Exchange SP1 out!!!

Folks Exchange SP1 is available for Download, this really is a exciting news as SP1 packs the power punch in it(literally) for the Administrator.

There are tons of new features added and improvised compared with Exchange 2007 RTM.

The release notes is available here.

All the new features included in SP1 are published in Technet

Enjoy SP1!!!

Unavailable Offline Address Line (OAL) information

A user reported that he is getting erratic information in the Address List, below is the problem:

• User’s outlook runs in Cached Exchange mode
• User’s outlook in few instances is not showing the “Organization” information of any user in Global Address List.

This is basically to do with how the Global Address Lists works.

When a user is working in Cached Exchange Mode, the Outlook downloads the Offline address book for offline viewing of exchange user information. This offline address list does not have the following information of Exchange users:

• “Organization” tab information.
• “Member of” tab information.

Since this information is retrieved online from a Global Catalogue server, they will not be available for offline viewing.

Mailbox permissions and Active directory permissions

When a beginner starts working with the Exchange Mailbox permissions, they have two places to work with:

• The Mailbox permissions in “Exchange Advanced tab” and
• The “Security” tab which is AD permissions of that mailbox.

Usually a question arises as to why classify “Send As” and “Receive As” permissions in the Active directory (Security tab). This has to do with the way in which the mails flow and mail handling works in Exchange server 2003.

Exchange Mail handling diagram shows the advanced queuing engine and other Exchange 2003 mail handling components.

Let’s take this scenario of mail delivery to an exchange recipient User1 (say he is a CEO). Let’s assume that User2 (his P.A) has ‘Receive As’ and ‘Send As’ permission on the mailbox of User1.

When User1 receives a mail, who is in Exchange server EX1, the categorizer of EX1 looks up User1’s information in AD to determine which all accounts have Exchange specific permissions(Send As and Receive As permission in this case) and stamp mail for appropriate delivery, both User1 and User2 receive the mails sent to User1. Similar scenario applies for User2 sending on-behalf of User1.

All said and done but why classify these permissions as AD?

Because the categorizer looks up only AD information to route mails to the user’s mailbox store and not the user’s mailbox permissions.

Mailbox permissions are processed only when the mails are moved to the mailbox of the user.