We created our blog series Tech Tips to familiarize all interested parties, customers, and partners with product features and user scenarios related to MailStore Server. The accompanying video format provides step-by-step instructions. In this Tech Tips Mini-Series, we would like to give you useful tips on how to archive your emails from Microsoft 365¹ as a new MailStore Server customer.

Why You Should Use MailStore Server With Microsoft 365

Even though emails can be archived natively in Microsoft 365, there are many reasons to use an external email archiving solution such as MailStore Server in combination with Microsoft 365. The reasons for this have been summarized for you in a free white paper from market research institute Osterman Research. Many companies believe, for example, that it is no longer necessary to protect and preserve their own business critical data after migrating to the (public) cloud because they assume that the cloud provider is responsible for backing up their data. However, this belief is completely misguided.

Microsoft 365 customers are responsible for the protection and storage of their data, which includes archiving and regularly backing up business data. As a public cloud service provider, Microsoft is merely responsible for the availability of their service and protecting it from outages. That is why companies that use such a public cloud service should take measures to protect themselves from the risk of data loss. MailStore Server not only provides protection and makes your emails in Microsoft 365 centrally and independently available, but also, among other things, provides a fast self-service that allows end users to search for and restore emails and file attachments using the email archive. You can find even more reasons for using MailStore Server in combination with Microsoft 365 on our blog.

Modern Authentication as a Standard at MailStore

More and more companies are switching to Microsoft 365. This trend is picking up faster with support for Microsoft Windows SBS 2011 having ended and with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 soon to follow suit. Since Microsoft has announced the end of basic authentication, modern authentication based on OAuth2 will become a must for many companies soon.

MailStore Server supports modern authentication and with that, provides not only an optimal integration into the cloud environment of Microsoft 365, but also the necessary security. For example, as a Microsoft 365 user, you simply use your usual log-in procedure for your Microsoft 365 tenant in order to log in to MailStore Server, which includes, for example, multi-factor authentication.

In this Tech Tip, we would like to explain how to archive your emails from Microsoft 365 as a new MailStore Server customer, thus providing you with long-term protection against data loss, and making the data available and retrievable at all times. Here are two videos that show you how to connect MailStore Server with your Microsoft 365 tenant using modern authentication, synchronize users (part 1), and customizing archiving profiles (part 2).

Part 1: Preparation of Your Microsoft 365 Tenant and User Synchronization

In this video, we describe the initial configuration and connection of MailStore Server to Microsoft 365. At the same time, we show you how to connect MailStore Server to your Microsoft 365 tenant, in order to synchronize user information from Microsoft 365. We address, among other things, how to register MailStore Server as an app in Azure AD and assign the necessary permissions. Finally, we show you how to perform the user synchronization.

You can find all the detailed steps in our MailStore Server Help and step-by-step instructions in our Tech Tip video:

Part 2: Customizing the Archiving Profile in MailStore Server

In the second video, we would like to show you how to completely archive your Microsoft 365 mailboxes. Please make sure that you have already carried out all the steps from the previous Tech Tip video (part 1). Then you can proceed with selecting the archiving profile. We explain how to archive existing as well as future emails with MailStore Server via “journal archiving” (also known as journaling). We recommend our free MailStore Gateway add-on program as an external journal mailbox. We also explain how to define deletion rules, for example.

You can find all the detailed steps in our MailStore Server Help. In the following video, you will receive practical step-by-step instructions on customizing archiving profiles:

Source: MailStore