Technical Tips for Archiving Microsoft 365 Emails for New MailStore Server Customers

Why Should You Use MailStore Server with Microsoft 365?

Although emails can be locally archived in Microsoft 365, there are many reasons to use an external email archiving solution like MailStore Server alongside Microsoft 365. These reasons are summarized in a free technical review by the market research institute Osterman Research, available here. For example, many companies believe that once they move to the cloud, they no longer need to protect and preserve their business-critical data since they assume the cloud provider is responsible for backing up their data. However, this belief is completely wrong. Microsoft 365 customers are responsible for the protection and storage of their data, including archiving and regular backups. As a general cloud service provider, Microsoft is only responsible for ensuring the availability of its services and protecting against outages. Therefore, companies using such a general cloud service should take measures to protect themselves from the risk of data loss. MailStore Server, not only provides protection, but also makes your emails in Microsoft 365 centrally and independently accessible. In addition to that, it provides a fast self-service solution that allows end-users to search for and retrieve emails and file attachments. You can find more reasons to use MailStore Server with Microsoft 365 here.

Modern Authentication as Standard in MailStore

Increasingly more companies are moving to Microsoft 365. This trend is accelerating further with the end of support for Microsoft Windows SBS 2011 and the soon-to-follow end of support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. Since Microsoft has announced the end of basic authentication, OAuth2 based modern authentication will soon become a requirement for many companies. MailStore Server supports modern authentication and, along with that, not only provides the most suitable integration for the Microsoft 365 cloud environment but also provides the necessary security. For example, as a Microsoft 365 user, you can simply use your normal login procedure for your Microsoft 365 tenant to log in to MailStore Server, which includes multi-factor authentication.

In this Technical Tip, we want to explain how you can archive your emails from Microsoft 365 as a new MailStore Server customer, thereby providing long-term protection against data loss and making your data always accessible and retrievable. We also show you how to connect MailStore Server to your Microsoft 365 tenant using modern authentication, how to synchronize users (section 1), and how to customize archiving profiles (section 2). Two videos are provided below, showing these steps.

Section 1: Preparing Your Microsoft 365 Tenant and User Synchronization

In this video, we explain the first configuration and connection of MailStore Server to Microsoft 365. We also show you how to connect MailStore Server to your Microsoft 365 tenant to synchronize user information. Among other things, we address how MailStore Server can be registered as an application in Azure AD and how the necessary permissions can be assigned. Finally, we show you how to perform user synchronization.

You can find all the detailed steps in our MailStore Server Help and step-by-step instructions in our Technical Tip video:

Section 2: Customizing the Archiving Profile on MailStore Server

In the second video, we show you how to fully archive your Microsoft 365 mailboxes. Please make sure that you have completed all steps from the previous Technical Tip video (section 1). Then, you can continue selecting your archiving profile. We explain how both current and future emails will be archived by MailStore Server through "daily archiving" (also known as daily log). We also recommend our free MailStore Gateway add-on as an external journal mailbox. For example, we also explain how to define deletion rules.

You can find all the detailed steps in our MailStore Server Help. In the video below, you will get practical step-by-step instructions on customizing archiving profiles:

Already Using MailStore Server?

If you are already using MailStore Server with an on-premise Exchange Server, you can easily transfer your existing archive to Microsoft 365. Your emails will continue to be archived as before, and it helps you meet the growing number of compatibility requirements. Our Technical Tip, Migrating from Microsoft Exchange Server to Microsoft 365 for Existing MailStore Customers, provides practical step-by-step instructions. You can also find a step-by-step guide on how to migrate your archiving from Microsoft Exchange Server to Microsoft 365 in our MailStore Server Help.

Source: Email Archiving for Microsoft 365 for New MailStore Customers