BEST PRACTICES EMAIL ARCHIVE in contentaccess version 2.5

BEST PRACTICES EMAIL ARCHIVE in contentaccess version 2.5 Use case: Email Archive configuration for companies with up to 2,000 mailboxes This document gives you an overview how to configure email archive for the company similar to the use case s company. Before you proceed to read the configuration part, please read the section Terms of use. Please keep in mind, that the names, configurations and units that we choose in this use case have an informative character only. What is contentaccess? contentaccess is an information management platform for migration, collaboration, access and transformation of data from different sources any time, from any devices. USE CASE Goal: Company size: Exchange server: Mailbox to be archived: Message classes to be archived: Archiving method: contentaccess single server: contentaccess server externally accessible over: Storage: Database: Retention time: Scheduler: TECH-ARROW s mailbox archive up to 2,000 mailboxes O365 (to be configured within EWS Settings) john.brown@tech-arrow.com Mails, Documents HTML shortcut tanews https://tanews.tech-arrow.com (to be configured within FQDN settings) single disk store single database 10 years provisioning job running daily from 5 PM till 6 PM; email archive process running every day from 6 PM till 7 PM Page 1/18

Monitoring: troubleshooting of misconfiguration. potential system and job related 1. Install contentaccess (server, central administration and contentweb) on a single server (in our case tanews) and navigate to the central administration start page of the software (for more details refer to contentaccess Manual). Log in with the system user credentials. It is also recommended to install proxy server over HTTPS (secure) connection and to publish contentaccess Outlook forms in Ms Outlook (to ensure HTML shortcut transparency). Proxy server setup and Outlook forms are both accessible in Tools option of the contentaccess setup package. Page 2/18

2. Navigate to System Services System, and under External accessibility settings enter https://tanews.techarrow.com. Under External accessibility settings the externally accessible, fully qualified domain name (FQDN) must be filled in correctly, otherwise the links in the HTML shortcut will not work. If you have a Proxy over HTTPS installed, then the domain name must be filled in here as HTTPS, too. In case that you use online exchange server, then the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) settings do not need to be filled in. In case that you archive from on premise exchange server, or you use Virtual Drive, and in all other cases the LDAP settings need to be filled in, too. For LDAP settings navigate to System Services System, and fill in Active directory integration settings. Page 3/18

3. Add a Tenant. Navigate to System Tenants Tenants (Screenshot A), click on + new and add TECH-ARROW (Screenshot B) & Tenant Admin for TA user into the system, then select the TECH-ARROW tenant that you created (Screenshot C). Screenshot A Screenshot B Screenshot C Add a new tenant & user (use existing or create new) into the system as it is shown on the screenshot A) above. The newly created tenant will appear in the right upper corner of the central administration user interface as on screenshot C). Select this tenant from the dropdown list. Page 4/18

4. Navigate to System Tenants All databases, click on + create new and fill in the Database repository window. Create a single SQL database to TECHARROW tenant with connection name Email Archive DB and Database user TA\Administrator. We will use the system database server (TANEWS), so tick the Use system database server (TANEWS) checkbox. Server name: enter the name of the database server (in our case we use the system database server). Database: under this name will be created the database on SQL server Under Database user option: enter the credentials of an already existing user, or create a new user and password to it with clicking on the Generate user and password button. With this step contentaccess will generate a new user on MSSQL. This newly created user will have access permissions only to the currently created database. If you do not check the Use explicit user under Database user option, then a new user will not be created and the service user will be used to access the database. If you do not check the Use explicit user option, then the Generate user and password button will remain inactive. Use explicit credentials: if this checkbox is not checked then contentaccess will automatically connect to the database (MSSQL) under the contentaccess service account. If you tick the checkbox, then enter the login data of the subject who has the right to create a new database on the database server. Tenants: select a tenant from the dropdown (in our case TECH-ARROW) list to whom the database will belong to. Page 5/18

When creating databases, always consider the size of the company, and the number of mailboxes that will be archived. For bigger companies with a high number of mailboxes (more then 2,000) it is always recommended to create separate databases e.g. for the provisioning job, for the store and separate database for email archive (or even for more exchange groups) also, to ensure transparency of processes. 5. Select TECH-ARROW tenant in the right hand menu of the central administration user interface, and navigate to the Email Archive tab on the ribbon. If you created a new tenant and navigated to the Email archive ribbon tab for the first time it will needed to activate Email Archiving with a click on Activate button. With this action a provisioning job will be automatically created. 6. Set the single Email Archive DB database as default. Navigate to Email Archive Settings Databases, select Email Archive DB, and click on the (ellipses) and select Set default from the dropdown list. Page 6/18

7. Perform system settings. Navigate to Email Archive Settings System settings ribbon button and fill in a) Email Archive DB under Database settings, b) Exchange Online (O365) under EWS settings and c) Exclude all message classes except of Mails and Documents. Important!!! The user that you set under Email Archive System settings EWS Settings, under User name must have a full access to the mailbox(es) that he/she would like to archive, and also must have View-Only Organization Management rights on exchange. It is important to bear in mind that the message class settings performed under Email Archive Settings System settings, under Exclude message classes will always have priority, nevertheless there will be another settings within an archiving job. a) Database settings. Here will be selected the database, which will be used by the provisioning job. The provisioning job will store here the metadata (mailbox permissions, group memberships, etc.) during the synchronization process. b) EWS Settings. Under Exchange server type and Exchange server interface version select the type and version of the Exchange server where your email provider is running. Then enter the EWS URL, PowerShell URL and the PowerShell authentication. These data must be requested from the email provider that you use. The maximum count of connection-attempts can be determined under Max. connection count option. It is also possible to disregard any SSL errors with checking the checkbox Ignore SSL errors. Enter the User name and Password for explicit credentials or log in under service-credentials and run a test connection via Test button. c) Exclude message classes. This feature can be quite useful for companies who have a policy, that certain message classes, e.g. Contacts, Tasks etc. mustn t be archived. Here you can also exclude custom message classes. E.g. if your company already has some emails archived by a product from another company, then you can exclude these already archived emails from the re-archiving process. Page 7/18

8. Adjust Retentions. Navigate to Email Archive Settings Retentions and configure the duration of storing of the archived item to 10 years. Click on + new, and fill in Retention required by law (10 years) for retention name and the 120 for retention time into the Retention repository window. During the duration of this retention time the archived items will not be deleted from the selected storage. 9. Set Retention required by law (10 years) as default retention. In the Email Archive Settings Retentions select retention Retention required by law (10 years), double click on ellipses ( ) and set this retention as default. This default retention is used by the Mail app, in case that the user would like to archive/restore mailbox items manually from the mailbox via the Mail app directly. 10. Configure an HTML shortcut. Navigate to Email Archive Settings Shortcut Configurations button and under HTML Templates click on + new to create a default HTML file. Name this HTML as Default (Screenshot A). Then click on + new option under the breadcrumbs and according to Screenshot B create an HTML shortcut, name it as Shortcut HTML. In the repository window select the Default HTML that you created a while ago. For truncate body fill in 200. Tick the options Change message class and Remove attachments. Type Green category into the Add category textbox. Screenshot A Page 8/18

Screenshot B With contentaccess the archived documents can be easily reopened/restored from the archive in case of need. This functionality can be achieved with the help of shortcuts. It is recommended to use HTML shortcut (with remove attachments and change message class option) instead of Normal shortcut. Normal shortcut works only in MS Outlook, the second condition is to have the contentaccess Outlook form installed in Outlook. The HTML shortcut will work with both, if the Change message class option is selected. On OWA or on mobile device you will see the HTML (which will contain a link to the archived attachment), and in MS Outlook it will open the email (if the form is installed). The archived emails will be marked with the category that you select under Add category option. If Remove attachments is ticked, then the attachments will be stored separately from the body of the email message. The HTML Templates are free for editing. The size of a HTML-template cannot exceed 32 kb, from this reason, it is not recommended to use MS Word for editing HTML templates. 11. Set the Shortcut HTML as default. Navigate to Email Archive Settings Shortcut Configurations, select the Shortcut HTML, double click on the (ellipses) and click on Set default in the dropdown list. This default shortcut is used by the Mail app, in case that the user would like to archive/restore mailbox items manually from the mailbox directly. Page 9/18

12. Create the disk type store with name Email Archive store. Navigate to Email archive Settings Storages, here click on + new and fill the Storage repository window. For store name type Email Archive store, select the Disk type store and fill in the path: c:\diskstoreta\emailarchive. Tick Store metadata in DB and Compression textboxes. Under Database connection select single Email Archive DB that we created in Step 5 above. The location that you set here will be used to store your binaries. By the disk type storages the user can decide, if he wants to store the metadata in the database (checkbox Store metadata in DB ). With unchecking this field it is possible to spare even more database space, if these metadata are for the user redundant. If an explicit user will not be selected for this storage, then the contentaccess service user will be used automatically. 13. Select the Email Archive store storage, click on ellipsis and choose Set default from the dropdown list. Screenshot A Email archive job scheduler 14. Configure 2 schedulers, one for the provisioning job, the second for the email archive job. Navigate to Email Archive Settings Schedules, click on + new option create a Week schedule with repeat scheduler with name Every day at 6 PM, and with a frequency of running 60 minutes. Fix the start time of the email archive job running in the week map, too (Screenshot A). Page 10/18

For the provisioning scheduler, Navigate to Email Archive Settings Schedules again, click on + new option create a Week schedule with repeat scheduler with name Provisioning scheduler, and with a frequency of running 60 minutes. Fix the start time 5 PM of the provisioning running in the week map, too (Screenshot B). Screenshot B Provisioning job scheduler 15. Perform provisioning settings. Navigate to Email Archive Settings Provisioning settings. Configure the provisioning as follows: a) set the Provisioning scheduler from the list, b) under Notification settings choose Never from the dropdown list (monitoring job will be used to check potential system and job misconfigurations), and c) under Exchange servers click on + select and add Office 365 to the list. Important!!! Provisioning should be run before the Email Archive is configured. That is why we configured a daily scheduler from 5 PM to 6 PM for the provisioning job, and a daily scheduler from 6 PM till 7 PM for the email archiving job. It is also a solution to start the provisioning job manually to ensure, that all the selected objects are synchronized into contentaccess. Page 11/18

The provisioning job is an elementary plugin to one or more email archive jobs, which is intended to extract exchange groups and subgroups and synchronize these changes with contentaccess. If the whole exchange server is selected, as in our case, then it is redundant to select exchange groups for processing, as the groups are already involved in the selected exchange server. Under Notification settings you can also set where and when to send emails about the potential errors, warnings that might occur during the running of the plugin. It is recommended to send these emails when errors occur, but if you use the monitoring feature, then this step can be left out. If you decide to use notifications, then it must be configured in System Services Notifications first. A notification email looks like this one bellow. If there would be an error, then it would be visible in the row bellow, in the Message and Details columns. Page 12/18

Now come on with creating the Email Archive job!!! 16. Creating a new Email Archiving job. A) Navigate to Email Archive Archive click on Jobs + new option. B) Enter the Display name (JohnBrown_ archive job) into the Add new job instance window, click on Add. C) Click on OK in the pop up window and configure the job instance. D) Set Email Archive DB that we created in step 4 above. The metadata will be stored here. E) Select the Every day at 6 PM scheduler that we created in step 14 above. F) Select the Email Archive store storage that we configured in step 12 above. G) Select retention Retention required by law (10 years), which we configured in step 8. Page 13/18

H) Within this step select the john.brown@tech-arrow.com this mailbox, which will be archived. Click on + select option and tick mailbox in the Mailbox selection window. I) Select the INBOX folder of john.brown@tech-arrow.com, which contents will be archived. For Folder filtering type select One single folder. If there are any folders which you would not like to archive, you can exclude them from archiving under Exclude folder, with a click on + add folder and configuring them in the Exclude folder window. Page 14/18

J) Item filtering. In Email Archive Settings System settings under Exclude message classes we have already configured, that only mails and documents need to be processed by the archiving job. Under Include folders we have selected whole INBOX to be archived. So there is no need to set filters in this step. It s worth to mention, that in case of need the archiving can be further limited with using 3 types of filters: Age filter, Size filter and Message class filter, but the filters set in Email Archive Settings System settings under Exclude message classes will always have priority. K) Under Notification settings select Never, as we will use the monitoring feature to check the details of possible system or job related failures. Although we do not use notification emails for detecting possible failures, it is possible to set here, when you will need to get notifications from the Email Archive regarding the successfulness of running of the email archive job. It is possible to set here, if you need a notification email always/never, or, you need it only in case when an error/warning occurred during the archiving process (it is recommended to choose this option if notification is used). Into the Recipient list mailbox insert the email addresses of the persons, to whom you would like to send these emails. If you decide to use notifications, then it must be configured in System Services Notifications first. L) Under Shortcut settings select Shortcut HTML, that we configured in step 10 above. M) Under processing settings select the Archive processing type from the dropdown list. It is always recommended to turn on the Split attachments function (by default it is turned on). N) Under resource settings set value 2. Page 15/18

This value will determine how many items will be processed simultaneously by the email archive plugin. 17. Save your changes!! After the configuration of a job instance it is still allowed to modify these configurations with navigating to Email Archive Archive Jobs, and a double click on the corresponding job. On this page you can also manually start/stop the running of the job. With enabling the auto refresh button the current state of running will be visible every 5 seconds. On the Progress bar you can check the status of the job. 18. Now we will check the JohnBrown_ archive job events, if everything has run properly. Navigate to System Services Monitoring. Under filtration, select Job event type, and select JohnBrown archive job. Under Runs, select the running starting with 6 PM CET (according to our scheduler settings). Under Events you will see that in this case, mailbox processing information run successfully. Page 16/18

With the Export button you can export the events into an HTML, XML or CSV file format: 19. After the archiving job has run, the Email Archive DB database and Email Archive store will be assigned to the mailbox automatically. These configurations can be checked with navigating to Email Archive Archive View address book, under the Exchange mailboxes section, in the last columns of john.brown@tech-arrow.com mailbox. 20. And last but not least; when working with this great product, do not forget to enjoy it!:) Page 17/18

Terms of use Definition of terms: TAB, GROUP, BUTTON contentaccess Central Administration user interface is divided into tabs, groups and buttons. Each tab contains several groups, which also contain several buttons. When the reader of the manual encounters with a path containing 3 levels, e.g. Email Archive Settings Databases, then this path will navigate the user through the following levels: TAB GROUP BUTTON. Page 18/18