Source: https://www.codetwo.com/admins-blog/cloud-based-message-recall/
Changes introduced in 2024
First, let’s dive into the most recent changes to how message recall works
- Encrypted emails support. Starting from October 2024, message recall gets an integration with Microsoft Purview’s Information Protection. It means that you gain the option to recall encrypted messages. Before this feature’s rollout, the message recall option is greyed out for encrypted emails stored in your Sent Items Folder. This feature is turned on by default.
- Optional Recall Notifications for Recipients. Introduced in August 2024, this feature allows you to send notifications to the recipients of recalled messages. This doesn’t sound like too big of a deal, until you’ve experienced confusion of messages disappearing from your inbox. You can apply this feature with PowerShell cmdlets: Set-OrganizationConfig -MessageRecallAlertRecipientsEnabled [$False | $True] and Set-OrganizationConfig -MessageRecallAlertRecipientsReadMessagesOnlyEnabled [$False | $True]
- Maximum Recallable Message Age. This feature, rolled out in August 2024, lets you control how much time to give everyone to recall messages. When a message exceeds a certain age, message recall will fail. You can control it with the following cmdlet:
Set-OrganizationConfig -MessageRecallMaxRecallableAge [DDDD.HH:MM:SS] - Support for External Round-trip Routing. Starting from August 2024, message recall should support intra-tenant messages that are processed by 3rd party services or on-premises servers, before the actual delivery to the recipients.
Now, back to the features introduced in cloud message recall deployed back in 2023.
More versions of Outlook supported
So far, to experience the goodness of the message recall feature, you needed Outlook for Windows. While the new Message Recall can’t be used in every email app just yet, the list of supported ones has been expanded with the new Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web (OWA), which is a welcome change.
Recall read messages
In the case of the classic Message Recall, once a recipient had read your email (or marked it as read), you were doomed (to die of embarrassment). The new cloud-based feature, however, lets you recall your message, regardless of its state. This can be super helpful if you realize (not immediately but after some time) that you absolutely need to recall an email, or if your recipients automatically mark emails as read.
At the same time, it’s worth noting that admins can opt to turn that functionality off. But I’ll discuss it later on.
Recall emails from subfolders
With the new Message Recall, you can take back your email from any subfolder (like Deleted Items) or even a custom mailbox folder. The classic Message Recall supported only your recipient’s Inbox. It can be extremely useful, for example, if your recipient moves your email manually or uses a rule to move it automatically.
Note that recalling is not possible (by design) in case your message is moved to Drafts or Sent Items.