The Email Connector

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The Email Connector provides a connection to your email server. This can be Microsoft Exchange or Lotus® Domino®. The connection enables you to monitor mailboxes and other collection sources in your email system.

During the installation of IBM® Content Collector, you can select Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, or both as source systems. When you select both, the initial configuration process creates connector entries for both mail systems. In the Configuration Manager, you can then select for which mail system you want to configure the Email Connector. However, Content Collector can connect to only one mail system at a time so that you can work with either Microsoft Exchange or with Lotus Domino but not with both in parallel.

Important: The IBM Content Collector Email Connector service and the IBM Content Collector Web Application service must run under an account that is not the local system account.

Microsoft Exchange Online

Refer to IBM Content Collector for Microsoft Exchange Online.

Microsoft Exchange Hybrid

The Microsoft Hybrid deployment allows an organization to have a single Exchange setup which can comprise of Exchange On-premises as well as Exchange Online.
  • Support for Microsoft Exchange Hybrid enables user to archive, stub, search, view, or restore archived content for Microsoft Exchange Hybrid mailboxes.
  • Support for Microsoft Exchange Hybrid allows a user to archive from a mixed collection source (mailboxes hosted On-premises and Online) in the same or in a separate Task Route.
  • Support for Microsoft Exchange Hybrid allows to search, preview and restore the already archived emails for the mailboxes that are migrated from Microsoft Exchange On-premises to Microsoft Exchange Online and the other way around.

The Microsoft Exchange Hybrid setup can include mailboxes hosted Online as well as On-premises. As a result, Exchange On-premises features for Content Collector that were not available for Exchange Online are now available with Microsoft Exchange Hybrid.

For details, refer to Microsoft Exchange collection sources for automatic archiving and Collecting email on request.

For all the topics that have information about Exchange Hybrid in the IBM Content Collector 4.0.1 documentation, refer to IBM Content Collector for Microsoft Exchange Hybrid.

Minimal and Full Hybrid setup options

Microsoft supports Minimal and Full Hybrid setup options. Typically, the Minimal variant is for one-time migration to Exchange Online and is usually a short-term setup. The Full variant is usually opted when a long-term co-existence of Exchange On-premises and Exchange Online is required. Content Collector supports Full Hybrid.

Exchange Hybrid requires local Active Directory to be in sync with Azure Active Directory. Exchange Hybrid can be configured with below Exchange users:
  • User with mailbox on Exchange On-premises
  • User with mailbox migrated to Exchange Online
Note: Users need to be in synchronized with the local Active Directory and Azure Active Directory in order to be configured with Content Collector for Exchange Hybrid.