Exchange Online Mailbox Connector

We’re excited to announce the launch of our Microsoft Exchange Connector, Mailbox edition, designed to offer greater flexibility in managing email retention and disposal.

With this new connector, each mailbox can be treated as an individual entity without ingesting full email content into RecordPoint, allowing you to apply tailored retention schedules and automate email disposal at the right time. This helps prevent email over-retention and reduce storage costs.

Our existing Microsoft Online Exchange connector remains available for capturing all emails for specific mailboxes.

With the flexibility of these two Microsoft Exchange connectors, you can now choose the setup option that works best for their organization:

Manage each mailbox as a single entity, integrating retention schedules for automated disposal on schedule.

Capture and retain all emails for senior staff members or policymakers that may be relevant in FOI requests, legal proceedings, or investigations.

Set Up Process Overview

The following steps are used to connect and configure your Exchange Online Mailbox Connector in RecordPoint:

Add Connector

1. Click on the Settings icon in the top right hand corner of the RecordPoint Platform

2. Click on +Add Connector

3. Select the Exchange Online Mailbox Connector tile in the Connectors Gallery.

Authorising the Connector

Now that the connector instance has been created, we need to complete the authorization process so that the connector can access your Exchange Online tenancy.

1. Once you are in the Exchange Online Mailbox Connector Details page, select Link Account to connect RecordPoint to your Exchange Online tenancy.
   1. 
2. You will be directed to a page where Microsoft will prompt you to log in. Enter credentials to log in, then click Accept.
   1. 

Now that the connector has been authorized against your Exchange Online tenancy the remaining configuration can now be completed.

In the Managed Mailboxes section, enter those email addresses which you wish to not have managed by RecordPoint.

This connector follows an entity based approach towards email management. A collection of emails is “rolled up” into a record which represents the total amount of emails created during that particular roll up period. For example, if the roll up period is set to weekly, an email digest record of 1 week would be created as a child record within the mailbox (aggregation).

Once enabled, the connector will only pull in content created or updated after the connection. To ingest content that was created before the connection, use Content Registration.

1. Select Ingest existing content. This will register your content in line with your exclusion/inclusion preferences that you just set.
2. If you select only ingest new and updated content, only data created after the connector is enabled will be ingested.

Email Digests and Mailboxes

What is the difference between a digest and a mailbox?

A mailbox is the aggregate that a user would apply all records management functions to. e.g. classification, legal hold/freeze, search…etc

An email digest represents a period of time (roll up) of emails that the mailbox received. These email digests are child records within the mailbox aggregate and have all RM functions applied based on what was applied to the mailbox (aggregate).

How do I search on these records?

You can use the advanced search feature and specify the content source or the title of the mailbox. e.g. “Content Source contains Mailbox” or “Title contains admin@yourcompany.com.”

How do I apply a classification to these records?

RecordPoint’s recommendation when classifying these records is to use the rules functionality. This ensures that every mailbox/record that is created by the Exchange Online Mailbox Connector is classified with the correct classification. To do this, simply:

• Go to the rules page

• Create a new node at the top where the criteria is “Content Source equals Exchange Online Mailbox”

• Create an action where a classification applies to records that meet this criteria.

• Save the updated rules tree.

Every mailbox and email digest that the connector creates will now have the correct classification moving forward.

How does disposition work?

The retention and disposal schedule of the classification is based on the “SourceCreatedDate” field (RecordPoint core field). For records created by the Exchange Online Mailbox Connector, the SourceCreatedDate will always be the last date in the roll up period to ensure that all emails within the roll up period have met their retention before disposal.

How do I know what emails were destroyed?

To know what emails were destroyed during the roll up period, you can download the email digest within the binaries page of the “Email Digest” record which contains metadata related to each email within that period. The metadata that RecordPoint pulls from Exchange for the Exchange Online Mailbox Connector include:

• bccRecipients - The Bcc: recipients for the message

• ccRecipients - The Cc: recipients for the message.

• createdDateTime - The date and time the message was created.

• id - Unique identifier for the message

• receivedDateTime - The date and time the message was received.

• sender - The account that is actually used to generate the message

• sentDateTime - The date and time the message was sent.

• subject - The subject of the message.

• toRecipients - The To: recipients for the message.

What happens if I have content in an online archive?

RecordPoint is in the process of supporting emails that are stored in Exchange Online Archive. Please speak to your account manager to understand how RecordPoint will support Exchange Online Archive. Otherwise, for emails that were not found, an audit message will be shown with event details "Content Not Found."