Email ingestion in the email archiver can ben done via email journaling, through connectors or both.
We advice to use both for the reasons explained below, but before getting into the details, let's see a brief summary of the characteristics of journaling and connector ingestion:
| Journaling | Connector | |
| Real-Time ingestion | x | |
| Polling (daily) ingestion | x | |
| Collects folder structure information | x | |
| Maximum compliance | x | |
| Can delete old email from mailserver | x | |
| Can import email received in the past | x | |
| Email already in the archiver is skipped | x | |
| Imports also Email copied into a folder through the email client | x |
Journaling
Ingesting through journaling provides the maximum compliance. Email is ingested as soon as it is received or sent which means that every incoming email is archived even before it reaches the mailbox and every outbound email is archived before it leaves the mailserver.
This provides the maximum compliance because no email can be missed and archiving happens in real time.
Journaling can import only current and future email, it cannot import old email stored in the mailboxes. It also cannot retrieve information about the folder the email is stored in.
Connector
The connector polls every mailbox once a day archiving all the contents of the mailbox that are not already archived.
The connector can retrieve information about the folder the email has been stored in, this information is not available from the Journaling.
If the connector finds email that has already been archived (for example via journaling) it does not archive the email a second time but it adds the folder information to the archiver.
The connector can also import old email from the mailserver and can, if configured, delete email older than a certain time to unload the mailserver.
The connector can also import email that has been put into the mailbox through the mail client (not received by the mailserver but copied into a folder from other sources).
The advantages of using both
By ingesting both through journaling and connector you achieve the most from the archiver: maximum compliance, real-time archiving, folder structure information, importing of old email and email that the user puts in a folder through the email client from other sources.