Introduction
Mail Time Machine (MTM) is a tool that allows you to access the backups of an email account from today to 15 days ago.
You can access MTM by entering the login credentials of the email account and selecting the day linked to the backups that you want to view. Once logged in, you will see an interface completely identical to the webmail one, but with limited functionality because the backups are read-only.
In the MTM you will see all personal folders, both subscribed and unsubscribed ones.
Backups are performed via Snapshot technology every day at midnight and, therefore, contain the messages from all the folders available at that particular time in the user box on our servers.
Functionality
With MTM, you can:
- Consult the emails available in your backups.
- View the source of a message.
- Download individual email messages in EML format.
- Request a recovery.
To download a message, right click on the message and then click Download. To recover more messages, read the recovery documentation.
Backups are read-only and their contents cannot be deleted or modified. Backups are a ‘picture’ of the data on our servers that relate to a single email address at a given time. If your email account is configured in POP 3, you will need to copy the messages in our server. Otherwise, it will not be possible to recover messages deleted by mistake as there is no trace on the server and, therefore, the backup would be empty. On the contrary, if you are configured in POP 3 with a copy of the messagges on the server or in IMAP, the messages will be available on the server and it will be possible to recover them.
Backup & Email Recovery
Backup
A backup is a copy of the data generated in the Webmail that is saved to avoid unpleasant situations in case of data loss caused by human error or other types of accident. In our case, the backup is performed on the users’ email accounts to prevent the loss of one or more messages due to accidental cancellation by the user. Our systems perform backups of all email accounts every day at midnight, store them and make them read-only for the user for 15 days, thanks to Mail Time Machine (MTM).
Backups are a ‘picture’ of the data on our servers relating to an email address at a given time. If your email account is configured in POP3 and you delete messages, it will not be possible to recover deleted messages because they are not on the server and the backup would be empty. Conversely, if your account is configured in IMAP, the messages will be available on the server and it will be possible to recover them.
Recovery
Thanks to backups that are performed every day, you can recover one or more messages deleted by mistake. Backups do not guarantee that recovery is always possible. For example, emails received and deleted between one backup window and another will not be shown and messages deleted by the user configured in POP3 will not be available without leaving a copy of the messages on the server.
You can choose between 2 types of recovery:
- Download of individual messages: the download allows you to keep selected messages in EML format within your device. From Mail TM you can download single messages in total autonomy. To do this, access the Mail Time Machine, find the message to download, right-click and then click Download.
- Restore messages in the email account: if you have mistakenly deleted multiple messages, entire folders or all the mail of an email account, you can request to perform a restore to one of the 15 days prior to today's date. With the restore, the deleted messages will be available and visible in the email account again. To request a restore, log into the Mail Time Machine, select the date corresponding to the backup you want to restore and click the Request restore button. The admin will receive an email with the restore request and an invitation to confirm or decline the operation. To refuse or confirm the operation, access the panel as admin, click on Restore requests and choose whether to confirm or reject the request.
If the request is accepted, the operation will be executed immediately and the user will receive a confirmation email upon completion.
If the request is denied, the user will receive an email denying the operation.