Stubbing

MailArchiva’s stubbing feature will strip the attachments of older e-mails in Microsoft Exchange and provide a link to the original attachments in the archive. The purpose of this feature is twofold (1) preserve the familiar Outlook experience by enabling users to access archived messages and attachments from within Outlook and in accordance with the user’s existing folder structure (2) relieve pressure from the mail server by removing attachments from older messages.

As illustrated above, a stubbed message has its attachment stripped and contains a link to the original message in the archive. Links to individual attachments in the archive are also available. When a user clicks on one of these attachment links, the user is automatically logged in to MailArchiva and the attachment opens immediately. MailArchiva is prevented from stubbing messages that are not available in the archive. This
restriction is designed to ensure that no message is modified unless there is a backup copy available. As a further safety measure, the stubbing engine is prevented from stubbing messages younger than sixty days. A stubbed message contains a link to an original message in the archive. When clicking on the link, the Outlook user is taken directly to the message in the archive without having to supply their login information. In reality, the user is authenticated by way of single-sign-on authentication with Windows.

Since the stubbing process modifies information in Microsoft Exchange, care should be taken to ensure that the MailArchiva stubbing rules are defined correctly.

Active Directory Authentication Preparation

MailArchiva’s stubbing engine authenticates with Microsoft Exchange using Active Directory authentication. As such as, it is necessary to ensure that Active Directory authentication is selected and functioning correctly as described in section 9.4.3. Since stubbing relies on NTLM authentication, care should be taken to ensure that NTLM authentication is checked in the AD configuration settings.

Stubbing can be enabled at any stage after the MailArchiva server is deployed. However, stubbing is not backwards compatible with earlier versions of MailArchiva. For instance, emails archived by MailArchiva EE v1.9.12 or lower will not be stubbed by the server.

Microsoft Exchange Preparation

The stubbing procedure requires the use of an impersonation account with sufficient privileges to access all mailboxes in Microsoft Exchange. Complete the steps outlined in
Section 10 to create an impersonation account and assign the appropriate rights to it.

Stubbing Configuration

The figure above illustrates the configuration settings for MailArchiva’s stubbing engine. Care should be taken to ensure that the link prefix correctly points to your instance of MailArchiva since once a message has been stubbed the link prefix cannot be changed. The link prefix shouldpoint to the MailArchiva instance as follows:
http://archive.company.com:8090
In the link prefix, be sure to use the fully qualified domain name of the MailArchiva server rather than its IP address. In doing so, you will have the flexibility to change the IP address of the MailArchiva server.

Before enabling stubbing, it is strongly recommended to test your stubbing rules individually. To do this:

• Ensure that stubbing enabled global option is unchecked
• Create a new stubbing rule and choose the desired options
• Save your configuration settings
• Create a test mailbox in MS Exchange
• Send a few test messages to it with attachments, varied text and so on
• Verify that the messages are stubbed correctly and according to your preferences

The following stubbing operations are available:

Due to the potential for unwanted data loss, it is very important to test each and every one of your stubbing rules against a test account containing a sample of messages. After everything is tested thoroughly, you may enable message stubbing. Though every effort has been made to ensure that stubbing is as safe as possible, Stimulus Software will not be held liable for data loss due to misconfiguration, program faults, or for any other reason.