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Exchange Edge server Filter Agent "precedence"

You might find the attachments are being stripped from some email entering your organization despite recipient and sender domain have been added to the "whitelist" in Sender ID Agent.

Agents on Exchange Edge server are as follows:


Each of the agents has its own priority, meaning which of the agent will be first, second, third,... in line to filter. Filters take precedence over another just in case spam is found.

For example: If Connection Filtering Agent finds spam (connection verification fails) it discards the message and none is processed any further. If the message passes Connection Filtering Agent it then goes to Address Rewriting Inbound Agent, which is next on priority list etc.

So, if we put a recipient to BypassedRecipients list in Sender ID Agent, it will be bypassed only for Sender ID Agent filter and not for example Attachment Filtering Agent.

As per Microsoft. "The BypassedRecipients parameter specifies one or more SMTP email addresses. Messages bound for the email addresses listed in this parameter are excluded from processing by the Sender ID agent. You can specify multiple values separated by commas. You can enter a maximum of 100 email addresses."

Therefore, precedence, as we might want it to be, does not exist on Exchange Edge server. It is not as Exchange policies which take precedence when the result (filtered) is found and no more policies are processed.

The biggest problem is with Attachment Filtering Agent, which does not offer any white-listing. The only possibility to bypass attachment filtering without disabling it is by using separate receive connector and then add it to ExceptionConnectors parameter.

As per Microsoft: "The ExceptionConnectors parameter specifies a list of connectors that should be excluded from attachment filtering. Attachment filters aren't applied to email messages received through these connectors. You must use the connector GUID to specify the ExceptionConnectors parameter value."

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