Archive Microsoft 365 and Exchange Online continuously

Overview

Continuous archiving runs through a transport rule in Exchange Online. The rule sends a BCC copy of every message to your relay address. The Microsoft 365 connector does not replace this rule. It provides users, groups and the import of existing mailboxes.

1. Copy the relay address

1. Open Admin > Integrations.
2. On the SMTP BCC relay card, click Set up.
3. Copy the address under Your relay address. It looks like {slug}-{token}@smtp.easymailarchive.com. The part after the hyphen is a token that differs for each tenant. Addresses without the token stop working after a short grace period.
4. Switch to the Exchange tab and click Done. This saves the source.

2. Create the transport rule

1. Open the Exchange admin center.
2. Go to Mail flow > Rules.
3. Create a new rule, for example named "EasyMailArchive".
4. Set the condition so the rule applies to all messages.
5. Set the action to Bcc the message to and enter your relay address.
6. Save the rule and enable it.

Or with PowerShell:

New-TransportRule -Name "Archive" -BlindCopyTo "{slug}-{token}@smtp.easymailarchive.com"

Instead of a transport rule you can use an Exchange journal rule that delivers to the same address.

3. If the address is rejected

Exchange does not accept some external addresses in the rule. In that case create a mail contact in the Exchange admin center with the relay address as its email address. Pick that contact as the recipient of the BCC copy in the rule.

4. Test

1. Send an email with a unique subject from one mailbox in your organization to another.
2. Send a second email to an external address.
3. In EasyMailArchive, open Search and look for the subject.
4. On the dashboard, check that the Compliance status card shows Active, {count} emails archived.

If delivery fails with 550 unknown tenant, the identifier in the relay address is wrong. 550 tenant is not active means your tenant is not active.

The rule covers new messages. Existing mail comes from the connector in the next section.

5. Optional: Microsoft 365 connector

1. Open Admin > Integrations and start the setup on the Microsoft 365 card.
2. Click Connect with Microsoft.
3. Sign in with a Global Administrator account.
4. Review the requested permissions and accept them. Access to the directory and mailboxes is read-only.
5. After the redirect you see Connected to Microsoft 365. The first sync starts automatically.
6. Optional: enter a Domain filter (optional) and click Save domains. Sync now starts a sync manually.

The connector syncs users, groups and domains hourly and creates import jobs for the mailboxes.

6. Check Import Jobs

Open Admin > Import Jobs. Jobs appear there automatically. The status is Pending, Running, Finished or Failed. The progress column shows duplicates (dup) and errors (err). You cannot create jobs on this page.

Next

To confirm your first archived mail, see Check your first archived email.