With journaling, Microsoft 365 automatically sends a copy (a so-called journal report) of every incoming and outgoing message to a central journal mailbox. Aktenplatz reads that mailbox and thus captures your organisation's entire mail traffic – seamlessly and audit-proof, regardless of which employee sent or received a message.
Journaling is also the only audit-proof way to archive your mail traffic: the copy is created automatically, before any user can move or delete a message. Reading the mailboxes directly (e.g. via the Graph Connector) is more convenient, but not audit-proof.
Journal rules are now managed in the Microsoft Purview portal under Data lifecycle management → Exchange (legacy).
Requirements
- Administrator access to the Microsoft Purview portal (purview.microsoft.com) or the corresponding Exchange/compliance rights in your Microsoft 365 tenant.
- A journal mailbox as the target. Important: Microsoft 365 cannot deliver journal reports to a mailbox in the same organisation – the target must be an external address (mail user, mail contact or external address). You obtain this external journal mailbox via Aktenplatz support.
1. Request a journal mailbox from Aktenplatz support
Get in touch at support@aktenplatz.de. We provide an external journal mailbox and give you the target address that you enter in Microsoft Purview in the next steps.
2. Set the address for undeliverable journal reports
First define where Microsoft 365 should send undeliverable journal reports (error/NDR messages) if the journal mailbox is ever unreachable. Open Purview → Settings → Data lifecycle management and enter a valid address under "Send undeliverable journal reports to".
Note: this address must also be a mail user, mail contact or external address – not a regular Exchange Online mailbox. Save the setting.
3. Create the journal rule
Now open Purview → Data lifecycle management → Exchange (legacy) → Journal rules and click + New rule. Enter:
- Rule name: e.g. "Aktenplatz journaling".
- Send journal reports to: the external target address of the journal mailbox provided by support.
- Journal messages for: usually all messages (internal and external), so that mail traffic is captured completely.
Save the rule. From now on Microsoft 365 sends a copy of every message to the journal mailbox.
4. Connect the journal mailbox to Aktenplatz
In Aktenplatz, open the project settings (gear icon) → Interfaces → Mail → External mail accounts → Add and choose the M365 Journal Inbox as the type. You receive the credentials for the support-provided mailbox during setup. Check the connection with Test connection and save. Details on this step are in Synchronising Mails.
Done – Aktenplatz now fetches the journaled messages regularly and assigns them automatically to the matching records.
Further Microsoft documentation: Journaling in Exchange Online (concepts & journal mailboxes) · Manage journaling (journal rule step by step).