Google announced a few months ago that they would be releasing a new function for searching Message Logs. Last week it was officially released and has been widely accepeted by all system administrators. The Message Log Search is available for Google Apps Premier and Postini administrators on Systems 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 200.

The Postini Message Log Search provides visibility into how your messages are processed, filtered and delivered, and insight in the traffic patterns for your domain. The message security service captures information about your messages as they’re processed, and this information is stored in a log. You can use Message Log Search to run searches on this data using a variety of criteria and queries. You can then view search results and details about groups or individual messages.

With Message Log Search, you can track what happened to an inbound or outbound message — whether it was delivered, quarantined, archived, encrypted, or other disposition — and see if the message triggered a specific filter. Log Search also enables you to track all messages for a specific sender, recipient, domain, or IP address.

About Message Log Data

The message security service stores information about your messages in a log, such as the message header and how the message was processed, but does not store the actual messages. If you want to save search results for later analysis, you can export a .csv file.

Important: The Log Search data is managed and stored securely in Google datacenters located in the United States (for customers on Systems 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) and the European Union (for customers on System 200).

For more information about the log data storage in Google datacenters, and how to opt out of the Log Search feature, please see the Message Log Feature Data FAQ.