Reporting and Message Trace Capabilities with Exchange Online

Most Microsoft Online customers probably don’t know it’s possible to track messages or generate email traffic reports for their organization. Lately in the Microsoft Online support forums there have been some discussions about these features, so we thought we’d take a look at what you can access through the Forefront admin.

To access these features, the first thing you’ll need to do is open a Microsoft Online support ticket and request Reporting and Message Trace capabilities within Forefront for you admin account. If all goes well, support will get back to you with a password that you can use to login to the Forefront Admin. It’s important to note that the level of access that Microsoft provides is very basic. You can generate reports and track messages… that’s it. Still it’s very useful and after it’s setup it will probably save you from having to open tickets in the future for message tracking type issues.

Once you have your password you’ll be able to log into https://admin.messaging.microsoft.com.

When you log in, you’ll be on the Information tab. In the left column you’ll see some basic statistics about mailflow into your environment. The middle of the screen has announcements, alerts, and configuration information.

The next tab is My Reports. You’ll first need to create a new report with the criteria you desire. There are several options when creating reports including the ability to automatically email the report on a recurring basis. Once created you’ll be able to view the report. A sample Email Traffic report is shown below.

The final tab is Tools. On the Tools tab, you’ll be able to trace inbound and outbound messages. Simply enter the search criteria and you’ll be able to see if the message(s) in question were sent or received.

You can then click on any of the messages found to display additional details.

As you can see it’s a very basic level of access, but it still gives you some very useful features.