Mail archive · Mac · Windows

Filum

Project email someone can still read in eight years.

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What Filum does

One project folder instead of five mailboxes.

Everyone involved files their project email into an Outlook folder and archives it themselves, each with their own sign-in, into the same project folder. What ends up there is a folder a third party can read without any extra software.

Filum fetches the filed mail through the Microsoft sign-in of the person who starts the run: Filum sees only what that person is allowed to see anyway. It writes to the storage path the office picks itself, for example its own NAS.

A second run knows what is already there: Filum identifies each message by its content, not by the file the mail server happens to hand out. Otherwise every quarterly run would file the same mail a second time. The same message from three mailboxes becomes one file naming all three places it was found, and Filum puts the threads together itself, because the same conversation is named differently in every mailbox.

  • Everyone archives their own filed project email, all into the same project folder
  • One readable PDF per message to click on, the original .eml kept unchanged alongside, attachments as files (the same attachment from ten mails is stored once), threads as readable HTML
  • An overview with search and filters (inbound/outbound, year, attachment), offline, no server
  • Every run writes a record: a checksum over the whole holding, pointing back to the previous one, plus a timestamp from an independent service (RFC 3161)
  • Overview, threads and read-me in German, English, French or Italian

What you get

  • Five years of liability from acceptance (Swiss CO art. 371 para. 2) and thirty days until the mailbox of someone who left is gone
  • Whoever searches in five years needs a file manager and a browser, not Filum
  • Re-check it without us: the archive carries a short script that verifies the chain with the Python standard library alone
  • The storage location belongs to the office: a path in your own archive, no cloud of ours
  • One sign-in: the same login fetches the mail and connects the bimover account

Why it exists

  • Architecture and planning offices from around five people (below that, filing by hand is still manageable)
  • Offices on Microsoft 365 with an archive of their own on a NAS or server
  • Projects whose correspondence has to outlive the liability period

Best fit for

In the archive

What ends up in the folder

Files, not a database. Two things are visible: the page you click and the folder with the messages. Everything else sits in a folder called .filum. The leading dot hides it, because nobody needs to click it; nothing is lost.

  • Mails ansehen.html The main entrance: search and filters by inbound/outbound, year and attachment. The search index sits inside the HTML itself, so the file works straight off the disk.
  • Mails/ Each message as its own PDF file, exactly as it arrived. Date and time come first in the name, so the folder sorts chronologically. A PDF opens on any computer without extra software.
  • .filum/originale/ The originals as .eml, untouched: the bytes as they came from the mailbox. Each carries the same name as its PDF, only with a different ending. They are the evidence, the PDF is the view.
  • .filum/verlaeufe/ One thread is one readable HTML file, in order from the first to the last message.
  • .filum/anhaenge/ Extracted and stored only once: the same drawing from ten mails is there exactly once.
  • .filum/verzeichnis.csv The emergency exit: one row per mail, readable in any text editor and any spreadsheet program.
  • .filum/liesmich.txt What this is and how to search it, for the person who opens the folder for the first time in eight years.
  • .filum/belege/ One record per run, chained to the previous one, plus a third-party timestamp. It can be re-checked with the script .filum/pruefen.py, which needs nothing but the Python standard library.

The file name already carries half the search

2019-04-02 0914 Eingang - Anna Muster - Baugesuch Sonnenhof a3f19c82.pdf

Date and time first, so every file manager sorts chronologically. Local time, not UTC, because you search for the time that stood in your mail program. ASCII only, because Mac and Windows store accented file names differently and that breaks over SMB; the real subject line lives in the overview and in the index.

Pricing

Per archived mailbox and year

What counts are the mailboxes that were archived from, not the people who start a run. The same mailbox across two projects of the same office counts once. The total works like a tax scale: each rate applies only to the mailboxes in its own range.

1-10 mailboxes
CHF 70
per mailbox in this range, per year
11-20 mailboxes
CHF 50
per mailbox in this range, per year
21-30 mailboxes
CHF 40
per mailbox in this range, per year
31+ mailboxes
CHF 32
per mailbox in this range, per year

What will it cost your office?

CHF 1 200 per year

CHF 60 per mailbox on average

Minimum CHF 350 per year

That is the price of 5 mailboxes. Archive fewer and you still pay the smallest package: invoicing, support and warranty cost the same for two mailboxes as for twenty.

Support is included in the rate.

After each run the app reports which mailboxes were archived: as hashes, never as addresses. Plus how many messages the archive holds, which run in order it was, and the record of that run. That is how a shrinking archive shows up later. No content leaves the office: no subject line, no address, no file name.

How Filum reaches the office

Sign in, choose folders, start the run

Three things before the first run: the sign-in, an archive folder and at least one Outlook folder to archive from.

It fetches the mail and connects the bimover account at the same time; there is no second login. If an office only allows outside programs after approval, its IT approves Filum once; in the Microsoft admin centre it is listed as “Filum Mailarchiv”. The app shows the link for that exactly when a sign-in fails because of it.

One Microsoft sign-in

The office picks the storage path itself. Your own domain comes from the sign-in, and that is how Filum tells incoming from outgoing. Anyone writing under several domains adds the others in the app settings under “More of your own domains”.

Archive folder and own domain

Each participant files their project email into an Outlook folder of their own. In the project you say which ones; one run collects them all.

The Outlook folders

Standalone apps for macOS and Windows. Both are built from the same core: same steps, same labels, same result.

Platforms

Filum comes from the App Store

It is not there yet. Write to us and we will walk through the first run together.

Honest status

What Filum does not promise

So nobody reads anything into it that is not there.

  • Filum does not prevent changes, it makes them detectable. Anyone with write access to the folder can change files. The record then shows that something is different.
  • No seal, no write-protected drive, no blockchain. That is a decision, not a backlog item.
  • Whether a given retention setup satisfies the rules is decided by the procedure in the office, not by a program. We say what Filum does; we do not give legal advice.
  • Filum archives only what was filed. After each run Filum reports how completely the conversations already begun in the archive are filed. About a conversation nothing was ever filed from, Filum says nothing.
  • Not captured as messages: Teams chats and drafts. Cloud attachments that arrive as a link instead of a file are archived as that link.
  • For every message Filum writes an archive file to read. It reproduces the content, not the look: fonts, colours and the position of images in the text are lost, and a few image formats are left out entirely. The original mail sits next to it, unchanged.