How LiveOffice Email Continuity Works
With just a simple mail exchange (MX) record repoint and hostname configuration change, you can have LiveOffice Email Continuity up and running in less than a week. Then, when you have an email outage, your administrator activates Email Continuity through LiveOffice Mail Archive, an easy-to-use, online archiving system that securely captures, indexes and stores every inbound, outbound and interoffice email as well as attachments. Users can then access their email during the downtime via a dedicated folder in Microsoft Outlook or remotely via a web page for convenient user access, without the hassle of managing additional software.
All email, from before and during the outage, is preserved in Mail Archive. Once you solve your downtime issue, your administrator can route all new data back to your Microsoft Exchange Server. End users are not affected, with full email access and functionality throughout the process. Plus, since Email Continuity leverages the same infrastructure as LiveOffice’s email archiving offering, clients using the service can upgrade to the full Mail Archive solution with no additional deployment or configuration changes. Clients who upgrade can also view all emails sent and received since the start of their Email Continuity service while benefiting from Mail Archive’s robust mailbox management, e-discovery and compliance capabilities.
Email Continuity has three operating modes:
Deactivated (Standby) Mode
This standard mode is in place while your Microsoft Exchange Server is functioning normally. Since your MX record points to LiveOffice, all of your inbound, outbound and interoffice email is routed through your Exchange Server as usual, but copies are also securely and simultaneously journaled to LiveOffice Mail Archive.
Activated Mode
Your system administrator activates this mode when your primary Microsoft Exchange Server goes down. Once activated, your email server hostname changes from your disabled server to LiveOffice. All subsequent email then flows directly into LiveOffice Mail Archive, where your users can access it during the outage.1 Your email continues routing through LiveOffice until your system administrator deactivates Email Continuity. During the downtime, your users can compose, read, forward, reply to, spell check, include attachments and format email with all the critical email functionality they normally use.
1Because of latency, some email sent after Email Continuity is activated may not be captured until the initial refresh cycle.
Recovery Mode
After your primary Microsoft Exchange Server recovers from an outage, your administrator deactivates Email Continuity and any email sent and received (inbound, outbound or interoffice) during the outage is automatically routed back to your Exchange Server.
Using Email Continuity is easy! Your system administrator just follows these steps to activate, deactivate or recover emails sent during an outage:
Email Continuity: Deactivated (Standby) Mode
- Repoint your company’s MX record to LiveOffice
- Add LiveOffice to your IP whitelist
- Enable Microsoft journaling to ensure all email messages are captured in LiveOffice Mail Archive
- Deploy an Unlimited Outlook web folder to end users for convenient, fingertip access (optional)
Email Continuity: Activated Mode
- Activate email Continuity from our web-based Administrator Console or by phone
- Provide users with access to email from Unlimited Outlook web folder or our web-based interface during downtime
Email Continuity: Recovery Mode
- Deactivate Email Continuity via our web-based Administrator Console
- Receive all messages captured during downtime (they are automatically sent back to your Exchange Server)
