MS Exchange Blog

New Mac Messenger for OCS

According to Eric Swift, Senior Director of the Office Communications Group at Microsoft, they are working on a new Messenger client for Mac with a beta coming later this year.

The new Mac Messenger (Office Communicator for Mac?) may not have feature-parity with its Windows-based counterpart, but it will have peer-to-peer video and audio conferencing, rich presence, GAL search and dual sign-on. Your Mac clients will be able to integrate with your Office Communications Server 2007 as well.

William Lefkovics

 

Exchange 2007 Protocol Documentation

So you have a week off from work and you don't have any specific plans for that week.  Well have we got a solution for you!

Microsoft has made available on MSDN yesterday the Exchange 2007 protocol documentation as part of their earlier announcement to publicize protocols and APIs for Microsoft products. At this time the documentation has been marked as 'preliminary' and the set of PDFs totals a 44.0MB download.

So grab a fine beverage, or a few, and get comfortable in your favorite chair and .....

William Lefkovics

Interact 2008

I am attending Microsoft's Inaugural event focusing on Unified Communications. The sessions and labs of course cover intermediate level topics on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007.

If Real-time communications and unified messaging are a significant part of your position, then consider Interact 2009 as a learning and networking opportunity. (interact09.com was reserved at the same time as interact08.com). I should warn you though, it seems speakers have been programmed to use the word 'Interoperability' a minimum number of times per session. Oh sure there is a good reason...

 

William Lefkovics

Apple licenses Activesync for iPhone 2.0

By now you have already heard that Apple made the expected, yet still surprising announcement that, in response to customer demand, they are licensing Microsoft's Activesync protocol to expand and improve the corporate market potential for the next iPhone. At the same time, they announced an iPhone Enterprise Beta program as well. 

The iPhone SDK is available in the Apple iPhone DevCenter downloads area.

William Lefkovics

Leap Year bug in Exchange 2007

Many have experienced what appears to be a February 29th bug in Exchange 2007. You might see an error with text something like:

"The Exchange server address list service failed to respond. This could be because of an address list or email address policy configuration error."

There is a TechNet forum thread on the issue as well.

Microsoft is frantically trying to resolve this. Since the problem appears to go away when changing the system date to March 1 (not a solution), perhaps by midnight the issue will resolve itself... at least for four more years.

Update: Nino clarifies the leap year situation at the Exchange Team blog stating that "We are working on a permanent fix for this and will update this blog post when it becomes available."

William Lefkovics

Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2007 SP1 Released

A few days after Rollup 6 for Exchange 2007 RTM was released, Microsoft has followed up with another between-service-packs update for Exchange 2007. Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2007 SP1 is an accumulation of several fixes listed in the description for this rollup in MS KB 945684.

Exchange 2007 SP1 is a prerequisite for this update.

William Lefkovics

Update Rollup 6 for Exchange 2007 RTM

Is now available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0b2993a3-d290-453e-85fe-108867865731&displaylang=en&tm

The corresponding KB is 942846 but it's not available yet.

Microsoft Exchange 2007 Search Basics

Unlike Exchange 2003, Exchange Search is enabled by default in Exchange 2007 and is automatically applied to new databases as they are created. Exchange Search depends on a full-text indexing and each mailbox database in Exchange 2007 has a full-text index associated with it. However, this latest incarnation of Exchange server-side search not the status quo. Search for Microsoft Exchange 2007 has been rewritten. 

Indexing content is now performed as messages arrive at the store and not on a set schedule. Certain attachment types are also indexed, most notably Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint and HTML files. To facilitate these changes, indexing is now more integrated with the Information Store Service. The result has been much improved indexing performance in Exchange 2007.

Exchange 2007 Search will show a few processes in Task Manager:

• Microsoft.Exchange.Search.ExSearch.exe (MSSearch)
• Msftefd.exe (filter daemon - similar to SQL Server 2005)
• Msftesql.exe (core indexer)

These Exchange 2007 Search processes will throttle server-side full-text indexing when the Exchange Server needs resources for client access so the user experience is not negatively impacted. Otherwise, new messages get indexed within seconds of arrival. Searches using the server-side Exchange 2007 Search return results expeditiously.

Exchange 2007 Search is not the same as Instant Search in Outlook 2007, which is implemented with Windows Desktop Search (WDS) on the client. Outlook 2007 Instant Search requires either a .pst or Exchange cached mode (.ost). For the desktop client to benefit from Exchange 2007 Search they need to use either Outlook Web Access or a MAPI profile without Exchange cached mode (online mode).

Even though they are index-enabled by default, some databases may not need to be searched efficiently and therefore do not require an index. Full-text indexing is toggled on or off ($true or $false) from the Exchange Management Shell as follows:

>Set-MailboxDatabase <MailboxDatabaseName> -IndexEnabled $false

Also using PowerShell, the Test-ExchangeSearch cmdlet is used to verify the status of Exchange 2007 Search by creating a message and querying for that message and reporting back to the administrator.

William Lefkovics

Windows Server 2008 goes RTM

Microsoft announced today that Windows Server 2008 has been released to manufacturing. If you haven't tried Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008, hey, now is a good time to try!

Oh, there was something about an operating system called 'Vista' having a service pack released today, too.

William Lefkovics

Microsoft Transporter Suite

For a while now, Microsoft has offered the Transporter Suite for Lotus Domino to migrate from Domino to Exchange 2007.  It looks like this suite has now been updated to include support for generic POP/IMAP sources, meaning that migrating from these systems to Exchange 2007 should be easier as you'll not need to maintain things like a copy of the old Exchange Migration Wizard.

TrainSignal.com Releases Exchange 2007 CBT

Fellow Exchange MVP David Shackelford lends his expertise to a new instructional video set on Administering Exchange 2007 through Train Signal. The Press Release for this set is found here. The Table of Contents for the videos is fairly thorough and found on the Exchange Server 2007 Training Videos product page.

Historically, I do find Train Signal produces quality videos, though I have not yet viewed this offering.

In the press release, the Train Signal Director of Sales and Marketing claims that there is a limited amout of training videos available for Exchange 2007. This is true. It is limited to almost all of his competition, including LearnKey and CBT Nuggets who both had Exchange 2007 training videos out last year.

William Lefkovics

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac released

In conjunction with the MacWorld Expo, Microsoft has finally released Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage make up a visually appealing and functional package for Mac users. Entourage is used to connect Mac users to Microsoft Exchange Server. Instructions on creating an Exchange account in Entourage is available in the online help.

William Lefkovics

UK Exchange User Group - Events for Jan/Feb 2008

Here are the details of the January MMMUG meeting.

This event will be held in London at the MS offices near Victoria.  Ben Appleby from MCS will be back to talk us through all things backup and recovery.  The session will take a detailed look at the System Center Data Protection Manager platform in relation to Exchange and will delve into the concept of VSS backups be that software or hardware snapshots.

The meeting will be held on Wednesday 23rd January.

 

To sign up see the thread here:

http://www.mmmug.co.uk/forums/thread/1862.aspx

 

Here are the details of our February MMMUG meeting.

This event will be held in London at the MS offices near Victoria.

This month we have our most popular speaker back! Yes; Jason Langridge will be with us this time talking all about Window Mobile device management. Jason will cover the recently announced System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 and enhancements to Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1.   Jason will run through all the options and let us know what is the best route for management.

Jason will also share the roadmap for Windows Mobile.

The meeting will be held on Wednesday 27th February.

 

To sign up see the thread here:

http://www.mmmug.co.uk/forums/thread/1863.aspx

Office 2007 SP1 Download

Calling all Outlook 2007 users : Office 2007 SP1 is now available for download here.

Promodag Reports Version 8 Available

I had an email stating that Promodag Reports, one of the leading Exchange reporting packages, now has Version 8 available.  The main features are:

Supports Exchange 2007.

Supports Windows Vista.

Exports to Sharepoint server destination.

Exports to Web Archive (MHT file) format.

Support Microsoft .Net framework 2.0 and 3.0.

CDO is not required anymore so you will not receive the Outlook security prompt anymore.

Global rewriting of all messages appearing in the user Interface.

Reports were renamed and have more meaningful names.

Reports have a new Definition tab that explains their purpose.

You can get a full list of improvements here. 

Exchange 2007 SP1 VHD available

As they did with Exchange 2007 RTM, Microsoft has made available for download a generically configured .vhd file for Virtual PC or Virtual Server with Exchange 2007 SP1 installed. It seems that they removed the Exchange 2007 RTM one in the process.

Having a prepared .vhd file makes server product evaluation easier. For Exchange, you can evaluate almost everything about the product except... the installation process, maybe. The download has Exchange installed on Windows 2003, so it is not insignificant. Microsoft uses WinRAR to separate the .vhd into an archive set of 3 files totalling 1835.1MB.

This is the 32-bit version for evaluation, probably because Microsoft does not have a production virtualization tool that allows for 64-bit guests yet.

William Lefkovics

Q&A With The Exchange MVP Experts Chat

Microsoft invites you to attend a Q&A with the Microsoft Exchange Server MVPs. In this chat Exchange MVPs will be on hand to answer your questions about Exchange Server, Outlook and Exchange for Small Business Server. So if you are thinking of upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 or have questions about Exchange Server 2003 we hope you can join us for this informative online chat!

Held on 2 dates/times

Chat 1: December 5th at 10am PDT
Chat 2: December 12 at 5pm PDT
Where: TechNet Chat Room
www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx
Password: Public Chat no password required

There is also a similar chat being held on the subject of security.  In this chat the MVP experts will answer your questions regarding online safety issues such as phishing, spyware, rootkits as well as server related topics. If you have questions on how to protect your PC, please bring them to this informative chat.

When:  December 11th at 4pm PDT
Where: TechNet Chat Room
www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx
Password: Public Chat no password required

Microsoft Outlook Resources

There are many Outlook specific resources available to those who use or administer the world's most popular Personal Information Manager. I am sure there are many more, but these are some of the ones I try to stay current with.

Ongoing newsgroups that have helped administrators, Outlook users and developers can be found at Yahoogroups.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/outlook-users/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/outlook-dev/

If NNTP newsgroups are your preference, then certainly there is news.microsoft.com groups. Search for "Outlook" to find groups in different languages. The English groups are as follows:
microsoft.public.outlook.*

The Microsoft Outlook Team blog (better late than never, guys)
http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/

MSDN Outlook Developer Portal
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905455.aspx

Outlook 2007 Office Online Help and How-To
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/FX100647191033.aspx

For developers there is an immaculately presented site by Sue Mosher
http://www.outlookcode.com/

For lots of Outlook tips and how-tos see
http://www.outlook-tips.net/

And of course Slipstick.com, still relevant after 124 years online!
http://www.slipstick.com/

William Lefkovics

Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 due November 30

According to the latest Technet Flash email newsletter of November 28, 2007, Exchange 2007 with Service Pack 1 will be accessible for download (it's not there yet...UPDATE:Download link is working today 11/29) on November 30, 2007. The Exchange 2007 Download Center mentions sp1 as well suggesting you might "watch for the impending release announcement on the Exchange TechCenter homepage."

Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 is incorporated into Exchange 2007 RTM. This is important to meet requirements for installing on Windows 2008 Server. It also makes it easy to deploy for new installations without requiring a separate service pack installation. Windows 2003 needs to have Service Pack 2 applied prior to Exchange 2007 sp1.

Much of the current documentation in the Exchange TechCenter has referenced the following for quite some time: Applies to: Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1.

William Lefkovics

December MMMUG Meeting (UK)

Here are the details of the December UK MMMUG meeting.

This event will be held in London at the new MS offices near Victoria. This month Russ Kirk (Grey Convergence), Neil Johnson and Keith Hanna (both from Microsoft) will lead the session.

The session will give a detailed introduction to the concept of Unified Messaging in Exchange 2007. We will then show how to set this up and discuss pros and cons of Exchange UM verses other UM solutions.

The meeting will be held on Thursday 13th December. Directions to the venue and instructions for signing up to the event can be found at http://www.mmmug.co.uk/forums/thread/1700.aspx.

The meeting will be a mixture of PowerPoint and Discussions so there will be plenty of time to run through your questions.

The agenda for the meeting will be as follows:

18:15 - 18:40            Arrival

18:40 - 18:45            Introduction to speakers and the aims of the group

18:45 - 19:30            1st session; Russ, Neil and Keith, Introducing Exchange UM

19:30 - 19:50            Food!

19:50 - 20:45            2^nd session; Russ, Neil and Keith, Demonstrating the configuration of UM and Discussion of Competitors.

20:45 - 21:00            Q and A; Summing up and suggestions for future meetings.

21:00                        The End!

Outlook Voice Access Quick Start command sheet

Almost a year ago Microsoft released a page with a lot of the voice commands available to the user when accessing Outlook Voice Access. They call it an Outlook Voice Access - Quick Start for the Outlook voice user interface. I am just finally getting the opportunity to make use of it.

William Lefkovics

Essential Business Server 2008 Announced

Microsoft announced as part of the upcoming wave of Windows Server 2008 products next year, a new bundle of joy called Windows Essential Business Server 2008. It is intended for the small business market for businesses a little larger than would use Small Business Server. EBS will benefit companies up to 250 workstations.

"Windows Essential Business Server is an integrated server infrastructure solution designed for the unique needs of midsized organizations. Combining the technologies of Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, Forefront Security for Exchange, System Center Essentials, the next version of ISA Server and SQL Server 2008 into an “all-in-one” solution." - Steven VanRoekel, Director, Windows Server Solution Group

I think this product will help dynamic businesses with around 100-200 users. Hopefully it will not restrictively bound like SBS. Windows Essential Business Server is expected in mid 2008.

William Lefkovics

Microsoft Employee Exchange blogs OPML

Microsoft has a community blog portal to search blogs by employees. I am not sure why they have chosen to list only 5 blogcasts and blogs on the main page, but there are hundreds and hundreds to choose from, as the responses to one rather disappointing effort from a writer at Network World reveal.

Entering the category of Exchange Server returned 82 blogs on Exchange. Many of those are stale where there hasn't been any new posts in a long time, but many are valuable resources as well. At the bottom of the search page for the Exchange Server category is the OPML button to download the list of Exchange-related blogs for import into your chosen RSS aggregator. (I currently use IntraVNews 1.2 on Outlook 2007 because Outlook's new native RSS capability is like reading and answering email for a living when you're stuck with Lotus Notes R5 beta 2 or something. But that's another story.)

In addition, the category Outlook returns 62 employee blogs for your reading enjoyment.

William Lefkovics

Exchange 2007 Component Architecture Poster

Microsoft has made available another one of its .pdf posters for Exchange Server. This one is called the Exchange Server 2007 Component Architecture poster.

This poster highlights the high level architecture of Exchange 2007, as well as the different roles and high availability.

William Lefkovics

Exchange 2007 Visio Stencil Shapes

Back here we mentioned Microsoft's Visio Stencil with shapes pertaining to Exchange 2007. I was working with it and just thought I would post an image of the objects that are in this stencil.

William Lefkovics

Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 available

Microsoft has released another update rollup for Exchange 2007. This rollup #5 is described in MS KB 941421.

This update is cumulative since RTM. You do not need the previous update rollups listed below to install the 5th one.

1. KB930809 Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 (KB930809)
2. KB935490 Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 (KB935490)
3. KB935999 Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2007 (KB935999)
4. KB940006 Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2007 (KB940006)

Obviously, this does not get installed on a server running Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 Beta 2. I will try a little later though.

William Lefkovics

Best Practices Analyzer released for Small Business Server 2003

Microsoft has finally released a Best Practices Analyzer for Small Business Server (SBS). You can download the SBSBPA here.

SBSBPA will check the following:

• Exchange Server 2003
• Update Service
• Network configuration
• Windows SharePoint Services
• SQL Server when it is present

William Lefkovics

.NET Framework Hotfix for Exchange 2007

Microsoft has released a .NET Framework hotfix that it recommends you apply to ALL Exchange 2007 servers.  It is more urgent that you apply this fix to your CAS servers with multiple protocols, but ultimately you should install it onto all Exchange 2007 servers.

The KB article that you need to reference is http://support.microsoft.com/?id=942027.  You need to call Microsoft PSS to get this hotfix, or you can use the Hotfix Request Web Submission Form at https://support.microsoft.com/contactus2/emailcontact.aspx?scid=sw;en;1410&WS=hotfix, or you can use the Connect Web site at https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=3705&wa=wsignin1.0&siteid=210

This fix will eventually make it into a .NET Framework service pack.

Exchange System Manager - 'Customized' Permissions

I saw someone ask today what it meant in Exchange System Manager when you ran the delegation wizard and it listed the role as Exchange Full Administrator (Customized) as seen in the graphic below.

You'll get the 'customized' tag if you've modified the permissions such that they now no longer correspond directly to one of the predefined roles, such as Exchange Full Administrator.  For example, if you were to enable the security page in ESM and then modifiy the permissions of a user manually, perhaps specificially enabling or disabling the Send As and Receive As rights for example, ESM would then show that role as customized.

UM Language Packs

After deployment of Exchange 2007 UM here it was noted that the voice talking back to the users was in US English.  How do you change this to use a different language?  Well, the first thing to do is to go to this link:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/bb330845.aspx

This link will take you to the page where you can download the relevant language pack.  Once downloaded, store the relevant language pack (downloaded as an MSI installer) onto the Exchange 2007 UM server.  Let's assume I've downloaded the UK English (en-GB) language pack and stored it in the D:\UMLanguagePacks folder.  On each server in the UM dial plan, run the following command:

exsetup /AddUmLanguagePack:en-GB /s:d:\UMLanguagePacks

Here's an example of how the output will look when you execute this command on the Exchange server:

Welcome to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unattended Setup

The following Unified Messaging language packs will be added:

    Um Language Pack for en-GB

Performing Microsoft Exchange Server Prerequisite Check

Configuring Microsoft Exchange Server

    UM Language Pack for (en-GB)     ......................... COMPLETED

The Microsoft Exchange Server setup operation completed successfully.

Once this has been done, run the Exchange Management Console, go to the Organisation object and then the Unified Messaging object underneath it.  On the UM Dial Plans tab, bring up the properties of your dial plan and on the Settings tab change the default language option to reflect your newly installed language pack.  No service restart is required - at least, I never had to!