Managing Mail Server Connections

How to manage your mail server connections in Solar Archive.

The Restore & Authentication section allows Administrators to register and manage details of your company’s mail server services (IMAP or EWS) which are used to restore emails from Solar Archive to user mailboxes and authenticate user logins which have been configured to be authenticated externally.

Restore is a technique used to inject email back into user mailboxes from the archive and Authentication is a technique to verify a user’s password at login. This section allows you to define connections to your email servers. These will be used to provide email “Restore To Inbox” and “Login Authentication” services to your users. This allows you to set up a connection to an older email server and newer one to assist during mailbox migration. The system will allow either IMAP or EWS to be used.

Authentication - Solar Archive local user accounts must be created with external authentication. When the user tries to login, the username will be used to obtain the details of the local user account. The username and the password from the login web page are then passed to each of the restore and authentication connections, where a login is attempted using the configured protocol (IMAP or EWS). If the login is successful, then the user will be logged in to Solar Archive using the name and email addresses from the local user account. Account details from the remote mail server will not be obtained or used.

The Login authentication sequence is as follows:

1. User enters their username and password

2. If the username matches a local user account, that has “external authorisation”.

3. For each entry in the “Restore and Authentication” list;

4. Open a connection to the remote EWS or IMAP service

5. Pass the user’s username and password to the EWS or IMAP login sequence

6. If the EWS or IMAP login succeeds, then the user gains access to Solar Archive via the Local User Account credentials.

If login fails, then the system will revert to try other login methods, first by testing other local user accounts and then trying LDAP, if configured.

Note: The username entered on the login page must be set in the Solar Archive local user account as the same username is passed to the EWS or IMAP service.

• For Office 365 – the username will always be an email address and the server will be outlook.office365.com.

• For IMAP or on-premise Exchanges – the username could be the “SAMAccountName” or the “User Principal Name” (an email address type format).

Create Connection

1. Navigate to Basic Configuration > Restore & Authentication.

2. Click the Create Connection button.

3. Enter / Select the required values in the fields. Refer to the table below for field names and descriptions.

4. Click Save Connection.

5. Click the Test Connection button.

6. Enter the credentials and click Test Connection.

Field	Description
Protocol	Protocol using which you want to create a new connection.
Server	Name or IP address of a CAS or a front-end server for the new connection.
Port	Port number for the new connection.
Connection Type	Type of new connection being created.

Editing a Connection

1. Navigate to Basic Configuration > Restore & Authentication.

2. Under Existing Servers, click the server for which you want to edit the details and then click the Edit Connection button.

3. Enter / Select the required values in the fields.

4. Click the Save Connection.

5. The connection details will be updated.