Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

Hello CU03091316-0,

You've raised a very important question about the storage implications of the "store exact copies of email on timeline" feature in Customer Insights - Journeys (CI-J). Unfortunately, you're right – the documentation on this feature is sparse, and the potential for significant storage consumption is a real concern.

Understanding the Storage Implications:

Exact Copies:
- The feature aims to store exact copies, meaning it likely captures the full email content, including HTML, text, attachments, and embedded images.
- This is significantly more storage-intensive than simply storing metadata (sender, recipient, subject, timestamp).

Potential for Large Storage Footprint:
- As you correctly pointed out, if you're sending a high volume of emails with attachments or embedded images, the storage requirements can quickly escalate.
- Your estimate of 50GB per month for half a million emails might even be conservative, depending on the average email size and content.

Compression and Intelligence:
- While Dynamics 365 and Azure storage services do employ some level of compression, it's unlikely that the "store exact copies" feature implements highly efficient, custom compression algorithms.
- The primary goal is to preserve the email's fidelity, not to minimize storage at all costs.
- It is more likely that the emails are stored as blobs of data.

Factors Affecting Storage Consumption:

Email Size:
- Larger emails with attachments or embedded images consume significantly more storage.

Email Volume:
- The higher the volume of sent emails, the greater the storage consumption.

Attachment Types and Sizes:
- Images, PDFs, and other large attachments contribute heavily to storage usage.

HTML Email Complexity:
- Complex HTML emails with embedded styles and scripts can also increase storage size.

Mitigation and Considerations:

Storage Cost Assessment:
- Carefully assess the potential storage costs associated with this feature.
- Use Azure pricing calculators to estimate the cost of storing the anticipated volume of email data.

Retention Policies:
- Implement appropriate data retention policies to automatically delete older email copies.
- This can help control storage growth over time.

Selective Storage:
- If possible, explore options to selectively store email copies.
- For example, you might only store copies of emails sent to specific segments or for specific journey types.

Monitoring and Reporting:
- Regularly monitor storage consumption to identify trends and potential issues.
- Create reports to track email storage usage over time.

Alternative Storage Solutions:
- In extreme cases, you might consider alternative storage solutions, such as Azure Blob Storage, and integrate them with Dynamics 365. However, this would require custom development.

Microsoft Feedback:
- Provide feedback to Microsoft about the storage implications of this feature.
- Request more detailed documentation and options for controlling storage consumption.

Email Size Optimization:
- If possible, optimize email sizes by compressing images and avoiding unnecessary attachments.

Testing:
- Run tests in a none production enviroment, to see how much storage is being used by the feature.

Key Recommendation:

Exercise caution when enabling the "store exact copies of email on timeline" feature, especially in environments with high email volumes.
Prioritize storage cost assessment and implement appropriate retention policies.

I hope this helps!

If my answer was helpful, please click Like, and if it solved your problem, please mark it as verified to help other community members find more. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact me.

My response was crafted with AI assistance and tailored to provide detailed and actionable guidance for your Microsoft Dynamics 365 query.

Regards,

Daivat Vartak

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Storage space requirement for "store exact copies of email on timeline" in CI-J?

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