Forum Discussion
[Tool] SafetyNet - Keep Office 365 Mailbox when removing AD-Synced user.
Hi guys, great to see another Office 365 community forming- and this time aimed at IT pros! :smileyhappy: My name is Maor Bracha, an Office 365 expert and a moderator over at the Microsoft Answer...
What do you see as the advantage to this over marking the box as an inactive box (litigation hold then removing the license)? I would typically tell the client to maintain the on prem acct for 30 days to allow for normal mailbox access for management and then mark the box for litigation hold and remove the license to retain the data when they remove the user.
- Hi Paul,
A mailbox that's been put under litigation hold and unlicensed can only be accessed via the e-discovery utility. The results of said search are then exported to a PST file.
This whole process means the mailbox data is inaccessible to the ordinary organization employees (co-workers, managers, etc) that requires ongoing and online access, and would require a ticket to the IT department to run a query.
TechNet:
"You can access the contents of the inactive mailbox by using In-Place eDiscovery in the Exchange admin center (EAC)... You can preview the search results, copy the search results to a discovery mailbox, or export the search results to an Outlook Data (PST) file."
Moreover, to be able to use this feature it is required to assign an Exchange plan 2 (/E3 and above) license that allows archiving- which some (mostly smaller) organizations don't have.
TechNet:
"..To make a mailbox inactive, it must be assigned an Exchange Online (Plan 2) license so that a Litigation Hold or an In-Place Hold can be placed on the mailbox before it's deleted. Exchange Online (Plan 2) licenses are part of an Office 365 365 Enterprise E3 and E5 subscriptions. If a mailbox is assigned an Exchange Online (Plan 1) license (which is part of an Office 365 365 Enterprise E1 subscription), you would have to assign it a separate Exchange Online Archiving license so that a hold can be placed on the mailbox before it's deleted. For more information, see Exchange Online Archiving."
More reading here:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn144876%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
And of course, there's always the chance of the client not fully understanding the processes and somehow mess it up (and I've seen it happen)
My clients found thus tool helpful, and hopefuly now you could see how- and enjoy it yourself ;)
Maor
