Implications of multiple journaling rules in Office 365?

Brandon Poindexter 71 Reputation points
2021-10-04T18:58:15.783+00:00

A scenario to consider. Let's say my company partners or merges with another company. We end up doing a full tenant to tenant migration to get both partners in the same Office 365 Tenant. However, both partners were using journaling for Microsoft Exchange Online to keep a record of all email communications for compliance purposes, and the two partners were using different services to store journal reports. For various reasons, the partners want to maintain their current archiving services rather than moving to one.

This obviously necessitates multiple journaling rules in Exchange Online. A typical, simple journaling rule would simply specify that all journal reports be sent to a specific journaling mailbox maintained by the compliance archiving vendor. In this scenario, however, I might need a rule for one of the partners, and a separate rule for the other partner, to direct journal reports where they need to go.

In that scenario, I am wondering how journaling rules are evaluated. Technet wasn't exactly explicitly clear on this. Are the journaling rules like transport rules, where they are evaluated in order until a match is found, and then processing additional rules stops? Is every journaling rule evaluated against every email for a match? If an email matches multiple journaling rules, will a journaling report be sent by each rule?

Once I understand how this works, I will need to determine the cleanest way to accommodate this scenario.

Microsoft Exchange Online Management
Microsoft Exchange Online Management
Microsoft Exchange Online: A Microsoft email and calendaring hosted service.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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  1. Kael Yao 37,741 Reputation points Moderator
    2021-10-05T06:36:27.793+00:00

    Hi @Brandon Poindexter

    Are the journaling rules like transport rules, where they are evaluated in order until a match is found, and then processing additional rules stops? Is every journaling rule evaluated against every email for a match?

    Unlike transport rules, you can only specify the recipient part (specific recipients or all messages) and the scope of messages (internal, external or all messages) in a journal rule.
    137597-06.png


    If an email matches multiple journaling rules, will a journaling report be sent by each rule?

    If a recipient is included in multiple journal rules with different journal mailboxes, multiple journal reports would be sent to the corresponding journal mailboxes.
    If the journal rules are configured with a same journal mailbox, only a journal report would be sent.
    137673-05.png


    Here is a link with more detailed information on this topic for your reference: Manage journaling


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