How can I create a log of all emails sent by a user for monitoring? 2

[skrontz]

I have a few employees that I believe are abusing our email policy and I want to document the large number of 'non-work related' emails they are sending. How can I generate a list of all sent/received emails from a particular mailbox, without having to access the client's 'Sent' box? Any help would be appreciated.

SK

 

[dcain]

You can use the Alternate Recipient field in the Mailbox properties in Exchange Administrator to take a copy of all email received by a particular mailbox. It's on the Delivery Options page. By choosing another mailbox and selecting the 'Deliver mail to both recipient and alternate recipient' the person being monitored will be unaware that anything they receive is also being directed to another mailbox.

Unfortunately it doesn't work for sent mail. You could try using the Message Tracking logs if you have Message Tracking enabled. This doesn't give the message body though, only info on who sent it, where it was sent to and it's size.

When I've been asked to provide this sort of info I've usually had to restore the databases to my test network and then recover any deleted sent items to get the full list of sent mail (deleted item retention set to 30 days by the way). If anyone knows of a tool to capture sent mail or a better way of doing this I'd be more than interested to hear about it as well.

Hope some of this helps


David

 

[jdavis]

Review the procedures for "Journaling". Requires Exchange 5.5 SP1, gives a copy of almost anything passing through the MTA. You have to route internal mail through the MTA and that mans some server overhead that has to be considered.

 

[kjonnnnn]

Make sure your company has made known that you have a policy that they can / may monitor email use. (For legal reasons)

 

[Zelandakh]

You could share their sent items folder to you or a group you are in, add it to your list and set a rules wizard to copy sent items to one of your folders.

Never tried it myself - if anyone gets it to work let me know!

 

[pbeck]

Hello, just a thought regarding one of the suggestions for monitoring emails....if you choose to use the Deliver mail to both recipient and alternate recipient' idea, it works fine unless the person chooses to do a reply to all...it will include you (the secret receiver) too...I bet there is a way around this and in my case, I had a fake user setup so it did not give me away but thats something to think about....

 

[aliciaJ]

ALL - I know this thread is old, but I'm currently visiting this topic in my company. A couple of questions:

Zelandakh - I can't figure out a way to put a "Sent Items" folder in the folder list and I can't seem to get the Rules Wiz to process against any folder other than the primary "InBox." Was your idea a shot in the dark suggestion or do you have some suggestion "how-to's" for your suggested process?

pbeck - I can't duplicate what you described on my system. Perhaps this was resolved w/ SP4 which of course wasn't around when you posted this.

Any new/current ideas from anyone on how to get a copy of sent items for a particular user send to his/her manager?

Any ideas would be appreciated!
aliciaJ

 

[toastfrenzy]

How about simply adding the users mailbox to you own outlook client, first give yourself rights in Exchange administrator.

You then can see when new mails arrive check sent items as you wish. Don't belive the user is aware...not been asked/informed of probs yet.

Only done it once but it gave the right info.

 

[aliciaJ]

Yes, we set up the supervisor's mailbox and outlook to have permissions and to open an additioal mailbox. It works fine as long as the supervisor doesn't read a message that hasn't yet been read by the user.

They were looking for a way to actually automatically BCC: the super of every outgoing mail message from the user.

Thanks,
aliciaJ

 

[cdbanting]

Hello,
Our problem is much the same, one difference being we are using Exchange 2000. But I really need to know what is being sent and to whom. The body of the email is secondary. What I'd like to find is a third party application that can strip the log file based on user, and give me a report that shows subject, sender, recipient, etc. That would be better to present then screen shots of System Manager Tracking.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[devastator]

Alicia J

But even if you read a message you can always right click on it and mark as unread.

 

[RadioActiveLamb]

I have no experience with this product, but it looks like it will do everything you want, and more. The price seems reasonable too:

http://www.gfi.com/mes/index.html

Jeff Lamb

 

[upsilona]

I know this is an old thread, but I just thought that I would add that covertly monitoring users emails is actually breaking the "Data Protection Act 1998" and the "Human Rights Act 2000", unless you have up to date and comprehensive email policies in place. Which I recently read that over 90% of companies do not have. Even then it could still be argued that you are breaching their human rights.

 

[jakess]

It's a great pitty that there is no free method of monitoring mailboxes...even if it's just the amount of incoming or outgoing you want to check. Message tracking on Exchange i dont rate at all.i find it strange that no one has developed freeware software that can do the trick. i have investigated some commercial software but they all come at a price $$$$.
My management have now continiously asked my to give reports on some users mailbox activities but i'm obviously unable to do that.