MS Exchange Blog

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

Exchange 2007 SDK Updated July 2007

The quarterly Software Development Kit for Exchange Server 2007 has been updated for July 2007. The samples and documentation are well worth the 19.1MB download and installation (which can even be Vista). Exchange Web Services has been updated the most from the previous SDK release back in April 2007.

The Exchange 2003 updated SDK was last released in June 2007.

William Lefkovics

ADModify.NET - New Download Location

Dan Winter of Microsoft kindly posted a comment to one of the blog posts here informing us that the ADModify.NET tool has a new download location.  I've therefore decided to create a new post to ensure that this information is dispersed as widely as possible.

You can download the latest build of ADModify.NET from http://ADModify.NET.

Daylight Savings Time (DST) Tool Update

I have been avoiding saying anything about the DST update process for Exchange, mostly because it is challenging to hit a moving target.

But I think today, we may be where we need to be to get this adjustment implemented on Exchange servers. Version 2.0 of the Exchange Calendar Update tool has been posted to the Microsoft download site. This one addresses resource mailboxes more effectively, with the Outlook tool, described in KB 931667, as a prerequisite. It has a couple of added command line options and manages public folder changes as well.

Look for KB 930879 How to address daylight savings time with the Exchange Calendar Update tool to be updated today.

Be wary of using internet searches and finding solutions prior to this version of the tool. I think the best resource for the process has come from the horse's mouth, namely the Exchange Team blog, including videos on implementing the tool.

William Lefkovics

Microsoft Office Visio Stencil Containing Shapes for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

"This download contains a Microsoft Office Visio stencil with shapes for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007."

Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Outlook SMS Add-in (MOSA)

"This download will enable you to send SMS text messages through most Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) mobile phones connected to your PC using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2003."

Powershell 1.0 Released

As you already know by now, Windows Powershell (not the original Powershell) has been released with version 1.0 available for download for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Powershell for Vista and Longhorn is still a couple of months away, however.  It makes sense that Powershell week was just a little while ago.

The Exchange Management Shell is an extension of the Windows Powershell and is installed with Exchange Server 2007. If your company allows you to download .exe files from websites (it's an HTML page... why not just .zip it? Or perhaps a web server might do the trick?), the Exchange Management Shell quick reference is available as well.

William Lefkovics

Outlook Junk E-mail Reporting Tool

This is a useful addition to Outlook.  Microsoft has released a Junk E-mail Reporting Tool for Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007.  Just download and run the .msi installer and a new toolbar is added to Outlook:

When you next get a piece of spam that has made it past the Outlook junk e-mail filter, just select the spam and click this toolbar button.  The spam will be sent to Frontbridge for analysis which will hopefully improve the filtering technology.  Clicking the toolbar for the first time will generate this message:

You will receive an auto-reply message regarding your spam submission.  If you send multiple spam submissions per day, you'll receive just the one auto-reply.

The OWACHECK Tool

Following on from my OWA synthetic logon post yesterday, I thought it a good time to talk about the OWACHECK.EXE tool available from Microsoft PSS.

It can be quite difficult to troubleshoot the OWA synthetic logons that MOM 2005 performs within your Exchange environment.  The OWACHECK.EXE tool can help you here, so let me explain what it does.  The tool is just a single executable file which is available from Microsoft PSS as I said earlier.  Copy it to the Exchange front-end server that contains the MOM 2005 agent performing the synthetic logon.  Next, enable debugging on this Exchange server by adding the following registry key:

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Exchange MOM
Value: REG_DWORD
Value Name: DebugLS
Value Data: 1

Now go to a command prompt and execute OWACHECK.EXE using the following command line:

owacheck.exe MailboxName URL

MailboxName = MOM test mailbox name.  You can check the BEAccount registry parameter in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Exchange MOM\FEMonitoring\servername on the Exchange front-end server to determine what this is.  Typically it's the first MOM test mailbox created on that server.  For example, if the server name is "SERVER", then the first MOM test mailbox would be called SERVERMOM.

URL = the URL that you want to test.  For example, https://email.domain.com/exchange

Therefore a sample command line would read:

owacheck.exe SERVERMOM https://email.domain.com/exchange

OWACHECK.EXE tells you where the output file has been created, typically in the \documents and settings\name\local settings\temp folder.  Examine the output file, owacheck.log, for evidence of either success or failure.  Here are some sample output files:

A successful logon file:

[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  Starting OWACHECK
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  --------------------
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  No credential override.
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  Mailbox SERVERMOM is going to be used.
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  CustomerUrl: https://email.domain.com/exchange
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  Url: https://email.domain.com/exchange/servermom
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  Calling GetCredential.
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  Entering GetCredential
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  Decrypting the credentials...
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  Decryption complete. Domain = DOMAIN, Username = MOMMBX.
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  GetCredential call returned success.
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  Starting Basic Auth Logon
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  Entering GetPage.
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  Adding credentials to the request.
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  GETPAGE - HttpTimeout set to 30 seconds.
[17/10/2006 12:01:31]  Calling GetResponse...
[17/10/2006 12:01:32]  GETPAGE - HTTP Response Code: OK
[17/10/2006 12:01:32]  Response stream received
[17/10/2006 12:01:32]  Logon Successful! - <FRAMESET...>
[17/10/2006 12:01:32]  Basic Auth Logon Successful

And here's an example of a failure logon file:

[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Starting OWACHECK
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  --------------------
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  No credential override.
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Mailbox SERVERMOM is going to be used.
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  CustomerUrl: https://email.domain.com/exchange
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Url: https://email.domain.com/exchange/servermom
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Calling GetCredential.
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Entering GetCredential
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Decrypting the credentials...
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Decryption complete. Domain = DOMAIN, Username = MOMMBX.
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  GetCredential call returned success.
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Starting Basic Auth Logon
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Entering GetPage.
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Adding credentials to the request.
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  GETPAGE - HttpTimeout set to 30 seconds.
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Calling GetResponse...
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  WebException caught. WebExcetion: TrustFailure.
[17/10/2006 11:55:51]  Basic Auth Logon Failed

Here you can see the errors highlighted in bold.  Now you can troubleshoot the certificate trust failure.

Skylook 2.0 Media Sneak Peek

A major new version of Skylook is around the corner, scheduled for release on 1st October 2006.  Information on what is new in Skylook 2.0, including the first public screenshots, is available at the Skylook 2.0 media sneak peek site.