Copying incoming/outgoing emails on Exchange 2007/2010 to another mailbox

Sometimes we come across situations where the client requires to see the emails sent and received by the employees. In most of these case providing access to the other users mailbox is is the easiest way. But there are situations where this solution does not fulfill the client’s expectations. It might be awkward to have a larger number of additional mailboxes opened. Also providing access to numerous mailboxes on mobile devices is not always straightforward. We considered setting up message forwarding on individual mailboxes, but that requires to have it changed on all the separate mailboxes and it does not provide this functionality for outgoing messages.

As an alternative we set up an additional mailbox and set up Exchange to copy the incoming and outgoing messages as required. The goal of this article is to provide detailed information on how to set it up. This information is provided presuming that an archive mailbox has been already created.

Start with opening the Exchanage Management Console and navigating to Organization Configuration -> Hub Transport

On the Actions list select New Transport Rule. The New Transport Rule wizard will be presented.

Type in a Name for the transport rule and optionally a comment explaining the rule and than click on Next. Follow by selecting the rule conditions.

Select the conditions based on which the emails need to be copied. In case of the emails being sent from organization, the most likely option is to select From People. This action will fill in the conditions at the bottom of the screen and provides a link to select the list of senders from which the sent emails need to be copied. Once all condition are selected, continue by clicking Next again. The following screen will allow you to choose the desired actions.

The Action screen allows you to select what to do with the messages. There is a wide range of options, but in our scenario the best option is to use the Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) message to. Selecting this option will again enable the link to choose where to BCC the messages. In this step we can pick the Email Archive mailbox that has been previously created. When the destination is selecting, continue to the next screen. The exceptions screen will be displayed.

This screen, as all the others, presents a long list of exceptions that can be selected. Following our scenario, the obvious option would be excluding emails sent to the person who will be reviewing the emails as that could cause duplication of emails. Finish following to the Summary screen.

On the final screen you can review the selected options, make sure all look good and save the new rule by clicking the New button.

Following this procedure a similar rule can be created for incoming messages, adjusting the options accordingly.