Firstly, a big Thank you! from us for adopting our product.

We hope that you like the software and find the next steps easy, should you run into any problems or just want to ask a question, please either email support@pentagonsolutions.com or phone us on +44 (0)2890 455355 (Option 3).


TIP: Your anti-virus and anti-malware may need to 'whitelist' the software.

Some security systems can misinterpret PentagonMail Assistant's connection to Outlook and background indexing as potential threats, so if you encounter an error please don't assume the software has failed, instead ask your IT experts to white-list our software.

Please let them know that there are four background processes:

PentagonMailAssistant.BackgroundFiler.exe
PentagonMailAssistant.Launcher.exe
PentagonMailAssistant.Indexer.exe
PentagonSolutions.MailAssistant.Broker.exe - if using PMA with New Outlook

And also tell them that there is an Outlook Add-in named PentagonMail Assistant Outlook Addin


We want you to get the best from our software by making it as easy as possible for you to configure and deploy PentagonMail Assistant to your colleagues. We also want you to have the opportunity to learn from the experiences from others so in this section we don't just explain how to set the software up, we also provide some best-practice advice. 


We recommend the following steps which are detailed below:

    1. Read and consider the Best Practice Advice on folder structures
    2. Install the software on your own machine
    3. Activate your license
    4. Create a Group on the server
    5. Test it:
      1. File some messages
      2. Search for them
    6. Allocate user licenses
    7. Deploy the software to users
    8. Consider the following:
      1. Cloning a pre-built profile


Read and consider the Best Practice Advice on folder structures

We have seen a lot of different approaches to folder structures, so to help you get it right straight away we have assembled some best practice guidance which we hope you will find useful. Whilst this guidance is based on Windows Folders and not Meridian Field Paths, you may never-the-less find it useful to consider the concepts that it addresses. So please review the guidance on Recommended Location Structures before proceeding further.


Install the software on your own machine

You have probably installed the software already but if you haven't, all of the installers are available in the Downloads & Change Logs section. To complete the next steps you will need to install the PentagonMail Assistant Meridian Configurator which is not installed by default, so please access Installing PMA with Meridian now.


Whilst there are no significant prerequisites we recommend that you take a quick look at the Prerequisites section too.


Activate your license

Depending on the type of license that you have purchased the activation process differs slightly. See the section on Activating Licenses to activate your license.


Create a Group on the server

Hopefully you will have read the best-practice guidance and will have a good idea of how you want to organise your filing. You may however be unfamiliar with our terminology, so before you create your first Group please review the short section on Understanding Filing Locations.


If your Meridian vault has not yet been configured to be used with PentagonMail Assistant, please go to section Configuring Meridian to work with PMA

Next follow the section on Setting up the PMA to Meridian Connection and repeat it for each of the Groups that you will need.


Connecting to your Group

You can now connect to the Group which will then populate the tiles in the Outlook interface with your filing locations.

To do this follow the section on Connecting to a Meridian Group.


Test it

File some messages

So you can now try filing some messages to the locations.



Search for them

Try a simple keyword search to make sure that it is working correctly:



If you want to learn more about the search capabilities watch the videos or take a closer look at the Search section of this documentation. 


Congratulations!  You now have the bones of a working filing system. You will probably want to test it more thoroughly with selected colleagues, so the next steps are to allocate licenses and deploy the software.


NOTE: You can mix filing locations, so if you have staff who not only need to file to Meridian but also to Windows folders or cloud storage systems too, you can provide them with all three by following the guidance on Managing Locations


Allocate user licenses

If you have purchased Enterprise licenses you will not need to allocate them to staff as anyone with an email account ending with your domain name will be allocated a license. If you have purchased named-user licenses, you will have a pool of licenses that you can allocate to staff as required, so now would be a good time to follow the guidance on Managing Licenses. 

Deploy the software to users

Small organisations may allow staff to install software on their own computers but larger organisations will not only prevent users from installing software themselves, they will also want to remotely deploy the software to them. So PentagonMail Assistant can be silently deployed to staff using MSIEXEC. For details and examples, see the section on Silent installation of the MSI package.

Consider the following:

Before you go further, you may wish to reflect on what type of experience you would like your staff to have. Do you want them to start slowly and add more locations and results as they go, or do you want them to start with all the locations immediately available and their index pre-built with the content of the locations they will need.

Cloning a pre-built profile

If you have users starting in a new project, office or joining a team where they will immediately need access to certain messages and either they can't wait for the indexing to happen or you have a concern about the impact of multiple machines all indexing the same locations, you should consider cloning a pre-built profile.