17
Feb
Support queries shared: Office365 aliases and archiving with MailStore
As Office365 and other hosted Exchange platforms continue to attract more users, we're starting to see more demand from customers looking for a way to keep an offline copy of their data 'just in case' the unthinkable should happen.
MailStore is perfect for automating this process, and while there's a good setup guide online to cover the basics, last week a customer called in asking for help with the more 'niche' requirement of setting up MailStore to archive email going to aliases in O365.
A question I'm frequently asked by users is "What happens to a user's mailbox in the event they leave the company?".
My first response is usually to qualify what's going to happen with their email address once they've left. Will the address leave with them and will all further messages sent to that address will be bounced? Or will there be another member of staff taking over their role who'll need visibility of those existing messages?
This is a decision for the business and companies will differ from each other in how they'll want to approach the managing of mailboxes and of staff turnover.
Typically I find that companies will remove the Active Directory account as soon as the person has left, and they'll probably also choose to remove the email account from the mail server. Most organisations will tend to keep the email archive for this user intact for some time.
We have seen two separate issues recently where MailStore had been configured to use directory services to synchronise its user list with an external source. One being an