M365 Changelog: Removing Message Trace in SCC. Move Custom Queries to Message Trace in the new Modern EAC.

MC275807 – Updated October 14, 2021: Based on recent customer feedback, Microsoft will delay retiring Message Trace from the Security and Compliance Center to make sure they provide the best experience for Message Trace in the new Modern Exchange Admin Center. This feature is now scheduled for removal from the Security and Compliance Center in November 2021 . The improved Message Trace feature can be found in the new Modern EAC along with the other mail flow reports and features.

Attention: Microsoft will be retiring Message Trace in the Security and Compliance Center (SCC) from the Security Portal beginning November 2021.

  • In place of this feature, Microsoft recommends you use the Message Trace in the Exchange Admin Center (EAC), which is where they will continue to invest their development resources.

How this will affect your organization:

You will not be able to use Message Trace in the Security and Compliance Center after November 2021. Message Trace has the options to use default queries, custom queries, and autosaved queries. As previously mentioned in earlier posts, you should recreate your custom queries stored in Message Trace in the Security and Compliance Center that you want to keep in Message Trace into Message Trace in the new Modern EAC if you have not done so already.

  • Custom queries in Message Trace in the Security and Compliance Center portal will not be migrated to the new Modern EAC portal. Message Trace custom queries in the Security and Compliance Center are stored differently from custom queries on Message Trace in the new Modern EAC.

Another key difference in Message Trace in the new Modern EAC portal is that your custom queries are stored on a per user basis unlike Message Trace on SCC where custom queries were being stored on a per-tenant basis. Therefore, in the new Modern EAC a user will not be able to see a custom query created by another user. In the SCC, when a user created a custom query, other users were able to see the custom query created due to it being stored at the tenant-level. This is due to privacy and security reasons for EAC.

What you need to do to prepare:

Note: If you have custom queries stored in Message Trace in the Security and Compliance Center that you want to keep, you will need to recreate these queries in Message Trace in the new Modern EAC. If not, they will not be able to be retrieved after Message Trace in the SCC is removed.

For more information, see Message Trace in the new Modern EAC.