Microsoft has just announced the general availability of the new Message Trace in the Exchange admin center (EAC) in Exchange Online for its worldwide (WW) customers. The Redmond giant said that it’ll begin rolling it out in mid-June and complete the rollout in July.
Message Trace in the Exchange Admin Center for Exchange Online is a tool that lets admins trace which path emails took as they traveled through the Microsoft 365 organization. It lets admins see if emails were received, rejected, or deferred. It is helpful for troubleshooting mail flow issues and validating policy changes.
To get started with the new Message Trace, admins can access it by going to the Exchange admin center > Mail flow > Message Trace. While the Windows-maker has received positive feedback during the Public Preview, you can still provide your thoughts through Exchange admin center > Give Feedback.
In addition, Microsoft will continue to maintain the old Message Trace user experience in Exchange admin center and cmdlets for several months to ease the transition, however, they will be deprecated for WW customers starting from September 1. The Reporting Webservice support for Message Trace data will also begin deprecating on this date.
A side note to mention here is that this timeline only applies to the WW environment and doesn’t affect GCC, GCC-High, DOD, or other sovereign clouds. More information about the switch over for those will be provided in the second half of the year.
Who it affects, and how
These changes need to be noted by Exchange Online administrators and IT professionals as those are the people who will be directly affected. Specifically, it will affect anyone managing mail flow and troubleshooting email delivery in Exchange Online.
Those who are affected will have to get switched over to the new Message Trace before Microsoft starts deprecating features in several months time. Admins will want to act promptly to avoid any unforeseen issues that could arise.
Another detail that admins should be aware of is that scripts that rely on the older “Get-MessageTrace” or “Get-MessageTraceDetail” cmdlets will break on September 1. To address this, admins will need to update their scripts to use the new “Get-MessageTraceV2” and the “Get-MessageTraceDetailV2” cmdlets.
Finally, any admins out there using the Reporting Webservice for Message Trace data will also need to make a change. They will need to shift to the new Message Trace PowerShell cmdlets.
Why it’s happening
Microsoft has been working on a new Message Trace experience, incorporating feedback from the Public Preview phase, to improve its design and performance. The switch gives Microsoft the opportunity to standardize and modernize admin interfaces and the underlying technologies.
What to watch for
While September 1 may seem like a long way away, fixing any issues, such as scripts due to deprecations, could take some time. Any admins managing the affected items need to ensure they deal with affected components in a timely manner.
In terms of documentation, Microsoft has so far only released the Public Preview document which highlights the changes between the old and new versions. Microsoft says that it will publish cmdlet documentation for the new Message Trace cmdlets by the time of the general availability, so admins should look out for that.
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