Answers to common questions about the AI features in Mail2Cloud and Mail2Cloud Advanced: what each feature sends, where it goes, who pays for it and how to keep it off. mxHERO has two separate AI features, and they handle data differently.
| Feature | Product | What it does | Where the data goes |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Question condition | Mail2Cloud | Asks your AI provider a yes/no question about each email, so a rule or security policy can act on the answer | Your own OpenAI account, using your API key |
| Store in AI and mxMCP | Mail2Cloud Advanced | Indexes selected email so AI assistants can search it | mxHERO's AI index for your organization |
AI Question conditions
What is an AI Question condition?
It is a type of variable in Auto Filling › Variables. You write a yes/no question, for example "Does this email mention sensitive content?". For each email the rule evaluates, mxHERO sends the question and the email's details to your AI provider and reads the answer. A security policy can then apply a stricter security definition when the answer is Yes. See AI Question Conditions.
Is AI Question part of Mail2Cloud Advanced?
No. AI Question is part of Mail2Cloud. It needs only your own OpenAI API key. Older articles listed it under Mail2Cloud Advanced.
Does mxHERO provide the AI model, or do we need our own account?
You need your own OpenAI account. mxHERO does not supply an AI key. In Settings › Integrations › Applications, turn on Open AI integration and enter your OpenAI API key. Until a key is saved, the AI Question option does not appear in the Variables editor.
Can we choose the model?
Not at the moment. mxHERO selects the OpenAI model that AI Question conditions use. The OpenAI card shows the current model.
Who pays for the AI usage?
You do. Requests are made with your API key, so OpenAI bills your account. mxHERO caches each answer for one hour, so reprocessing the same email within that hour does not send a second request.
What does mxHERO send to OpenAI?
By default, each request contains:
- your question;
- mxHERO's built-in instructions (the Question context);
- the email's subject, sender, all recipients, sent or received date and body text.
Attachments and attachment text are not sent by default. If you edit the Question context and add other variables, for example the attachments' text, those values are sent too.
Requests go directly from mxHERO to OpenAI's API. OpenAI's terms for your account apply to that data.
Is AI Question on by default?
No. It does nothing until you save an OpenAI key and create a variable that uses it, and that variable runs only in the rules and policies you add it to.
What happens if OpenAI does not answer?
Temporary errors (timeouts, rate limits, server errors) are retried, and the email is processed again later. When you design an AI security policy, map the Yes answer to the stricter security definition, so that any doubtful result errs on the side of protection.
Can we test a question before using it?
Yes. On the variable, click Test variable and enter text or upload a .eml or .msg file (up to 25 MB). The test sends a real request to OpenAI with your key.
Mail2Cloud Advanced: Store in AI and mxMCP
What does Store in AI send, and where?
After a rule successfully saves an email to cloud storage, Store in AI sends the email's text to your organization's AI index at mxHERO. The index keeps:
- the sender, To and Cc recipients, subject, date and thread identifiers (not Bcc or other headers);
- the body as plain text, with long quoted reply chains trimmed;
- for each attachment that has readable text, its name and that text (not the file itself);
- one link to the copy of the email the rule stored, typically its PDF copy, which contains links to the attachments.
Scanned images and image-only PDFs are not read, and nothing is read with OCR. To make the text searchable by meaning, it is converted into embeddings with OpenAI's embedding model, under mxHERO's account. OpenAI does not use this text to train AI models. Your own OpenAI key isn't used. See Store in AI.
Which email is indexed?
Only email that matches a rule with Store in AI turned on, into the scope you pick on that rule. Nothing else is indexed. Store in AI is off on every rule by default, and the option appears only after mxHERO provisions Mail2Cloud Advanced for your organization. Mail2Cloud Advanced is in early access and is set up on request.
Does mxHERO train AI models on our email?
No. mxHERO does not train AI models on customer email. The text that mxHERO sends to OpenAI to create embeddings is not used to train AI models either.
What does mxMCP share with the AI assistant?
When a user asks a question, the assistant sends mxMCP only the search request (the question text and derived search parameters), not the rest of the conversation. mxMCP returns matching messages, metadata and attachment text from the scope the user is linked to. The assistant then handles those results under its own provider's terms. mxMCP is read-only: it cannot send, change, move or delete email. See Installing mxMCP.
Can users of one team see another team's email through mxMCP?
The index is separated into scopes (data tenants). mxHERO links each user's address to one scope, and the user can search all the email in that scope and nothing in other scopes. There is no per-mailbox filter inside a scope. Put mail that only some people may see in its own scope, for example HR. See Mail2Cloud Advanced Overview.
Can mxMCP build dashboards, and who can see them?
The mxMCP connector only searches. Assistants that can create documents or artifacts, such as Claude, can build a dashboard from the results themselves. mxHERO also offers optional dashboard connectors that publish a dashboard as a web page. Anyone with the link to such a page can open it, without signing in, for 90 days, and it can't be deleted earlier. See Installing mxMCP.
Where is the AI index stored, and for how long?
Contact mxHERO for the current data residency of the AI index.
Indexed email stays until it is deleted. On request, mxHERO can:
- set a retention period for a scope (minimum 30 days), after which email is deleted daily, by the date it was sent;
- run a one-time purge of email older than a date you choose;
- delete a whole scope.
Individual emails can't be removed. Deleted email leaves search at once and stays in backups until they expire. Disconnecting an assistant doesn't delete anything. Email support@mxhero.com to arrange deletion. See Store in AI.
Can we send email content to our own vector database instead?
mxHERO offers custom routing of email content to other targets, such as your own vector database, as a bespoke project. Contact sales@mxhero.com.
Other AI-related features
Can AI in our cloud storage use the files mxHERO saves?
Yes. Files that mxHERO saves to Box, OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive or Egnyte are ordinary files in that service, so the provider's own AI features can use them under the provider's permissions. For example, you can file email into a specific Box folder or Box Hub that only certain users can query.
Is OCR (reading text from images and scanned documents) an AI feature?
OCR is a separate option that adds variables with text read from images, scanned PDFs and Word documents, for use in rules. It runs inside mxHERO, does not use your OpenAI key, and is not sent to the AI index by Store in AI. It is off by default and enabled by mxHERO on request. See OCR Text Extraction.
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