes (e.g. the spam-quarantine is available to a end-user - all others are reserved for privileged users/admins)

I hope this explains it!

 

[sagelike]

Thanks for your response Stoiko.

I can live without Bayesian and you are probably correct that Bayesian doesn't help much. I'm not sure it helps much on the Barracuda.

With regards to Journaling/archiving, the big feature I would like to see is Barracuda style Journaling. In the Barracuda I can access any email and view it whether it was blocked or allowed and re-deliver it and all views are presented on one page with various search filters.

If an Allowed email is actually Spam, I can declare it Spam and it gets sent to Barracuda for analysis.

The most important feature however is ability to archive All email 2-3 week old (depends on size of your drive) and re-deliver it.

Thanks
G

 

[Stoiko Ivanov]

As said - PMG currently is in its architecture a proxy/gateway - nothing which saves mails on a long-term basis - and at least from my point of view - we don't have a architectural change that big on our roadmap.

 

[heutger]

As said - PMG currently is in its architecture a proxy/gateway - nothing which saves mails on a long-term basis - and at least from my point of view - we don't have a architectural change that big on our roadmap.

Seems to be just the same suggestion as others and would also well integrate, as that would help out for some issues as well would provide better anti spam quality by allowing better learning of ham and spam via e.g. GUI actions on the "archive backend" (moving to spam or ham on user action).

 

[Kan]

As said - PMG currently is in its architecture a proxy/gateway - nothing which saves mails on a long-term basis - and at least from my point of view - we don't have a architectural change that big on our roadmap.

It's a shame. Mails archiving is future.

 

[sagelike]

I wasn't actually suggesting an 'archive' per se. I was suggesting temporary retention like Barracuda does which retains email for 15-30 days depending on total storage available.

PMG is already sort of doing it with the Tracking Center which stores email header information. All you need to do is store the actual email content and put a Redeliver option next to it.

The ability to redeliver an email is a huge bonus and a feature I wish PMG had. Heck, make it an add-on and charge $50 for it.

 

[mira]

I wasn't actually suggesting an 'archive' per se. I was suggesting temporary retention like Barracuda does which retains email for 15-30 days depending on total storage available.

PMG is already sort of doing it with the Tracking Center which stores email header information. All you need to do is store the actual email content and put a Redeliver option next to it.

The ability to redeliver an email is a huge bonus and a feature I wish PMG had. Heck, make it an add-on and charge $50 for it.

Just to clarify, the tracking center uses the syslogs for all its information. It does not store mail header information.
This means once the syslogs have been removed (after the default 7 days rotation, or whatever is manually configured), that information is gone as well.