User and mailbox protection report

[tm67]

Hi Veeam Team
# 07892081
I had some questions about some users that are displayed in the user and mailbox protection report. But those users do not have an active m365 license, so they cannot have an active mailbox or onedrive or really anything that we want to back up with vb365. So I thought at least.
So support looked into this, and I finally have an explanation that somehow makes sense to me:

Microsoft 365 automatically creates SharePoint-backed Exchange mailboxes when a user:

• is added to a SharePoint site,

• is added to a Microsoft 365 Group or Team,

• receives SharePoint notifications, or

• interacts with content that requires mailbox-backed storage.

These are sometimes referred to as “shadow mailboxes” or SPO system mailboxes.

And Veeam is also protecting those mailboxes. I still need to verify this but it would make sense.

My issue is that we use those user and mailbox protection reports regularly to show our customers what data is protected. And in this case, the customer asked why a user is protected that clearly has no active license and therefore no data that can be protected.
To be clear, the user did not use a vb365 license, so licensing is not an issue.
But the issue is that in the reports we cannot really identify "what data is protected". I would request some improvements in the reports to see what data is protected. Also I did not see any options with REST API / PowerShell to get those exact information.
I want to see what type of mailbox is protected. Is it a shared mailbox? Or a normal usermailbox? Or as in this case some shadow/system mailbox?
Also there is no OneDrive protection report? And also no SharePoint site protection report? And no protected teams report?

Also this information that support gave me, I did not find in any Veeam documentation. Maybe I missed it but it would make sense to add some of that information in articles like this https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo36 ... tml?ver=80

Thanks
Timo

[Polina]

Hi Timo,

Honestly, I have never heard that adding a user to a site creates a mailbox that can be protected. Shadow mailboxes are created for users belonging to the on-premises environments who use Teams, and those mailboxes are hidden and not accessible by any APIs, including VB365. I believe, the inconsistency you see in reporting needs to be further investigated.

For OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams we do not provide any protection reports yet.

Thanks!

[tm67]

Thanks Polina, I will work further with support..
some additional reports would be great as well as PowerShell / REST API endpoints to get this data.

[tm67]

Hi Polina, I now have a final answer that everything is correct and expected behavior. My mailboxes have "RecipientType: UserMailbox" and "RecipientTypeDetails: SchedulingMailbox"
And those are some kind of special behind the scenes mailboxes..
For now I have an answer that I can explain to the customer why the reports display this data.
But I would like to add this as a feature request to improve those reporting capabilities. It would make understanding and explaining the data much more easier.
If we could add some columns to the reports (and also see this data in PowerShell / Rest API) - "what kind of mailbox type we are protecting". This would be great to see.

[Polina]

Hi Timo,

Noted, I'll consider this improvement.
Thanks!