In our previous post, Email-to-Flow, let’s deal with some spam (Microsoft 365), we discussed our Get Spam Level Apex action. This Apex action, when used in conjunction with our Email-to-Flow application, provides the ability to appropriate action against emails flagged as spam.
What if you aren’t ready to take action on spam? Instead, you want to evaluate the Spam levels to come up with an approach. No worries. We can help.
In this installment, we will take a look at exposing Microsoft 365 Spam protection rating within your origanization.
Before we get started, let’s review a couple of terms briefly.
What is Junk email?
Junk email is spam. Yes, this is an extremely basic definition. But for our needs, spam/junk email is typically defined as unsolicited and universally unwanted messages.
What is Bulk email?
Bulk email (or gray mail) is email generated in bulk. In other words, a mailer generates the same or similar content to a large number of recipients. Unlike spam email, bulk email may be good or bad (and many shades in between). Bulk email might be “good”, such as a vendor sending coupon codes to individuals that have subscribed to a service. Bulk email might be “bad”, such as a vendor selling a high volume of unsolicited content.
What is Microsoft 365 Exchange Online Protection?
In Microsoft 365 organizations with mailboxes in Exchange Online or standalone Exchange Online Protection (EOP) organizations without Exchange Online mailboxes, inbound messages go through spam filtering in EOP and are assigned a spam score(s).
The specific EOP scores we will be discussing today are Spam Confidence Level (SCL) and Bulk Complaint Level (BCL)
What is Spam Confidence Level (SCL)?
The EOP filtering process assigns emails a SCL score. The higher the score, the more likely an email is spam. The scores break down as follows:
| SCL | Definition |
| -1 | The message skipped spam filtering (most likely pre-flagged as safe) |
| 0, 1 | Spam filtering determined the message was not spam. |
| 5, 6 | Spam filtering marked the message as Spam |
| 9 | Spam filtering marked the message as High confidence spam |
SCL will not produce a score of 2, 3, 4, or 8
What is Bulk Complaint Level (BCL)?
The EOP filtering process assigns email a BCL score. The higher the score, the more likely the email has or will generated complaints. The higher the likelihood of complaints, the more likely the email is spam.
| BCL | Definition |
| 0 | The message isn’t from a bulk sender. |
| 1, 2, 3 | The message is from a bulk sender that generates few complaints. |
| 4, 5, 6, 7 | The message is from a bulk sender that generates a mixed number of complaints. Most anti-spam filter set their policy at 7 by default. |
| 8, 9 | The message is from a bulk sender that generates a high number of complaints. |
Introducing the Spam Detection lightning component
The Spam Detection Lightning Component installs in minutes with only a couple of basic steps.
- Navigate to your Case Record Page
- Choose Edit Page
- Under Custom Components, find emailMessageSpam
- Drag the component into the page and select save
- Go back to the Case Record Page
The Case record page now displays a list of all incoming email messages. Included in the list is the spam confidence level (when available) and the bulk complaint level (when available).