Enabling Message Journaling on Exchange Server

In Exchange Server 5.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1), Microsoft added a new feature—journaling—that captures copies of user's messages within the Exchange system. Journaling lets an administrator capture all messages to another recipient (i.e., mailbox, custom recipient, or public folder) as soon as anyone submits or receives the message.

Although most private companies want to delete messages after a week or 2 for various reasons (e.g., to prevent litigants from introducing messages as evidence in criminal or civil lawsuits), some companies and government agencies require retention of every message sent through an organization. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires retention of messages that relate to a broker-dealer's business, and the State of Florida requires its agencies to store all email messages for public record retrieval under the Florida Sunshine Law.

Journaling is different from archiving. Journaling saves messages to a recipient, whereas archiving moves those messages to long-term storage where you can search for and retrieve them. Here, we describe how message journaling works and how to configure it. In a future issue, we'll review options (e.g., Microsoft Exchange Server Archiving Agent, third-party utilities) for archiving the messages you've captured in your journal. . . .