Primer: Using the MFCMAPI Utility to See Inside Exchange Online Mailboxes

The MFCMAPI utility is of great help to Microsoft 365 tenant administrators who want to understand the data apps store in Exchange Online mailboxes. An on-premises mailbox stores email data, but in the cloud, Microsoft 365 apps use Exchange Online as a convenient place to store data that needs to be accessible to services like Search and eDiscovery.

Microsoft’s Cloud Email Signatures Solve a Problem for Outlook

Microsoft says that the roaming (or cloud) email signatures feature is now fully deployed. The new approach solves an Outlook problem, but it’s not a universal panacea for the management of email signatures within large organizations where you want consistency in the signatures used by everyone. You’ll need an ISV solution to get that kind of functionality.

Yammer Powers Viva Engage and Teams Q&A

Some recent announcements have shown Yammer’s new direction. The Communities app is now Viva Engage and Teams Meeting Q&A app is powered by Yammer. That’s all good because it negates some of the tension between Teams and Yammer in terms of positioning within Microsoft 365. The messages that make up Q&A in Teams meetings are captured for compliance purposes, and that’s also a good thing.

Using Teams Compliance Records for eDiscovery

For compliance purposes, the Microsoft 365 substrate captures copies of Teams messages in Exchange Online mailboxes. The compliance records are indexed and discoverable, which means that they can be found by content searches. However, Teams compliance records are imperfect copies of the real data, which is a fact that seems to have escaped many people.

Applying Holds to Teams Private Channel Messages

The Office 365 compliance framework can now to place holds on Teams compliance records created for conversations in private channels. You simply have to place holds on the mailboxes of members of the private channels and hope that no one removes the members from the tenant. If they do, the hold lapses, which seems like a pity.

How Outlook Knows About Online Teams Meetings

Outlook can schedule online Teams or Skype for Business Online meetings. But what marks an online meeting as different to a regular Outlook meeting? The magic lies in a set of MAPI properties populated by Outlook to help meeting participants connect to the right online meeting. A little poking behind the scenes with MFCMAPI reveals more.