Jobs
A job archives one or more mailboxes over a connection. It is created Pending, measured, started by you with licences, archived by runs, and then used to build exports.
Creating a job
Open Jobs and choose New job, or Archive from a connection's menu.
- Choose the connection.
- Tick the mailboxes. For an organisation the list is its directory.
- Save.
The job page opens. Mailgestor measures each mailbox in the background: message count and size for Gmail (an estimate from the count), folder item counts for Microsoft 365. Measuring is usually done within a minute. A mailbox over 50 GB fails the job with a message naming it; take it out of the job and create the job again. Directory accounts that have no mailbox are dropped, and the page says which.
Starting
A measured job shows Start. Starting takes one licence per mailbox from the account's balance and queues the first run. If the balance is short, the job stays Pending and the page says how many more licences it needs, with a link to buy them.
Nothing starts by itself. A job can wait as Pending for as long as you like.
States
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Created, and waiting to be started. It may still be measuring. |
| Archiving | A run is listing or fetching, or a catch-up pass is queued. |
| Archived | Every mailbox is archived and the last catch-up pass found nothing new. Exports can be built. |
| Failed | A run could not make progress at all. The licences are kept until you cancel. |
| Cancelled | You cancelled it. The licences went back to the balance. |
Runs
Each start or retry queues a run, and every run keeps its own log, shown on the job page. A run lists the mailbox, then fetches every item in parallel batches. Progress is checkpointed, so a run interrupted by a deploy or a restart resumes where it was rather than starting over.
One message that the provider refuses does not stop a run: it is recorded as failed and the run continues. Only a credential the provider has withdrawn fails a run outright.
When a run completes and fetched anything, a catch-up pass is queued: an incremental run from the provider's change cursor, to collect mail that arrived during the first pass. Passes continue until one finds nothing new, up to three, and then the job is Archived. The person who created the job gets an email.
Progress
The job page shows the whole job: items done out of the total, items archived by every run, storage used, throughput and time remaining, and each mailbox's estimate. The total is the listing where it exists, or the estimate. Everything updates live; no need to refresh.
Retry and cancel
- Retry on a Failed job queues another run of the same job. It resumes from the checkpoints and keeps the licences. A run still in flight is adopted rather than duplicated.
- Cancel is allowed while Pending, Archiving or Failed. It stops the run and returns the licences to the balance. Retry after a cancel only puts the job back to Pending.
Archiving again
An Archived job has an Archive again button. It lists every mailbox from scratch, skips what is already archived, and collects anything new or anything an earlier listing missed. No licences are used, and the job shows as Archiving until it finishes. Use it to top up an archive before building the files, or when the archived total looks short of what the mailbox holds.
After archiving
An Archived job is where the files come from: see Exports and downloads. Browse any mailbox on it before building: see Browsing an archive.
Deleting
A job's files can be deleted from the job page at any time. The archived mailboxes are deleted six months after their last archive pass, with a week's notice, or sooner if you request deletion of a mailbox or of the whole account; see Settings and deletion.