For the list of all release notes click here.
The following list will give a quick overview about the newest improvements that contentACCESS version 7.1 brings to you:
Common
✓ System insights
With System Insights in contentACCESS 7.1, administrators get powerful, real-time visibility into the health and performance of their backup and archiving environment. The new System Insights dashboard, integrated directly into the Administration UI, provides comprehensive analytics across key areas, enabling faster troubleshooting, better resource allocation, and smarter decision-making.
System Insights brings a modern, real-time approach to monitoring your contentACCESS environment, replacing the previous periodical telemetry calculations with instant, always-up-to-date analytics. Flexible data exploration allows you to effortlessly switch between a complete system overview or zoom in on specific jobs and operations, giving you the right level of detail whenever you need it. Built on a modern technology stack – leveraging Timescale over Postgres for maximum performance and real-time analytics, while also supporting SQL Server 2022 and above for flexible deployment – System Insights helps you make informed decisions, proactively manage resources, and optimize performance, all within a streamlined and intuitive interface.
Key Capabilities:
Real-time metrics: Instantly accessing up-to-the-minute data on CPU usage, memory consumption, application memory, and the number of running jobs, helping you proactively manage your system’s workload.
Archive activity monitoring: Track the volume of archived data, item counts, average processing times, and error occurrences. Quickly spot trends, bottlenecks, or anomalies affecting archiving performance.
Model activity analytics: View operational metrics such as the number of model-related operations, total data retrieved, and average retrieval times for in-depth performance tuning.
Storage activity tracking: Monitor storage operations, failure counts, and data volume to ensure your storage environment is running smoothly and efficiently.
License usage insights: Get a clear overview of total data volume used and the number of licenses in use, making it easier to plan for future needs and compliance.
Experience instant visibility and control – your system health at a glance!
✓ AI powered help
The new AI powered help in contentACCESS 7.1 takes user support to the next level, delivering fast, intelligent answers to your questions directly within the new Administration UI. Powered by advanced AI and grounded in the official contentACCESS documentation, this help agent ensures that every response is relevant, accurate, and tailored to your needs.
What sets this help system apart is its context-sensitive intelligence – it always knows exactly where you are in the application, providing guidance specific to the part of the interface you’re working in. Thanks to session memory, the help agent remembers your ongoing conversation, so even in longer discussions, it keeps track of what you’ve asked and the context behind it. This means you get coherent, continuous assistance without repeating yourself or losing track of your previous questions.
For maximum convenience, the AI help can be launched with a single click right from your current screen, opened in a separate window, or accessed anytime at https://smartdocs.tech-arrow.com.
Enjoy a seamless support experience that keeps you productive, informed, and always moving forward – no matter how complex your question.
✓ Amazon S3 object lock
With contentACCESS 7.1, you can now take your data protection to the next level with S3 object lock support. Immutable storage is a critical security component for any archive or backup solution, ensuring that once your data is written, it cannot be modified or deleted for a defined retention period. By enabling object lock, contentACCESS allows you to activate hardware-level retention policies on your backup and archive data, providing an extra layer of protection against accidental deletion, tampering, or ransomware attacks.
contentACCESS uses Governance mode for object lock, which not only enforces data immutability but also allows retention settings to be changed by authorized users when necessary. This ensures your organization can respond flexibly to legal or regulatory requirements such as GDPR, where data may need to be deleted or retention periods adjusted.
This feature is fully compatible with all S3-compatible storage solutions, making it easy to ensure data integrity and meet your security needs, regardless of your chosen storage provider. With object lock enabled, you can be confident that your data remains exactly as it was saved—secure, unchangeable, yet adaptable to evolving compliance requirements.
✓ Windows Server 2025 support
contentACCESS 7.1 has been fully verified and optimized to run seamlessly on Windows Server 2025. Whether you’re planning an upgrade or deploying new infrastructure, you can trust that contentACCESS is ready for Microsoft’s latest server platform. Enjoy improved performance, reliability, and compatibility with all the latest features and enhancements that Windows Server 2025 has to offer. Stay ahead of the curve with a future-ready backup and archiving solution!
✓ Introducting Serilog
With contentACCESS 7.1, we’re making a major leap forward in logging technology by replacing log4net with Serilog. Serilog is a modern, industry-leading logging framework that’s become widely adopted in recent years, supported by a vibrant community and a rich ecosystem of integrations.
Unlike traditional logging tools, Serilog is built around structured logging. This means we can now log not just plain text messages, but also complex objects and detailed properties, making our logs far more insightful and actionable. Structured logging enables advanced querying, filtering, and analysis, helping you quickly pinpoint issues and better understand your system’s behavior.
This upgrade brings contentACCESS a more robust, flexible, and future-proof approach to monitoring and troubleshooting – unlocking new possibilities for diagnostics and operational intelligence.
✓ Performance and stability fixes
contentACCESS 7.1 delivers a range of under-the-hood improvements aimed at boosting both speed and reliability. We’ve optimized key areas of the platform to ensure faster response times and a more stable overall experience. Whether you’re archiving, backing up, or managing your data, you’ll notice a smoother, more responsive system that lets you work more efficiently and with greater confidence than ever before.
Email archive
✓ M365 Group archiving
contentACCESS 7.1 introduces comprehensive support for Microsoft 365 Group archiving. Microsoft 365 Groups (often referred to as “modern groups”) are a powerful collaboration tool, bringing together people, shared resources, and conversations. Previously, contentACCESS treated these groups as security groups only. Now, you can take full advantage of contentACCESS’s advanced archiving features – such as filtration, shortcutting, and direct data access – for your Microsoft 365 Groups, just like you do for standard mailboxes.
For even better usability, modern groups are now clearly separated from traditional mailboxes in the Administration UI, making it much easier to find and manage exactly what you need. And if you still want to use Microsoft 365 Groups as security groups within contentACCESS, that option remains available, giving you full flexibility and control.
✓ New style of mailApp deployment
contentACCESS 7.1 introduces a new, streamlined approach for deploying the mailApp. Previously, deployment required providing a backlink from Exchange to contentACCESS, which often caused failures when the archive wasn’t externally accessible—since Exchange couldn’t retrieve the manifest file. With the new version, contentACCESS now sends the manifest directly to Exchange, completely eliminating the need for a backlink.
This improvement means you can now deploy the mailApp even in environments that are not externally accessible. Users can safely and seamlessly access the mailApp behind the firewall, making the deployment process smoother, more secure, and far more flexible for internal systems.
Microsoft 365 backup
✓ M365 Group backup
With contentACCESS 7.1, you can now securely back up Microsoft 365 Groups (modern groups) using the same advanced features available for standard mailboxes. The new Modern Group backup feature ensures that all your group data – including conversations, files, and collaborative content – is protected against data loss and ransomware threats. Enjoy reliable backup and quick data access, so your teams can collaborate confidently, knowing their information is safe and always recoverable.
Update from older versions
✓ Update path: The update is supported by contentACCESS version 5.0 and later. Older versions must first be updated to contentACCESS 5.0 and after that they can be updated to the latest version.
If the update has been done for an earlier version than 3.3, after the update some of the new features must be configured manually.
One of these features is the Task runner, which requires resource storage where the export files will be stored. This storage must be configured in System -> System -> Resource storage settings. This store must be accessible by all contentACCESS nodes inside a cluster, so it is highly recommended to use a network share.
✓ SQL Server 2022 is required for System Insights: In contentACCESS 7.1, we have introduced the new System Insights feature, which requires either Timescale over Postgres or Microsoft SQL Server 2022 (or higher).
✓ .NET updated: In contentACCESS 7.0 all .NET Core based projects were updated to .NET 8. This affects the following components: Document Preview, Search V2, Administration UI (New).
✓ TLS 1.1 and older is disabled: In contentACCESS 6.1 and later the TLS versions older than 1.2 are disabled for security reasons
✓ Modern authentication for Email archive needs more permissions: we have switched from the deprecated Remote PowerShell to a REST based management API, which requires some more permissions on the configured Azure AD application
✓ Search V2 requires .NET Core: In 6.0 we have introduced the next version of search. The new search components targets .NET Core 6, which will be installed automatically by the search server setup.
✓ Teams and Teams chat job filter must be adjusted: In 5.4 we have fully redesigned the filtering capabilities in all Teams and Teams Chat jobs. Your existing Teams and Teams Chat jobs settings must be verified and adjusted after the update from 5.3 and earlier.
✓ Application pool identities changed: To increase the security, all application pools of contentACCESS are using the isolated IIS App Pool Identity. This requires a switch to the server-side rendering in contentACCESS Portal for email archive.
✓ .NET Framework support: From the 5.0 version, the minimum required .NET version for all applications was increased from 4.5.2 to 4.8.
✓ Mail app activation: As a result of redesigning the Mail app activation method in contentACCESS Email Archive, new permissions: “Org Marketplace Apps” and “User Options”, are needed to make the super user work correctly.
✓ Outlook forms: If the update has been done from an earlier version than 3.4, because of some internal changes in the email archive shortcut format, the Outlook forms must be updated to the latest version to maintain the correct functionality. For contentACCESS 3.8, the Outlook forms must be also republished due to the authentication changes.
✓ Remote file archiving: While updating from contentACCESS 3.6, existing remote agent definitions will be not working, since some of the database structures have been moved from the file system archive database to the tenant database.
✓ SQL server support: The minimum required SQL version was increased from MS SQL 2008 to MS SQL 2012.
✓ Redesigned filtering: The old filtering was converted to a new format. Therefore, after the update from 3.7 or earlier, we recommend the checking of all your job filtering settings.
Documentation
Please check the updated documentation and manuals.
contentACCESS and client apps user manuals
