Change management is an important part of how we improve Exchange Online. Some changes to the service can affect existing mail flow, and the key to minimizing disruption is giving administrators the visibility they need to identify affected traffic and take action before those changes arrive.
Earlier this year, we released the Change Optics Report into Public Preview (Change Optics Report released into Public Preview to showcase messages impacted by future changes | Microsoft Community Hub). Today, we're pleased to announce that the Change Optics Report is now generally available for Exchange Online worldwide tenants.
Thank you to everyone who tried the report during Public Preview and provided feedback. That feedback helped us improve the experience before General Availability (GA).
What is the Change Optics Report?
When we announce changes that could affect the sending or delivery of certain messages, the Change Optics Report provides a central place for administrators to identify potentially affected traffic.
The report displays a sample set of messages from your organization that match the characteristics expected to be affected by a particular change. Administrators can use these samples to begin an investigation, determine where remediation might be required, and monitor progress as affected traffic is reduced ahead of the change.
Scenarios available at GA
The Change Optics Report currently includes two scenarios:
Onmicrosoft.com external traffic (OMC)
This scenario identifies messages being sent externally using onmicrosoft.com addresses. Throttling of this traffic has now rolled out, so organizations that continue to see this usage should investigate and move appropriate sending scenarios to a custom domain.
For more information, see Limiting Onmicrosoft Domain Usage for Sending Emails.
Direct Send traffic (DRS)
This scenario identifies Direct Send messages received by your tenant. Organizations planning to use the Reject Direct Send setting can use the report to identify legitimate Direct Send traffic and ensure those senders are appropriately handled before enabling the setting.
For more information, see Introducing more control over Direct Send in Exchange Online.
As additional Exchange Online changes are introduced, we plan to add scenarios to the Change Optics Report where additional visibility can help administrators prepare.
What's changed since Public Preview?
Customer feedback during Public Preview helped us improve the report before GA including clearer report and scenario descriptions, filtering noisy message types like journaling reports, and displaying the P1 envelope sender address used for onmicrosoft.com enforcement.
Using the Change Optics Report
You can find the report in the Exchange admin center under:
Reports > Mail flow > Change Optics Report
The report contains two main pages:
Summary
The Summary page displays message-volume trends for the scenarios being tracked. This makes it possible to monitor potentially affected traffic and see whether remediation is reducing that traffic over time.
Details
The Details page displays example messages for the selected scenario and provides the main message properties needed to begin an investigation. The table can be exported, and Message Trace can be used when additional information about an individual message is required.
The Export function currently exports data loaded into the table rather than all data for the selected time range. We have plans to enhance the Export functionality but not ETA to report yet.
Remember that Change Optics provides samples of affected messages. It should be used to identify sending patterns and scenarios requiring investigation rather than as an exhaustive message trace.
Availability
The Change Optics Report is generally available to Exchange Online tenants in the worldwide environment.
It is not currently available in GCC, GCC High, DoD, or other sovereign cloud environments.
We will continue expanding the Change Optics framework as new scenarios arise where giving administrators early visibility can help reduce the impact of future service changes.
As always, let us know what you think in the comments below.
The Exchange Online Messaging Team
