Troubleshooting Exchange 2007 Free/Busy

    In Exchange 2007 the Free/Busy information is stored and accessed in the respective mailboxes, as compared to Exchange 2003, where the Free/Busy is accessed from Public folders.

Public folder distribution is in-efficient because of the fact that it is not up to date in certain circumstances. In Exchange 2007 the Public Folders are De-emphasized and Client Access Server (CAS) role takes most of the functions provided by Public Folder like:

1. Access to a Exchange mailbox Free/Busy information.
2. Offline Address Book (OAB) distribution.
3. Outlook Web Access (OWA)
4. Outlook Anywhere (previously RPC over HTTP) etc

and in addition to the above the CAS Exchange role provides Auto-Discover service and Availability service.

Availability service:

Availability service is the web-based Free/Busy access provided by CAS role. When a user creates a meeting request for his manager (say), the user's exchange server contacts the Availability service URL which opens the Manager's mailbox and get's the free/busy information to complete the process.

Troubleshooting:

To troubleshoot the availability information, use the

Test-OutlookWebservices cmdlet for scenarios like free/busy information of self, user on same server, user on server in different site etc. You can user Verbose parameter to check the process carried out by Exchange server.

Example: Test-OutlookWebServices  -Identity user1@domain.com -targetaddress user2@domain.com

Personal to Global SPAM settings with Exchange 2007!

         We all know that we can classify a sender as Safe or Blocked in Outlook 2003/Exchange 2003 environment, this is just local SPAM control solution in Exchange 2003.

        Exchange 2007 takes is a little further with the cmdlet Upadte-Safelist.

        This cmdlet synchronizes the JUNK mail settings of the user to the Exchange Transport servers and allows for the JUNK mail handling at the server level itself.

       This classification becomes important as EDGE server role which is not part of the Corporate network, handles the mails to the users based on the data in the ADAM, avoiding false positives.

You can choose to Sync either the Safe sender list or the Safe recipient list or Both, the default being Safe sender list.

Ex:-

Update-Safelist -Identity <UserAlias> -Type "Safesenders"

Update-Safelist -Identity user1 -Type "Saferecipient"

Update-Safelist -Identity user2 -Type "Both"

 

You can apply it on the Server/Storage group/Store level or to a particular filter setting.

Google Desktop search and Outlook Problems

We came across a interesting issue with users having performance issues accessing their Exchange server 2003 mailbox using Outlook 2k3 and 2k7.

And the problem as it turned out to be, users were using Google Desktop search, which searches and indexes the mailbox and Public folder, creating a lot of RPC requests resulting in poor Outlook performance.

There are a lot of interesting articles relating to various issues, they are Public folder issues , Cross desktop search , Exchange server performance issues!. It's worth reading these articles to make sure the performance issue is not relate Desktop search Engine!

In the KB article Exchange server performance issues! they have given a tool called EXMON.exe to identify which all users have installed the desktop search software, cool isn't it.

Calendar sharing and reminders in outlook

• We all know that user can share his/her outlook resources with other users through delegates tab, but the point to note is that the user can only share the default system calendar container and not the user created custom calendar.
• Outlook reminders will work as long as the mails received is in it's original container, in other words if a item received in Inbox folder is moved another folder, the remainder feature won't work, as the exchange server generates remainders for only items in their received folder.

Creating Calendar public folders

We can create a calendar public folder only through Outlook under the public folder in which you have permissions to create a folder.

To create a Calendar PF:

1. Select the Public Folder in which you have "Create Sub-folders" permission on.

• Right-click and select New folder
• In the Pop-up dialogue box Give the name of the folder you want to create.
• In the drop down list below, select the type of the folder you want to create (Calendar PF in this case) and click OK.

Recovering Hard-deleted items a.k.a Exchange Dumpster

One of the basic features that comes in handy for customers that come with the request of recovering deleted mails from backup is to use Dumpster mail recovery feature in Exchange server to check if mails are there in the server.

There are two ways in which this recovery operation can accomplished:

1. Registry editor option: - This option is for remote user support guys only not for users!!!

A. Go to Start --> Run and type “regedit”.
B. In the Registry editor click on the + sign next to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”.
C. Click on + sign next to “SOFTWARE”.
D. Click on + sign next to “Microsoft”.
E. Click on + sign next to “Exchange”.
F. Click on + sign next to “Client”.
G. Click on + sign next to “Options”.
H. Right-click the options folders and select NewàDWORD value
J. Name it as “DumpsterAlwaysOn” (Without quotes and no space inbetween).
K. Double click the key and set the value as 1
L. Exit the registry Key and re-open the Outlook.
M. Select the folder where the items were hard deleted (i.e, shift+delete).
N. Go to ToolsàRecover Deleted items and select the items you want to recover and press the arrow button at the top of the window.

2. Now another easy way is to copy the below content and ask the user to save it as .reg file (say dumpster.reg) in the desktop. Double click the file and say OK for the pop-up window.

The content of the file is below:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options]
"DumpsterAlwaysOn"=dword:00000001

3. The third way is using Add-in manager:

A. Go to Tools -->Options.
B. Select the “other” tab.
C. Click on the “Advanced features” button.
E. Click the “Add-in Manager” button.
F. In the opened popup window Click on the “Install” button.
G. Select the DUMPSTER.ECF and click OK, also make sure that the "Deleted items recovery" is selected.
H. Exit all the windows by clicking OK.
I. Now access the Folder where you Hard deleted (shift+delete) the mails.
J. Go to Tools --> Recover deleted items.
K. In the open window select the item you want to recover and click the arrow button at the top of the window.

Missing or Disabled Out Of Office (OOO)

Came through this interesting issue a while ago, thought it’s worth writing.

A user reported that he is not able to use his OOO, because it’s grayed out.

While checking some features found out the root cause, to enable the OOO feature again, follow the below steps:

1. Go to Tools menu -->Options
2. In the pop-up window select the “Other” tab.
3. Click the “Advanced options” button at the top part of the window.
4. In the pop-up window click on the “Add-in manager” button.
5. A small window with various options opens, in that, click on the install button and select OUTEX.ECF and say OK also make sure that the "Exchange Extensions property Pages" option is selected.
6. Exit all the window by clicking OK.
7. Re-open Outlook and use the OOO feature.

Missing Contacts Lookup in Outlook

Last month i came across a intersting issue with Outlook. A user's personal contacts list in Outlook is not available for lookup in address book.



After a lot of head scracthing and ms-office site research found the solution. Outlook looks up the configured address books for lookup function. If the personal contacts are listed, it will not be available for lookup.



Here is the procedure to add the personal contacts for lookup:

1. Go to Tools --> Email Accounts.
2. In the pop-up box Select the "Add a new directory or Address book" option.
3. Click next and select the "Additional address book" option.
4. Select the "Personal address book" option and click next.
5. Click OK to finish the wizard.

Now when you compose a mail and use address look up you will have Outlook contacts available for look up.

Outlook Administration in Focus

The second type of issues that a administrator faces in job is that of Outlook and User's Exchange server related settings. Let's get some insight to what Outlook 2003 is all about.


Outlook is the primary client for accessing Exchange server mailboxes. Outlook uses a Microsoft's proprietary MAPI protocol. Outlook apart from providing access to mailbox, leverages the collaboration experience by providing various features like:

• Calendaring.
• Global Address list(a.k.a GAL)
• Public folder access
• Contacts management.
• Personal Storage Folders(a.k.a PST)
• Cached Mode (For working offline)
• Reminders and
• Rules(Both Client and Server side)

Let's look in to each of these features in brief, but first the Mailbox access. When the outlook is setup for the first time outlook offers a option to setup exchange in Cached Exchange Mode. So what exactly cached exchange is? Let's consider it analogous to folder synchronisation. Outlook uses the logged in user's credentials and authenticates with the Exchange server and accesses the user's mailbox, creates a Outlook storage file (a.k.a OST) and starts synchronising the Mailbox with this folder.

Once the Sync. is complete, the outllook performs something called send/receive to send all pending itmes in the outbox and receive new items received in the user's mailbox at a set interval(typically 3 minutes). The advantage of this mode is that it allows the users to work offline(typically for laptop users).

If you do not select this mode, there actually will not be much of a difference in user's experience, Outlook directly accesses the mails from the server each time you open any item that's stored in the mailbox.

One of the collaboration features of Exchange server is Calendaring. It allows user's to store their free/busy information which is accessible to everyone in the organisation. This free/busy information is one among various data stored in Public folders for organisation wide access. The other things stored in public folders are:

• Offline address list (Offline version of Enterprise GAL)
• Eforms registry (Email templates to be simple)
• OWA scratch pads (Temporary storage location for data accessed by OWA users)

That brings us to the topic what are Public Folders?. Public Folders(PF) are publicly accessible storage location where mails, notes and calendars are stored and accessed based on permissions(Just like a Windows folder share). User's with permissions can access the PFs and post mail messages or notes or calendar items depending upon the type of the PF. No need to mention they can create subfolders if they have permissions.

Our next topic Global Address Lists(GAL). These are analoguous to telephone directory, contains information about other telephone users, similarly GAL presents with data about other Exchange users be it any type of user (Contacts or mail-enabled or mailbox enabled). Each Exchange server generates a Offline address list, which are downloaded by the outlook clients configured with cached mode for offline use.

Offline address lists are similar to GAL, except that they do not provide certain details like Organisation information, Group membership etc of a Exchange user, which are actually accesses from a Global catalog server (a type of Active directory server).

Let's have a quick look at other feature of Outlook, PST. A PST folder is a simple outlook folder to store mail messages, so that they can be accessed later, mail archiving being the major usage of PST folders.

The reminder feature alerts users about a approaching followup set either by the user themselves on a mail or by a mail set sent by sender. Reminder to a mail can be set by right-clicking on a mail and selectin followup, which gives you options for the remider.

Another important feature of Outlook is Rules feature. The rules and alerts can be set/accessed by going to Tools-->Rules and alerts. You can set either client side rules, which run only your outlook is open of server side rules which run independant of Outlook. Playing a sound or displaying alert window on arrival of a mail will be client side rule for the obvious reason. Moving a specific type of mail from inbox to user created folder in mailbox will be server side rule, because the rule dose not reaquire Outlook.

There is a lot to outlook than it might seem to be in a weeks usage. Will try to put as much basic stuff as possible.