Message archiving is a SmarterMail Enterprise feature that allows a business to store all email traffic for a domain — either incoming messages, outgoing messages, or both — in a separate location on the mail server. When archiving is set up, messages are automatically archived as soon as they hit the spool and before they are handled by any spam and/or content filters. This means that all messages are archived, not simply those that are delivered to a user's mailbox. The exception to this rule is messages rejected due to SMTP Blocking. If a message is rejected due SMTP Spam blocking, it will never hit the spool and, therefore, will not be archived.
By default, SmarterMail does not archive any messages. To specify which domains are archived, the system administrator first needs to enable it, then create general archiving rules. Rules can be set up for the system as a whole, so all domains are archived, in the system's General settings, then archiving rules can be enabled, disabled, or modified for individual domains on a domain's Options tab.
Enabling Archiving
First, the domain administrator needs to enable Message Archiving. To do this:
- Log in as the system administrator.
- Navigate to Settings -> General.
- Find the Message Archiving (Enterprise Only) card.
- Click the Enable link to enable the archiving feature.
- Once enabled, click the Settings link. This allows a system administrator to set default rules for where the archive is stored, and how long messages are archived before they're purged.
That's all there is to it. Next, it's possible to disable archiving for a specific domain or edit the default settings for a domain. For example, if a specific business requires message data to be stored longer than the default rules that were set up, this can be adjusted specifically for that business.
Editing a Domain's Message Archive
Individual domains can have Message Archiving enabled, disabled, or edited by a system administrator on an as-needed basis. By default, even if Message Archiving is enabled at the system level, Archiving is NOT enabled for any domains by default, so it needs to be enabled by a system administrator for each domain individually. When Archiving is enabled for a domain, only the system administrator can edit its Settings. Domain administrators only have the ability to search the Message Archive, not edit settings.
- As the system administrator, navigate to the Manage area.
- Select the domain you want/need to edit.
- By default, you should be on that domain's Options tab. If not, select it.
- Find the Message Archiving (Enterprise Only) card for the domain.
- Click the Enable link -- this enables Message Archiving for that domain.
- Once enabled, click the Settings link. This opens a modal that will allow you to manage or change any default settings that were created. Once you're satisfied with the Settings, click the Enable button.
Message Archiving is now set up for that domain.
Disabling Message Archiving for a Domain
When you disable Message Archiving for a domain, any archived EMLs or ZIP files remain. SmarterMail does not have a nightly clean up routine that will remove archived data if Archiving is turned off. Therefore, these will need to be manually deleted from the server or moved off the relevant data drive. In addition, even if "Months to Keep" is enabled, that stops running, so that timeframe is never hit by SmarterMail.
If Archiving is disabled for a domain, and then re-enabled using the same data path, any previously archived data is still there, and still searchable.