What is Messaging Central, and how is it used?
As part of the SpamSmart service, every customer has access to a web-based user and admin interface ("Messaging Central") which has a quarantine of all spam sent to a user, organized by month and day. Spam is stored for 30 days to allow users to check their spam to confirm no real messages were mistakenly caught by the service. If this happens, improperly tagged messages (false positives) can be immediately delivered to the user's mailbox and the sender will be automatically added to the user’s Allow list so they will not be stopped in the future. The email is also reported so that the service is automatically trained for greater future accuracy. Administrators can look at individual user quarantines and manage spam and Allow-lists for their users if they wish. Via the web interface, users will also be able to Allow-list senders such as newsletters so they will not be tagged as spam in the future. Administrators will also be able to set domain-wide Allow-lists to ensure domain-wide delivery of certain content that might otherwise be mistakenly caught by the system.
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How do I login to Messaging Central?
Login to messaging central by typing mailadmin..com into your web browser. You will log in using your email address login name and password. If you are a customer who has messaging central services as stand-alone (you host your own email and have purchased messaging central services without any of our email hosting services) the username and password will have been assigned to you when you set up service.
By default, at login the administrator will be in their mailbox record as soon as they log in, and from there they can move to the domain record by clicking on their domain name in the black bar at the top of the page, or by clicking on the on the domain name under the domain status menu tab.
Hosted Exchange customers can use a mechanism set through Messaging Central that notifies each user individually with the URL for Messaging Central and a temporary password for accessing it the first time they receive a piece of spam in quarantine. Alternatively, email administrators can provide user’s with login credentials. After login, the end user can change the password within Messaging Central to something more familiar.
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What is Messaging Central’s spam retention period?
The standard retention period is 30 days.
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Does changing a Messaging Central password affect logging in to the email account as well?
Changing a Messaging Central Password may affect logging into the email account as well. It will depend on which services have been subscribed to, and how the account is set up:
- Regular Hosted Mail Customers (not Hosted Microsoft Exchange):
- The password change will change the email password as well.
- Any Forwarding accounts’ passwords are also changed.
- Hosted Microsoft Exchange Customers:
- Password change affects Messaging Central only and does not change the email password.
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How does Messaging Central interact with the SpamSmart preferences for my domain?
SpamSmart preferences that are available in Messaging Central are: tag and deliver, redirect to address, or low/high stop message delivery. Email passes through the various filters and points are added to and subtracted from the email according to the criteria of the technology of the filter. All spam identified for your domain that is equal to or above the lowest points threshold you have set will be quarantined in Messaging Central on a rolling thirty day basis. This occurs automatically as part of the basic setup of SpamSmart for both SMTP Relay and Hosted Mail customers.
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What is the difference between a domain-wide Allow-list and a user Allow-list?
A domain-wide Allow list is a list of senders, sending domains or IP addresses that will be allowed to bypass spam filtering for all users of a specific domain. Typically, the domain-wide Allow-list is administered by a company’s email administrator. Domain-wide Allow and Deny entries cannot be modified or overridden by users.
A user Allow-list is applicable to a specific user only, and can be either manually or automatically added. Manual entries can be created under the "Allow-list" tab, or they can be created as an option when a user reports a false positive. Automatic entries are created after a user sends two emails to a specific address (the domain must relay outbound mail through Electric Mail). If an automatic entry is later removed by the user, then it will never be added as an automatic entry again; the user would have to add the entry manually.
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What is an automated way to tell my users that their spam quarantine is now active, send them their passwords and to remind them to check it regularly?
There are two choices of notification options available to the administrator:
- Initial Notifications
- Reminders
You can log in to Messaging Central and select the Options tab > SpamSmart Service Options and adjust notification and reminder settings.
Do Not Notify: No quarantine notification email will ever be sent. You may prefer this if you only have a few users you wish to give access to Messaging Central.
Notify Once On First Spam Only(Preferred): With this setting enabled, as soon the first piece of spam arrives in a specific mailbox, a one-time notification message will be sent to the user with instructions and a password on how to login to Messaging Central.
Notify Once Plus Two Week Reminders (also sends a one-time notification message with password): The minimum time period for reminding users to check Messaging Central is every two weeks. No password is sent with the reminder notification messages.
Notify Once Plus Monthly Reminders (also sends a one-time notification message with password): Optionally, you can remind your users to check Messaging Central once a month.
Daily/weekly email Quarantine Summary notifications(recommended)
The daily/weekly email notification option allows easy and efficient management of false positives. The administrator can set the default domain email notification frequency to daily or weekly with a choice of hourly time options. If the administrator wishes to send multiple daily notifications they can choose additional hours by selecting the appropriate check boxes.
How it works: Each day or week the user receives an email notification of all suspected spam received in Messaging Central since the day before. Beside each email in the notification there is an "Allow & Deliver" link with a token that expires at the end of the 30-day quarantine retention period. If a valid piece of mail is discovered in the notification, the user simply clicks the "Allow & Deliver" link and the message will be immediately released, and its sender added to the Allow list automatically so it will not be tagged in the future.
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How can I release a large group of messages all at once?
Should the user encounter several false positives (which can occur in early in the SpamSmart experience - especially if the user belongs to many mailing lists) and would like to release them all at once, they simply click the "here" link at the top or bottom of the page and they will be logged in immediately. While this function will log the user directly in to their Messaging Central account it will not allow them to change the password, and the token will expire at the end of the 30-day retention period. The only way for a user to change their Messaging Central password is to log in to their messaging central account with full credentials.
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My users are reporting that they did not receive Quarantine Summary notifications at certain times or on certain days. Why is this?
If no spam arrives between notifications, a summary is not sent.
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What do I do if I receive a piece of spam that has been missed, or if a legitimate email is incorrectly identified as spam?
If you receive a piece of email that you feel is spam, please contact technical support for further instruction.
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Is there a fast way to check for false positives in Messaging Central?
False positives (email incorrectly identified as spam) will typically have a lower score than most other spam messages. If they are incorrectly caught, they are usually either at, or slightly above the low point threshold set in SpamSmart Properties.
Because of this, messages in quarantine are sorted by point value from lowest to highest. In the unlikely event that there are false positives, these messages will likely be close to the top of the list. This saves hunting through hundreds of messages.
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What if I do not want my users to use Messaging Central?
We recognize that companies may have different preferences regarding the use of Messaging Central. You can restrict access to Messaging Central by unchecking the Access box next to each user’s name in Messaging Central.
Most of our customers recognize the value of Messaging Central as a user tool however it is highly recommended that spam be managed via the email summary notifications for efficiency and effectiveness.
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Below are examples of the Notification and Reminder emails:
Example # 1: Email Notification
From:
Subject: Quarantined email available for review
To:
Message text:
Your Email Administrator has activated spam filtering for this email account, and at least one suspected spam message has been detected and quarantined (stored separately from your inbox).
Messages suspected of being spam will be quarantined for days in Messaging Central, accessible via login at: address will be provided
Your account details
Email account:
Password: (password not shown)
About Messaging Central
The use of Messaging Central is optional. Spam messages do not need to be deleted from Messaging Central, as they will be automatically deleted on an ongoing basis at the end of the abovementioned quarantine period.
Messaging Central is the place to check should you suspect that newsletters, systems messages, mailing lists or other valid email messages are not arriving in your inbox.
Should you find a valid email in Messaging Central, you may report it as falsely quarantined, re-deliver it and allow the sender/domain (allow-list) so that future messages of this type will be directly delivered to the account.
Other features of Messaging Central you may find useful
Create a personal Allow-list: a list of allowed senders for your account, so their messages will always reach your inbox.
Change your password.
Multiple account management: set up aliases so that you can manage spam from multiple accounts from one login.
Check scoring (spam points assigned) for a quarantined message.
Spam is sorted by points from lowest to highest so that you can quickly scan messages with lower spam scores (these are more likely to not be spam).
Example # 2: Email Reminder
From:postmaster@yourdomain.com>
Subject: Quarantined E-mail Reminder
To:
Message text:
Your Email Administrator would like to remind you that suspected spam messages for your email account are being quarantined in Messaging Central at: https://mc.htenvmail.net
Action:
None. The use of Messaging Central is optional, and only necessary if you suspect that legitimate email messages are being falsely quarantined.
Your account details
Your account:
Spam last received on:
Spam quarantine period: days
Reminder frequency:
Next reminder date:
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