Enterprise Vault™ Setting up SMTP Archiving

About SMTP provisioning groups

SMTP provisioning groups facilitate the initial configuration and ongoing management of large numbers of target users for SMTP Group Journaling and SMTP Mailbox Journaling. You can create multiple provisioning groups to apply different policy and retention settings to different groups of users. For example, you could create one provisioning group for sales users, and a different one for engineering users.

Before creating provisioning groups for SMTP Group or Mailbox Journaling, you need to add the required SMTP routing addresses. The routing addresses are added as manual SMTP target addresses. You cannot use provisioning groups to add routing addresses.

See Adding SMTP routing addresses.

When you create the first provisioning group, Enterprise Vault offers to create the SMTP Provisioning task, if it does not exist. When the provisioning task runs, it configures each target user in the group with the provisioning group archiving and retention settings. The provisioning task creates a report on how it has provisioned target users in each group. The provisioning reports include details of any issues that arise during the provisioning run.

See SMTP Provisioning task summary reports.

There are two different types of provisioning group: one to configure users for SMTP Group Journaling, and another to configure users for SMTP Mailbox Journaling. You create new provisioning groups in the Administration Console, under Targets > SMTP > Provisioning Groups.

The order of SMTP provisioning groups is significant. Enterprise Vault processes the groups from the top of the list down. If you add target users in large groups, you can use group ordering to process certain users differently.

See Changing the order of the SMTP provisioning groups.

Use SMTP Group Journaling provisioning groups when you want the group members' messages archived together in the archive or archives that you assign to the provisioning group.

In the new provisioning group wizard for this type of group, you select or create one or more archives in which you want Enterprise Vault to store the messages. All the archives assigned to an SMTP Group Journaling provisioning group must have the same retention settings. Enterprise Vault enforces this requirement. If you change the retention on one of the group archives, Enterprise Vault propagates the change to all of the other archives assigned to the group.

See Managing cascading retention settings on multiple archives.

If you create archives in the new provisioning group wizard, you can only create SMTP archives. However, if you select existing archives, you can select any of the following types of archive: SMTP, Shared, Exchange Journal, or Domino Journal.

If you assign multiple archives to a provisioning group, Enterprise Vault spreads the archiving load across the archives.

Use SMTP Mailbox Journaling provisioning groups when you want each group member's messages archived in a separate, personal Internet Mail archive. Enterprise Vault creates and configures the Internet Mail archives automatically.

In the new provisioning group wizard for this type of provisioning group, you select the vault store in which you want Enterprise Vault to create any new Internet Mail archives.

When provisioning a target user or address in an SMTP Mailbox Journaling provisioning group, the SMTP provisioning task tries to resolve the target user or address to an Active Directory user account. Provisioning then checks the Enterprise Vault configuration to see if an Internet Mail archive already exists for the user. If an Internet Mail archive exists, then provisioning assigns the archive for the user's SMTP messages. If an Internet Mail archive does not exist, then provisioning creates a new one in the vault store that you selected. The user is given access permissions to the new archive.

If provisioning cannot find an Active Directory account for the target, it uses the target SMTP address as the archive name. For example, if the target email address is john.doe@example.com, then the archive name is john.doe@example.com. In this situation, you have to add access permissions to the archive manually.

If you have previously configured the target users for IMAP access in Enterprise Vault, then they will already have an Internet Mail archive. When the same Internet Mail archives are used for both SMTP Archiving and IMAP access, then you need to set the same retention settings for the archives in both IMAP and SMTP provisioning groups.

If you schedule both the Client Access Provisioning task for IMAP access, and the SMTP Provisioning task for the same target users, then we recommend that you stagger the schedules so that both tasks do not run at the same time.

If you change the retention settings on the archive of a target user in an SMTP Mailbox Journaling provisioning group, Enterprise Vault does not cascade the change to other archives in the group, as in SMTP Journaling and SMTP Group Journaling. However, the provisioning task restores the provisioning group retention to the archive on the next provisioning run.

You can add target users to a provisioning group in the new provisioning group wizard. After you have created a provisioning group, you can add or remove group members using the provisioning group Targets properties. The following options are available in the wizard and in the group properties:

When you add a target user to a group, we recommend that you always add an Active Directory target user using one of the menu options other than Email address.

Use the Email address option to add to the provisioning group the target SMTP address of a user who is not associated with an Active Directory account. For example, you can use this option to add to the group users who are external to your organization. You can also use this option to add to the group an existing target address that is listed under Manual Targets. Enterprise Vault cannot provision the target address as a member of the group until you delete the existing target under Manual Targets.

To include as targets all of the SMTP addresses for the Active Directory user's, clear the check box, Target only primary email address, if it is selected. This option is in the wizard, and on the General tab of the provisioning group properties. If the target user has no SMTP addresses in Active Directory, the target is created, but disabled for archiving.

If the same target user is included in more than one provisioning group, then the user is provisioned according to the first group processed. You can change the order in which Enterprise Vault processes the provisioning groups. As provisioning groups for both SMTP Group and Mailbox Journaling are listed together, the same user cannot be provisioned for both types of journaling.

If you have a multi-site SMTP Archiving environment, and some target users are in more than one site, then Target only primary email address must be set consistently across the sites.

You can use the dashboard to list the SMTP target users in the provisioning group, and view their configuration details. To open the dashboard, click Targets > SMTP in the navigation pane of the Administration Console.

If you are implementing SMTP Group or Mailbox Journaling with SMTP Journaling, the setting, Selective Journal Archiving, lets you control whether target users' messages are archived in both the SMTP Journaling archives and the SMTP Group or Mailbox Journaling archives. For example, your provisioned target users may be senior managers, who want their messages archived in the provisioning group archives only, and not in the general journal archives. In this case, you can use the value, Exclusive, to limit where target users' messages are stored.

For SMTP Group or Mailbox Journaling, the value of the advanced SMTP site setting, Selective Journal Archiving, must be Inclusive or Exclusive. When you create the first provisioning group, Enterprise Vault automatically sets the value to Inclusive. If you subsequently change the setting value, Enterprise Vault does not update it automatically.

See Configuring the SMTP site setting, Selective Journal Archiving.

You can create a provisioning group as enabled or disabled for archiving. In the new provisioning group wizard, this is controlled by the setting, Archive messages sent from or received by these users.

Creating a disabled provisioning group is useful if you have added a large group of target users to a provisioning group, and you want to exclude certain users in that group from archiving. You can create a disabled provisioning group, and add as targets the users that you want to exclude. Make sure that this provisioning group is first in the list of provisioning groups.

After you create a provisioning group, you can control whether the group members are enabled for archiving using the setting, Archive messages for provisioned users, in the General tab of the provisioning group properties

We strongly recommend that you use SMTP provisioning groups to configure users for SMTP Group and Mailbox Journaling. If necessary, you can use the Manual Targets node to add target SMTP addresses for SMTP Group or Mailbox Journaling. Note that targets that you add in this way are not associated with any provisioning group.

See Adding SMTP target addresses manually.