M365 Admin - Outlook Online Archive

Details

 

An Outlook online archive mailbox can store older email messages where they won't occupy space in the Outlook primary mailbox.

  • This specialized mailbox appears alongside the other mailbox folders in Outlook. 
  • An M365 administrator has to enable the online archive mailbox
  • Messages can be manually moved into the archive mailbox, but users may assign policies to messages and folders to move those items to the online archive mailbox
  • Currently at Dartmouth, an online archive, (or archive mailbox), adds an additional 100GB of mail storage as a separate mailbox that will show up in a user's account.

There is also an auto-expanding archive option. 

  • This type of online archive is intended for mailboxes on legal hold that cannot delete messages to recover the space.

Criteria
  • Users who qualify for an Online Archive mailbox are most often in VIP, Senior leadership roles, or a mailbox that meets the criteria for legal hold.
    • CTC Team 
  • In general, for a user who is having a full mailbox issue, we recommend following the guidelines in the article below to reduce the size of their Outlook mailbox

 

Functional Details

How it looks based on version of Outlook being used

  • BWA Outlook - archive name is "In-Place Archive" 
  • Mac Legacy Outlook - archive doesn't show/unavailable 
  • Mac New Outlook - archive name is "Online Archive" 
  • PC Legacy Outlook - archive name is "Online Archive" 
  • PC New Outlook - archive name is "In-Place Archive" 

Cannot drag or move a folder from mailbox to the Archive folder unless you are using PC Legacy Outlook

Can make a folder in the Archive folder (that is inside the Online/In-Place Archive folder), and move messages to that folder. 

Recommend assigning archive policies to folder and allowing them to move automatically to the Online/In-Place Archive folder. Folder structure from mailbox will be maintained, see section below for more details

 

Archive Policies

Current Archive Policies

  • Personal 1 year move to archive
  • Personal 5 year move to archive
  • Personal never move to archive
  • Use Parent Folder Archive Policy

Assigning an Archive Personal Policy

  • Example - Set the policy Personal 1 year move to archive on a folder in the mailbox
    • Once Managed Folder Assistant runs, user will can see that a folder by the same name is created in the Online/In-Place Archive folder and moved all the messages to that folder.
    • So the folder doesn't go away from my mailbox, but a folder by same name is created and messages moved there according to the policy
    • Folder structure from mailbox will be maintained, including sub-folders.

 

Managed Folder Assistant
  1. The Managed Folder Assistant is an Exchange Mailbox Assistant that applies and processes the message retention settings that are configured in retention policies.
  2. Runs every 7 days 
  3. We can't change the schedule
  1. Dartmouth Email Reports
    1. Criteria - mailbox within 10GB of reaching Storage Quota
    2. Report emailed to CITS.Staff@cloud.dartmouth.edu on the first weekday of each month
How to Create an Online Archive
  1. https://ci.dartmouth.edu/job/Infrastructure_Services_Helpdesk/job/mail/job/Add-ArchiveMailboxOnDemand/
  • Note - Access to Jenkins for this process requires VPN connection

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