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Configuring and Scheduling the Exchange Online Permissions Collection

Permissions can be analyzed to determine the application permissions of an application, provided you have defined an identity store for Data Access Security to use in its analysis, and you have run a crawl for the application.

The permission collector is a software component responsible for analyzing the permissions in an application.

Configuring the Permission Collection

  1. Open the edit screen of the required application.
    • Go to Admin > Applications.
    • Scroll through the list or use the filter to find the application.
    • Select the Edit icon on the line of the application.
  2. Select Next until you reach the Crawler & Permissions Collection settings page. The actual entry fields vary according to the application type.

When entering this page in edit mode, you can navigate between the various configuration windows using the Next and Back buttons.

Scheduling a Task

To create a schedule:

  1. Select Create a Schedule.
  2. The system will provide a Schedule Task Name in the format {appName} - {type} Scheduler. Choose to keep or override this suggestion.

  3. Select a scheduling frequency from the dropdown list.

    Schedule Frequency Options
    • Once - Single execution task runs.
    • Run After - Create dependency of tasks. The task starts running only upon successful completion of the first task.
    • Hourly - Set the start time.
    • Daily - Set the start date and time.
    • Weekly - Set the day(s) of the week on which to run.
    • Monthly - Set the day of the month on which to run a task.
    • Quarterly - Set a monthly schedule with an interval of 3 months.
    • Half Yearly - Set a monthly schedule with an interval of 6 months.
    • Yearly - Set a monthly schedule with an interval of 12 months.

  4. Fill the Date and Time field with scheduling times. These fields differ depending upon the scheduling frequency selected.

  5. Select the Active checkbox to activate the schedule.
  6. Select Next.

Configuring and Scheduling the Crawler

To set or edit the Crawler configuration and scheduling:

  1. Open the edit screen of the required application.
    • Go to Admin > Applications.
    • Scroll through the list or use the filter to find the application.
    • Select the Edit icon on the line of the application.
  2. Select Next until you reach the Crawler & Permissions Collection settings page. The actual entry fields vary according to the application type.

Crawl Mailboxes, Crawl Public Folders

Select the types of folders to scan.

Create a Schedule

Select to open the schedule panel. Refer to Scheduling a Task.

Setting the Crawl Scope

Options for setting the crawl scope are:

  • Setting an explicit list of resources to include and / or exclude from the scan.
  • Creating a regex to define the resources to exclude.

Including and Excluding Paths by List

To set the paths to include or exclude in the crawl process for an application:

  1. Open the edit screen of the required application.
    • Go to Admin > Applications.
    • Scroll through the list or use the filter to find the application.
    • Select the Edit icon on the line of the application.
  2. Select Next until you reach the Crawler & Permissions Collection settings page. The actual entry fields vary according to the application type.
  3. Scroll to the Crawl configuration settings.
  4. Select Advanced Crawl Scope Configuration to open the scope configuration panel.
  5. Select Include / Exclude Resources to open the input fields.
  6. To add a resource to a list, enter the full path to include / exclude in the top field and select + to add it to the list.
  7. To remove a resource from a list, find the resource from the list, and select the x icon on the resource row.

When creating exclusion lists, excludes take precedence over includes.

Excluding Paths by Regex

To set filters of paths to exclude in the crawl process for an application using regex:

  1. Open the edit screen of the required application.
    • Go to Admin > Applications.
    • Scroll through the list or use the filter to find the application.
    • Select the Edit icon on the line of the application.
  2. Select Next until you reach the Crawler & Permissions Collection settings page. The actual entry fields vary according to the application type.
  3. Select Exclude Paths by Regex to open the configuration panel.
  4. Enter the paths to exclude by Regex; refer to regex examples in the section below. Since the system does not collect business resources that match this Regex, it also does not analyze them for permissions.

Crawler Regex Exclusion Example

The following are examples of crawler Regex exclusions:

Exclude all shares which start with one or more shares names

  Starting with Public Folders\\shareName

  Regex: Public Folders\\\\shareName$

  Starting with Public Folders\\shareName or Public Folders\\OtherShareName

  Public Folders\\\\(shareName|OtherShareName)$

Include ONLY shares which start with one or more shares names

  Starting with Public Folders\\shareName

  Regex: ^(?!Public Folders\\\\shareName($|\\.*)).*

  Starting with Public Folders\\shareName or Public Folders\\OtherShareName

  Regex: ^(?!Public Folders\\\\(shareName|OtherShareName)($|\\.*)).*

  Include ONLY one folder under a share: \\server\share\folderA

  Regex: ^(?!\\\\Public Folders\\shareName\$($|\\folderA$|\\folderA\\.*)).*

Exclude all mailboxes which start with one or more user names

  Starting with John.Doe

  Regex: ^Mailboxes\\John\.Doe@.*

  Starting with John.Doe or Jane.Doe

  Regex: ^Mailboxes\\(John|Jane)\.Doe@.* |

Include ONLY mailboxes that start with one or more user names

  Starting with John.Doe

  Regex: ^(?!Mailboxes\/John\.Doe@.*).*



  Starting with John.Doe or Jane.Doe

  Regex: ^(?!Mailboxes\/(John|Jane)\.Doe@.*).* |

Note

To write a backslash or a Dollar sign, add a backslash before it as an escape character.

To add a condition in a single command, use a pipe character “|” .

Narrow down the selection

  Include ONLY *the C$ drive shares: \\server_name\*C$*

  Regex: ^(?!\\\\server_name\\*C*\$($|\\.*)).* |


  Include ONLY one folder under a share: \\server\share\*folderA*

  Regex`: ^(?!\\\\server_name\\share\$($|\\`*folderA*`$|\\`*folderA*`\\.*)).*` |


  Include ONLY all administrative shares

  Regex: ^(?!\\\\server_name\\[a-zA-Z]\$($|)).* |

Note

To write a backslash or a Dollar sign, add a backslash before it as an escape character.

To add a condition in a single command, use a pipe character “|” .

Excluding Top Level Resources

Use the top level exclusion screen to select top level roots to exclude from the crawl. This setting is done per application.

To exclude top level resources from the crawl process

  1. Open the application screen Admin > Applications.
  2. Find the application to configure and select the dropdown list on the application line. Select Exclude Top Level Resources to open the configuration panel.

  3. Run Task

    • The Run Task button triggers a task that runs a short detection scan to detect the current top level resources.
    • Before running the task for the first time, the message above this button is: "Note: Run task to detect the top-level resources."
    • If the top level resource list has changed in the application while you are on this screen, select this button to retrieve the updated structure.
    • Once triggered, you can see the task status in Settings > Task Management > Tasks. This will only work if the user has access to the task page.
    • When the task has completed, select Refresh to update the page with the list of top level resources.

  4. Select the top level resource list, and select top level resources to exclude.

  5. Select Save to save the change.
  6. To refresh the list of top level resources, run the task again. Running the task will not clear the list of top level resources to exclude.

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