AndersonPatricio.ca : Tips

Managing Calendar permissions using PowerShell in Exchange Server 2010

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 16:31:49 GMT

Good morning folks (A beautiful winter day without snow here in Toronto),

In Today’s post we are going over the Add-MailboxFolderPermission cmdlet. This command is very helpful if you have a busy Director that wants a new assistant to have access to his Calendar and he doesn’t have time to do it.

First of all, I would recommend to list the current Calendar permissions for our user and it can be done using Get-MailboxFolderPermission <mailbox>:\Calendar

Adding permissions…

Now that you know what is going on, you can add a new user and to do that just run the following cmdlet Add-MailboxFolderPermission <mailbox>:\Calendar –User <Mailbox-that-will-have-access> –AccessRights <Editor,Owner,PublishingEditor,PublishingAuthor,Author,NonEditingAuthor,Reviewer,Contributor>

Removing Permissions

Okay, we also need to be able to remove permissions and it can be easily done by running the following cmdlet: Remove-MailboxFolderPermission <mailbox>:\Calendar –User <Mailbox-that-will-be-removed-from-Calendar-Permissions> and then type Y to confirm.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio

Technorati Tags: Exchange Server 2010,Get-MailboxFolderPermission,Add-MailboxFolderPermission,Remove-MailboxFolderPermission,AndersonPatricio.ca,Calendar

Removing the first line (#TYPE) when using Export-csv cmdlet

Anderson Patricio — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 19:37:46 GMT

Hello my friends,

If you export data from Exchange you may have already noticed that after exporting data you will have a first line which by default starts with #TYPE and then specifies the object (full qualified).

If you are not sure we can show you the issue in a couple of steps. First Let’s get a list of all our mailboxes and then export to the file OUTemp.csv

If we open the file, here we have the first line with the information.

It’s not a big deal but when you open on Excel instead of having your columns ready to rock and roll you have to go there and delete the line.

The solution..

The solution can be found in the export-csv cmdlet by using the switch –NoTypeInformation as show in the figure below.

Now, as result we can open the CSV file generated by the previous cmdlet and voilà we don’t have that line.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio

Managing Windows Time

Anderson Patricio — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:08:01 GMT

Hello my friends

I got in Canada this morning at 6:00AM and around 8AM I had a time issue because the freaking atomic clock that I was using was down (Can you believe it? Well if you are using from USA, you can check the list of their status on this site http://tf.nist.gov/tf-cgi/servers.cgi).

So, the topic of Today is going to be Time! (when I say that I keep hearing Morgan Freeman initial speech on Through the Wormhole series. If you haven’t seen it, please do!).

There are several ways to implement time on your environment and Microsoft has great documents and KBs for that, but here are Andy’s two cents of advice:

Active Directory is sensitive about time discrepancies, so be consitente
I would recommend to create a sub-Organization Unit under Domain Controllers called PDC and move the main Domain Controller of your forest/domain to that OU and assign a GPO to synchronize with an atomic clock for that server
All other DCs should synchronize for this special DC
If you are using Virtualization make sure that your hosts are synchronizing from the DCs
Disable the Time Sync with your virtualization product and let the Active Directory control that, in case you forget or miss that configuration in a machine the previous step will keep consistency
Learn how to use the w32tm to help you out during the troubleshoot phase

Okay, now that you have it configured you can use these following cmdlets to help you to troubleshoot any time issues.

How do I know which NTP server my server is using?

w32tm /query /source

How do I start the refresh process?

w32tm /resync /nowait

Bear in mind that the difference is not going to drop 5 minutes in a single shot. It going to be a slow process.

How far are we from the atomic clock?

That is a piece of cake, just run w32tm /stripchart /computer:time.nrc.ca

By the way, if you have a server too much ahead and you want to make sure that the server is using your local DC, you can restart the Windows Time Service to refresh settings and it will bring the time to the local NTP/DC server.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio

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Managing Picture Display In Outlook 2010

Anderson Patricio — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:04:12 GMT

Hi folks,

This week I published an article about Picture Display usage in Outlook 2010, the article was published at MSExchange.org and has the script that I published here a couple of weeks ago (http://msmvps.com/blogs/andersonpatricio/archive/2010/01/06/adding-images-to-ad-users-using-a-uploadphoto-ps1-script.aspx)

Here is the article: http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/management-administration/configuring-using-display-picture-exchange-server-2010.html

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://msmvps.org/Blog/AndersonPatricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.org
Twitter: @apatricio

Visualizing Quota Information using Outlook 2010 and Outlook Web App

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:17:00 GMT

Hi folks,

A friend of mine just asked me about Quota Information to the end-user on the new products. So here a small brief how to retrieve quota information using Outlook 2010 and Outlook Web App.

If you are a happy user and you are using the Outlook Web App, you can hover your mouse over your name on the right side and you will se the current size of your mailbox and limits assigned to you.

If you are using Outlook 2010 there is Quota Information feature that can be turned on or off. Basically, righ click on the bottom bar of your Outlook 2010 and click on Quota Information.

Then, you will notice a quota status on the bottom left corner of your Outloo. Nice, isn't it?

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://msmvps.org/blogs/AndersonPatricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.org

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Managing multiple users through Exchange Managent Console of Exchange Server 2010

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:51:00 GMT

Hello folks,

Today we are going over a new administrative feature found in the Exchange Management Console of Exchange Server 2010. In the new version we are able to change more than one user' attributes in a single step like we already have in the Active Directory users and computers tool.

Let's disable the IMAP protocol of a couple of users using Exchange Management Console, let's select the designated users and click on Properties.

Click on Mailbox Features, and when we have <current status> value means that the values will not be changed on the selected mailboxes even though if they are different.

Let's Disable IMAP4 procotol as can be seen on the picture below.

When you click on OK or Apply you will be prompted with a Bulk Edit Summary window containing all settings that will be applied and also the number of recipients that will be affected by that change.

Note:

Select always the same type of objects (resource mailboxes, user mailbox, groups)
You can also use the Window PowerShell Command Log before applying the settings to see what's going to be applied. More info: http://msmvps.com/blogs/andersonpatricio/archive/2009/04/20/using-exchange-2010-windows-powershell-command-log.aspx

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

List of available updates for Communications Server 2007 R2: April 2, 2009

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 05 May 2009 23:31:00 GMT

Hello folks,

I read about this kb on the Office Communications Server Team Blog (http://communicationsserverteam.com) and the following kb http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968802 has a descriptive list of all updates for OCS 2007 R2 and its use for each server role.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Personalizing Disclaimer in Exchange Server 2010

Anderson Patricio — Sat, 02 May 2009 02:30:30 GMT

Hello folks,

Exchange Server 2010 brings a lot of new features, today we will go over some of the new capabilities that we can have in a Disclaimer Transpor Rule rule.

Using Exchange Server 2010 we can add HTML and Active Directory information in a Transport Rule, isn't cool?

To use an Active Directory attribute we have to use double dollar sign before and after the attribute name, for example: %%Company%%, it will bring the Company attribute of the user to the disclaimer. We can also combine HTML and AD attributes, in this post we are using some basic HTML in our disclaimer rule.

Okay, time for a test, let's create a new Transport Rule that adds disclaimer to the messages, and in the disclaimer text, we are going to add the text of the figure below.

Okay, we are using the following attributes: DisplayName, StreetAddress, Company and Phone. My user which is going to send a message has all those attributes filled out as show in the following pictures:

Company's attribute of my user

Street Address and Phone atributes

Now, my user is going to send a message, the user who receives my test message will see a personalized disclaimer based on user's AD attributes.

By the way, if you want to learn how to create a disclaimer transport rule in Exchange Server 2010, you can follow this Exchange Server 2007 article that I wrote last year http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Using-Transport-Rules-Creating-Disclaimers-Exchange-Server-2007.html.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Exchange Server 2010: Mail Tips feature

Anderson Patricio — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:20:54 GMT

Hello folks,

Nice posts about a new Exchange Server 2010 feature: Mail tips! You can check this out at: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/04/28/451193.aspx

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer in Action

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:30:00 GMT

Hello folks,

Microsoft Canada has a great blog for IT Professionals that is the IT Pro Connection (http://blogs.technet.com/canitpro) and last April 18th Sasha Krsmanovic blogged about a tool that we spoke here in this blog before: Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer and he also added a video about the tool. Good stuff!

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Using Exchange 2010 Windows PowerShell Command Log

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:49:11 GMT

Hello folks,

In this new Exchange Server version PowerShell got a lot of new tricks! :) We can use Windows PowerShell Command Log to track down all the cmdlets used in Exchange Management Console in detail. To enable the functionality click on View.. in the Toolbox Actions and click on View Windows PowerShell Command Log...

Let's click on Action menu item and then on Start Command Logging

Time to play with Exchange Management Console, let's navigate on some roles properties, user properties, and so forth. Afterwards, let's go back to View WindowsPowerShell Command Log and we will be able to see all cmdlets performed during our last trip to the Exchange Management Console. For each cmdlet ran in background we can see the status, start and end execution time and the details of that command. We can stop this trace clicking on Action and Stop Command Logging

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Exchange 2010 and PowerShell

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:28:58 GMT

Hello folks,

A nice feature of the new Exchange Server 2010 (former E14) is the Show Exchange Management Shell command which is a small button located on the left corner of Exchange Management Console and we can see that

Let's play with this feature, let's get properties of any user and change any attribute, in our example, we are going to tick the option Hide from Exchange address listand after that we can hit the Show Exchange Management Shell Command button and we will see all changes that will be performed in background when you click OK or Apply buttons. We can also use this feature to figure out attributes names easily.

Here is the cmdlet that will run based in our last change.

We can also navigate across different tabs and change settings, when we click on the Show Exchange Management Shell command we will be able to see all changes that will be performed.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Retrieving OCS Communicator R2 Configuration Information

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 02:45:06 GMT

Hello folks,

The new Communicator R2 has a feature to show the current configuration that the client is using. To retrieve your configuration settings, hold Ctrl key and right-click on the OCS 2007 Communicator icon located on systray area, and then click on Configuration Information.

The tip came from Office Communicatons Server Team, and the original post can be found here: http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2009/04/08/400.aspx

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Communicator 2007 R2 - Cool Tips by Office Communicator Team

Anderson Patricio — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:20:23 GMT

Hello folks,

Office Communicator team has been releasing some tips about Communicator R2 and they reached the "Tip of the Day" number 10. Here is a summary of all tips blogged so far, as follows:

Cool Tip of the Day 1: Start an IM Conference using Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/09/493.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 2: Join an IM Conference
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/10/564.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 3: Start/Join an Unscheduled Conference Call
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/11/565.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 4: Start an Audio/Video Conference
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/12/566.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 5: Join an Audio/Video Conference
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/13/567.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 6: Conduct Conference Calls
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/30/568.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 7: Escalate Conferencing Communication Modes
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/31/569.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 8: Share Your Desktop or Share Information Using Microsoft Office Live Meeting
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/04/01/570.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 9: Schedule a Conference Call or Live Meeting
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/04/02/571.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 10: Manage Your Contacts and Contact List
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/04/03/572.aspx

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Chaging time zone on a Hub Transport Server? Don't forget to restart the Transport Services!

Anderson Patricio — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:02:42 GMT

Hello folks,

Here is a nice one, do you know that when we change the time zone information on a server running Hub Tranport the new configuration will be applied after a restart of the Exchange Transport Service? Yes, it's true, and there is a kb for that, check this out http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/960963

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

DSNConversionMode and You: An Administrator's Guide

Anderson Patricio — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:20:00 GMT

MSExchangeteam blogged about a new feature introduced with Rollup Update 4 which is a new parameter called DSNConversionMode.

How to use Exchange Management Shell to find users based on attributes

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:08:00 GMT

Hello folks,

There are a bunch of questions in Microsoft Forums asking how to retrieve information from Exchange Server 2007, such as: how to search all users from a specific department or how many users that have redirection and so forth. Also, some beginners may find complicated to get this information using Exchange Management Shell. So.. I'm going to use a simple scenario and all methods used here can be used to retrieve any other information just comparing values. Let's get some action...

Scenario: Your boss is going to change the company SMTP address and he wants to know how many users will not receive the new SMTP Address coming from E-mail Address Policies because they have the Automatic E-mail Address Policie option disabled. Let's say also that you have no idea what is the attribute name of that specificoption, so.. how can you do that?

First of all, find a guinea pig that can be your mailbox or any other user, we are not going to do nothing special just change some attributes in order to find the attribute name that will be used later on in the final query.

First step, open Exchange Management Console, expand Recipient Configuration and double click in your test user, click on E-mail Addresses tab and make sure that the option that you want to create a report is selected. Then, open an Exchange Management Shell session and type in the following cmdlet:

Get-Mailbox <UserName> | FL

Secont step, let's go back to Exchange Management Console and double click on the same test account and now uncheck the option Automatically update e-mail address based on e-mail address policy and click on Apply and OK. Open a new Exchange Management Shell (We are not going to use the current Exchange Management Shell session must be new one to facilitate the next step) and run the same cmdlet that we had run in the last step, as follows:

Get-Mailbox <UserName> | FL

Why? Because you are going to comparte the differences between the first run and the second run of "Get-Mailbox <UserName> | FL" cmdlet and the difference will be what you are looking for, in our example we want to know the attribute how controls who has the E-mail Address Policy with a disable value, as shown in below.

Okay, now that you know the attribute you just to use it in a pipe to get information from your entire organization, as follows:

Get-Mailbox | where { $_.<AttributeName> -eq <value> }

In our example will be:
Get-Mailbox | where { $_.EmailAddressPolicyEnabled -eq 0 }

Okay, Do you want to impress your boss with a .csv report? :) Not a problem, just add " | export-csv c:\<file-name>.csv" at the end and that's all!

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Changing more than 1000 mailboxes at the same time through Exchange Management Shell

Anderson Patricio — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:13:05 GMT

Hello folks,

If you need to run a cmdlet that changes one or more attribute of more than 1000 users you will receive an error if you try this following cmdlet:

Get-Mailbox | Set-Mailbox -RulesQuota:256KB

In this specific case we have to use ResultSize parameter in the Get-Mailbox cmdlet to list all your users and then they will be changed by the second cmdlet in the same pipe, as follows:

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize:5000 | Set-Mailbox -RulesQuota:256KB

Note: In this case my result size does not go over 5000 mailboxes. You have to change this value based in your number of mailbxes.

Note #2: There is also the value unlimited for the ResultSize switch which means that you can use -ResultSize unlimited and you don't need to care to add a number higher than your current users because it will get all users no matter how many users you have.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Exchange Server build numbes and release dates..

Anderson Patricio — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:07:18 GMT

Hello folks,

There is a KB with all Exchange Server build number and release dates of the products, check this out: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/158530.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio.

Updated script for Moving Domino Groups containing SMTP Addresses

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:02:57 GMT

Hello folks,

A new version of the script that moves domino groups to AD was released.

This script will move Domino Groups to Active Directory while preserving SMTP Addresses by creating contacts in AD for these users. By default Move-DominoGroupToAD will drop SMTP addresses if they do not already exist in AD.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio