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Version: 7.3

Introduction to contentACCESS

Introduction​

contentACCESS is an enterprise archiving platform that brings email, files, SharePoint, Teams, and other content sources under a single, consistent architecture. This page introduces the core concepts behind contentACCESS, including how the platform handles data discovery, storage, lifecycle management, permissions, and retrieval across the different source systems it supports.

Unified archiving architecture​

Regardless of the source system, contentACCESS follows the same overall approach:

  • It crawls the source structures.
  • It indexes metadata into a central database.
  • It stores the content itself in a storage of your choice — on-premises, in the cloud, or a combination of both.

This unified model makes it straightforward to manage a wide range of data types without having to operate separate, disconnected archive systems.

Content lifecycle management​

Once data is in the archive, contentACCESS gives administrators full control over its lifecycle:

  • Retention policies ensure that content is kept for as long as required and automatically removed when it is no longer needed, supporting both compliance requirements and efficient storage use.
  • Shortcuts can replace archived items on live source systems such as mailboxes or file shares, offloading data from the source while keeping it transparently accessible to users.

Permissions and access​

Access to archived content is always governed by the permissions that exist in the originating system. contentACCESS synchronizes these permissions automatically, so users see exactly what they are entitled to see — nothing more, nothing less — without any additional administrative effort.

Data ingestion and retrieval​

contentACCESS offers flexibility in how data enters the archive:

  • Content can be discovered and collected through scheduled crawl jobs.
  • Content can be pushed directly into the archive through ingestion.

Either way, robust restore and recovery capabilities ensure that any archived item can be reliably retrieved whenever it is needed.