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May 12, 2020, 12:28 am
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Microsoft’s Office 365 is intended to prevent all answer chains from getting out of control in the future. Initially, only very large organizations benefit from the function.
The mail hosting solution Exchange Online included in Office 365 should ensure in the future that email chains do not get completely out of control and in the worst case can paralyze the entire productivity of a company. Such message chains arise when employees respond to an e-mail that is sent to a large part of the workforce with the “Reply all” function. Then not only will all the original recipients get the answer, but often others will also write a reply, which will then be answered by others until, in case of doubt, the entire internal mail traffic is flooded with these messages.
All the answers: Microsoft wants to stop out of control mail chains. (Screenshot: Microsoft)
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Exchange Online will recognize such mail chains in the future if at least ten mails are sent to more than 5,000 recipients within an hour. The software then blocks all messages to this mail thread for four hours. The solution is clearly only for large organizations, Microsoft has on the Company blog announced, however, to further adapt the function in the future. According to the company, there could also be thresholds that can be adjusted by the respective administrator at a later date. The blocking period could also be defined at a later point in time.
Answer everyone: When a circular email becomes a problem
Microsoft itself has some experience with the problem known in the English-speaking world as Mail Storm. In 1998 an out of control mail chain with 25,000 recipients led to the sending of around 15 million emails and a data volume of 195 gigabytes. The Bundestag has already dealt with that problem to fight: In 2012, a member of parliament’s email caused such a flood of mail that some MPs even reported that iPads had crashed. In addition, there should have been delays of up to 30 minutes in receiving mail.
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