Continuity - Managing Continuity Events

This article contains information on managing Continuity Events in Mimecast, including activation, extension, notifications, and post-event actions to ensure seamless email operations during outages and proper restoration afterward.

Prerequisites

• You have configured a Continuity Monitor.

Managing Continuity Events

Once the thresholds that you have configured in the Continuity Monitor are triggered, you are sent an alert or (by SMS or email message) that a Continuity condition has been met:

Click on the link inside the SMS Message, or on the or Manage Event button shown inside the email message (which are valid for 24 hours), to open the Continuity Portal. This allows you to:

• Activate a Continuity event: Click on one of the buttons to start a Continuity Event for the desired duration.
  A confirmation message is displayed Continuity mode activated, with details of the date and time that the Continuity Mode will end, if it is not extended. 
  Additionally the Continuity Mode Status in the right hand panel changes from Inactive to Active, and the Continuity Event's end date and time is also displayed.
• Extend the Continuity event: Click on one of the buttons to extend a Continuity Event for the desired duration.
   A confirmation message is displayed Continuity mode extended, with details of the date and time that the Continuity Event will end, if it is not extended further.
  Additionally the Continuity Event's end date and time changes in the right hand panel.
  The extension is added to any current Continuity Mode's duration. For example, if there are two hours left of an active Continuity Mode, and it is extended by one hour, the Continuity Mode ends in three hours.
• Stop receiving notifications for the event: Click on one of the buttons to stop receiving notifications for the desired 
  duration.
  A confirmation message is displayed Notifications suspended, with details of the date and time that the notifications will restart.
  Suspending notifications can be useful if you expect the Continuity Event to last a long time, as notifications are issued on an hourly basis. If the notification suspension is suspended further, the suspension's duration is added to any remaining suspension. For example, if there are two hours left of a suspension, and it is extended by one hour, the notifications are suspended for three hours.
• Stop the Continuity event: Click on the Stop button to end a Continuity Event.
  A confirmation message is displayed Continuity mode was ended. Additionally the Continuity Mode Status in the right hand panel changes from Active to Inactive.

During a Continuity Event

Here's some things you should be aware of, while a Continuity Event is taking place:

• If an outage occurs in your organization's infrastructure, and Mimecast cannot deliver email messages to you, inbound email messages are automatically queued for a maximum of four days, after this time, messages are bounced and the sender will receive a notification of the bounce. This is only if you have not paused the Delivery Queue in the Continuity Event.
  If the outage is expected to last more than four days, your inbound deliveries can be paused, to prevent senders receiving bounced message notifications. Mimecast will continue to queue the emails indefinitely, and deliver them gradually to the server once they become available.
• If Continuity has been enabled for Mimecast for Outlook, Continuity Mode will automatically activate within 15 minutes of an Exchange server outage. This mode will only activate if a message in Mimecast cannot be found on Microsoft Exchange. This may result in a delay to Continuity Mode for some users. Users have to be logged in to Mimecast for Outlook, in order to be notified, and to be switched to Continuity Mode.
• Communicate with your users: you should already have ensured they can authenticate, and be set up to receive SMS messages or application Notifications; they should be notified of the Continuity Event and given information on which Mimecast services to use during this event.

After a Continuity Event

Once the Continuity Event is over, it may be necessary to revert some of the changes you made:

• End or remove any Continuity Event definitions for Mimecast for Outlook. This will restore regular email flow to the applications.
• If the pause inbound deliveries feature was enabled via Account | Account Settings in the Mimecast Administration Console, it can now be deactivated.

You must test your delivery route to ensure Mimecast can contact your email server.

• Communicate with your users: notify them that the Continuity Event has ended, and monitor your support calls for email Continuity issues, from them.