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autoarchive
Idea shared by Sabatino - 4/12/2022 at 1:52 AM
Under Consideration
I am repetitive, but every now and then I bring this topic to the attention because I know, from experience with other mail servers, how much this can lighten customer assistance.

I propose to create an Archive subfolder (which can be activated per single user) which creates a copy of all incoming and outgoing messages with autoclean options

This folder must be accessible to the user in read-only mode (it would be nice if it was also accessible via imap / eas but I would be satisfied even only via webmail)

This solves the problem of deleting emails by user error, which can be recovered independently without creating tickets
Sabatino Traini
      Chief Information Officer
Genial s.r.l. 
Martinsicuro - Italy
I see you don't like this idea.
Yet I have solved various situations and made many of my clients happy.

To consider that it could be a business. Even in other mail servers that allow me it, I only activate it for some paid customers
Sabatino Traini
      Chief Information Officer
Genial s.r.l. 
Martinsicuro - Italy
Zach Sylvester Replied
4/20/2022 at 12:50 PM
Employee Post
Hey Sabatino, 

Thank you for posting to the community, Using backup software is always recommended when it comes to email servers. 
One thing that you could do to make this idea work is to create a new user on the domain and then create a separate Archive folder for each user. Then share this folder with the user in question as read-only. Once that is done you can write a script that uses VSS to copy the GRP files from the user's inboxes to said shared inbox then run the folder rebuild function in the API. 

But I will go ahead and escalate this request to management for you. 

Kind Regards, 

Zach Sylvester

Software Developer
SmarterTools Inc.
Zach Sylvester Replied
4/20/2022 at 1:35 PM
Employee Post
Hello, 

This has been escalated the current proper way to do this would be just to take nightly backups then take the GRP files for the day that the email was deleted and place them in a newly created folder and then rebuild that folder. But now management will see if this is something that is feasible to add. I do want to add that one of the downsides of doing this would be that you'd take up twice the amount of space per user as you'd effectively have two copies of the mailbox instead of just one. so a 10 GB account would take up 20 GBS etc. This would then become 30 GBS if you're also doing full backups. 

Kind Regards, 

Zach Sylvester

Software Developer
SmarterTools Inc.
hi Zach

I have already put in place a little trick to achieve what is described

I created an accout plus message (archive@domain.tld) with move to folder

So with the events of the domain

1) message received, if in a there is user1@domain.tdl add recipient archivie+user1/inbox@domain.tld 

2) message sent, if in from there is user1@domain.tdl add recipient archivie+user1/sent@domain.tld

and so on for the various users I am interested in creating the archive

Then if anything I could share the folder with user1 as read-only


The system works but a bit cumbersome, it could be made much simpler in my opinion, providing it as a native functionality.

Of course it takes up space, but if they want the service I will pay for it

So the archive could be autocleaned by time or by space

Also I would like to be able to put the archive on a different disk (sometimes we manage to pay less space for a cold archive at low speed)
But I can only do this at the domain level, but then I lose the ability to share as read only


I believe that a service of this type can be sold and therefore to the benefit of all.
The customer is happy, I earn more and I'm even happier :-)
Sabatino Traini
      Chief Information Officer
Genial s.r.l. 
Martinsicuro - Italy
Zach Sylvester Replied
4/21/2022 at 7:42 AM
Employee Post
Hello, 

Thanks for including all this detail including needs, workflow, and use case. 

This helps management decide if this is something we need and helps the developers implement it. 

I've forwarded this reply over to management. 

Have a great rest of your day. 

Kind Regards, 

Zach Sylvester

Software Developer
SmarterTools Inc.
Shameless un-compensated plug: 

I am now using Securence for security, continuity, archiving. This includes a web interface with Shadow mailbox that each user can access, to see/search their sent/received emails, not to mention viewing their Quarantine and being able to release/whitelist false positives. They can also blacklist senders if allowed (I don't allow it per user).

Also allows them to send/receive recent emails directly if their mail server is down. AV and Anti-Spam (etc.) are highly effective with VERY low false-positive rates. Other features too numerous to mention in this already too-long post.

Costs about a couple bucks/mo./user (as a reseller) but also allows email to flow to unregistered users, that you don't pay for (so catch-all still works, for example). I'm fortunate enough to have clients who don't mind paying for this stuff per-user.

In use now for several months. Extremely pleased with the service. Maintenance overhead close to zero once an account and users are set up.

Oh yeah, and 24x7 phone tech support. Whoohoo. A division of U.S. Internet, quite a large provider. Developed for their own use and then made available to others, including Fortune 100 companies.

Moved to Securence from Messagelabs/Symantec Cloud for more than one client and never looked back. 

Environments are SmarterMail <--> Microsoft 365 and iMail Server <--> Microsoft 365 split-domain arrangements.

BTW the SmarterMail archive is great/useful but is not available directly to users and of course does not work with Microsoft 365 users. Microsoft's own archiving costs more, but my feeling also is that it's good to have another party handling this for continuity purposes.
Zach Sylvester Replied
4/28/2022 at 8:45 AM
Employee Post
Hey Paul, 

Thanks for sharing what you use. That sounds like a pretty cool tool. The only 3rd party tool I have used for archiving is MailStore. It doesn't have all of those features however as it's mostly just used for backups. 

Thanks again Paul,

Zach Sylvester

Software Developer
SmarterTools Inc.
I use MailStore too. The user also has a client that allows them to search the archive and restore options or reply from archive
C
Hi
I currently use Securence for archiving, continuity, and security. This contains a web interface with a shadow mailbox that each user can access, as well as the ability to view their quarantine and be able to release or whitelist false positives, as well as to see/search their sent/received emails.  
I should note that one drawback of doing this would be that you would effectively have two copies of the mailbox instead of just one, taking up twice as much space per user. 

Clifton Evans
Mechanical Engineer
(877)-555-0103
Mechanical EngineerSmarterTools Inc.www.smartertools.com basket random
+1 for this function
Gabriele Maoret - Head of SysAdmins and CISO at SERSIS
Currently manages 6 SmarterMail installations (1 in the cloud for SERSIS which provides services to a few hundred third-party email domains + 5 on-premise for customers who prefer to have their mail server in-house)
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