Anderson Patricio Get-news Blog : Tips

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

Configuring a Managed Folder help page

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:00:36 GMT

Hello folks,

MRM (Messaging Records Management) is a cool feature of Exchange Server 2007 however to work properly the users should be trained to use it. Exchange Server 2007 allows us to configure a page when you click on Managed Folder item when using Outlook 2007. Creating a page to instruct the user the basic steps should help your users a bit, so let's see how to do that, as follows:

#1. Ask you marketing department to create a nice webpage with nice pictures and good technicall stuff explaining how to use MRM

#2. Add the content created in a web server. You can use your CAS server to host that page. In my example here I created a simple hello world page.

#3. Configure the MRM page, using the following cmdlet:

#4. Now it's time to test it. Click on Managed Folders and on the right side and you will be able to see the page that you have just configured.

Grande abraço,
Anderson Patricio

Technorati : MRM, Managed Folder, start page

Overhauling the PowerShell startup process

Anderson Patricio — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:02:00 GMT

Hello folks,

I saw an interesting post in the PowerShell Team Blog (https://blogs.msdn.com) and they explained that running the script below you can increase the speed to open your PowerShell Console, as follows:

Set-Alias ngen @(
dir (join-path ${env:\windir} "Microsoft.NET\Framework") ngen.exe -recurse |
sort -descending lastwritetime
)[0].fullName
[appdomain]::currentdomain.getassemblies() | %{ngen $_.location}

Read more at source: http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/default.aspx

I ran in my machine and the startup time was much better than before. There is also a comment on that post to use Microsoft.NET\Framework64 in case of a x64 system.

What's your impression? Has it tuned up your PowerShell? Drop us a line about your experience.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio.

How to remove the sentence Sent by Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:01:47 GMT

Hello folks,

If you updated your server to Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Rollup Update 3 then you will be able to remove the text "Sent by Microsoft Exchange Server 2007" using the following cmdlet:

Set-TransportConfig WritingBrandingInDSNEnabled $false

More information at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;941770&sd=rss&spid=10926

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Technorati : Remove, Sent by Exchange Server 2007

How to track the Exchange Server 2007 rollup updates and Service Packs

Anderson Patricio — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 23:08:00 GMT

Hello folks,

Microsoft KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937052 tracks all Service Packs and Rollup Updates for Exchange Server 2007. It's a useful resource to find out what is the latest update available.

This article describes how to obtain the latest update rollup for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Update rollups are a common way to distribute Exchange 2007 fixes and Exchange 2007 modifications. You can install the latest update rollup to help keep the product up-to-date.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Significant update to the Mailbox Server Role Storage Requirements Calculator - v 14.7

Anderson Patricio — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:00:47 GMT

Hello folks,

A new version of Mailbox Server role Storage calculator was released today. You can download it from here: http://msexchangeteam.com/files/12/attachments/entry438481.aspx

You read more at source as well: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/06/12/449007.aspx

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio