Prior to Exchange 2007, there were two primary methods of implementing automated resource scheduling – Direct Booking and the AutoAccept Agent (a store event sink released as a web download for Exchange 2003) . In Exchange 2007, we changed how automated resource scheduling is implemented. The AutoAccept...

In Exchange 2010, when a database availability group (DAG) member needs service, it can be placed into maintenance mode. Exchange 2010 includes scripts the StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1 and StopDagServerMaintenace.ps1 scripts to place/remove a DAG member from maintenance mode. For a summary of what these...

In Exchange Online and Exchange Server 2013, you can use In-Place Hold to preserve mailbox content for litigation or investigations. Many organizations also need to preserve mailbox data for users who are no longer in the organization. In on-premises Exchange deployments, this has typically been done...

Many organizations have chosen to configure a hybrid deployment with Exchange Online to take advantage of different features such as rich mailbox moves and cross-premises calendar free/busy sharing. This includes Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 organizations that require a long-term hybrid...

OAB History Offline Address Books, fondly referred to as OAB s, are a critical component in Exchange infrastructure for a long time now. An OAB is used by Microsoft Outlook clients in Cached Exchange Mode for address book lookups when offline. OABs are also critical in reducing the workload on Exchange...

You may have seen the introduction to the new Exchange Administration Center ( EAC ). The EAC is a unified Web-based portal for both on-premises and online Exchange deployments. Managing high availability (HA) is one of the key scenarios for on-premises customers, and the EAC delivers a brand new experience...

A brief history of hybrid management The release of Exchange Server 2010 brought with it a revolutionary new Cloud based service which we all know today as Exchange Online for Office 365. In the early days of the Cloud lots of time and energy was devoted to rapid migration of user and organizational...

A question that has come up several times in recent months is: How do I create RBAC roles that present only very limited ActiveSync management functionality? Before we dive into the answer let us do a quick review of what RBAC (Role Based Access Control) is. Prior to Exchange 2010 permissions were defined...

The changes in the updated Exchange 2010 Monitoring Management Pack include: Fixes to Alerts – at times two events were logged for the same event. Ensure Correct Values are read. Log the event on local server where the TS is running. Here is a location of the updated Management Pack: http://www.microsoft...

Following our last article, introducing the new Exchange Administration Center (EAC) , we follow up on how the new EAC makes it really easy to manage multi-forest Exchange deployments. As described in Deploy Exchange 2010 in a Cross-Forest Topology , Exchange Server 2010 can be deployed in a cross...

Last week, we announced The New Exchange . Today, we are excited to share its new, refreshed management experience. For folks familiar with Exchange 2010 , there are 3 ways to manage Exchange: the Exchange Management Console (EMC), the Exchange Control Panel (ECP), and the Exchange Management Shell ...

* But Were Afraid to Ask In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series we looked at the fundamentals of Exchange backups using VSS, and the flow of an active DAG database backup. In Part 3 we break down how a passive DAG database copy undergoes a full backup. The Exchange Writer responsible for passive copy backups...

* But Were Afraid to Ask Part 2 of this series ( Part 1 is here and Part 3 is here ) breaks down the events that take place during the backup of a mounted and active replicated database in an Exchange 2010 Database Availability Group called, simply enough, “DAG”. In this example the backup...

*But Were Afraid to Ask This is a part 1 of a 3 part blog series. Please see this for Part 2 and this for Part 3 . If you find the inner workings of Exchange data backups using Volume Shadown Copy (VSS) a bit mystifying take comfort in not being alone. Administrators may ask, “What’s...

This post describes an update to the Facebook provider for the Outlook Social Connector and the related policy settings that are available for Administrators. Outlook 2010 includes a feature called the Outlook Social Connector which can show social updates for the people your users email with, directly...

Moving mailboxes is an important part of managing an email service. Check out the latest Geek Out with Perry blog and video to gain some deep insights on our approach to moving mailboxes with Mailbox Replication Service (MRS) and get Perry’s take on this topic and how it works. This technology is also...

Since its release in 2009, the interest in Exchange 2010 has been fantastic. While working with customers to educate them and prep them for moving to Exchange 2010, we've uncovered some common misconceptions. One trend has to do with misconceptions around the Client Access Server array object, or CAS...

Update 12/13/2011 : Please note that starting with today, you do not need to call Microsoft Support to get the fix to resolve this issue. All that is required now is installation of December 13, 2011 IE security update, KB 2618444 . The below blog post has been updated accordingly. We are happy to...

Update 10/21/11 : There is now a fix for this issue. Please go here to learn how to get it. We wanted to write a blog post about an issue that some of you have reported to us, and has been discussed at some length in Exchange Forums also. After you install Internet Explorer 9 on a computer that...

A user is out of office for some reason – on vacation, sick, on a sabbatical or extended leave of absence, or traveling to a remote location on business, and forgets to set an automatic reply , also known as an Out Of Office message or OOF in Exchange/Outlook lingo. As an Exchange administrator...

Last year when we released Exchange 2010 SP1, we posted about the change expired password feature in Outlook Web App and how you can enable it by creating the ChangeExpiredPasswordEnabled registry entry. See So you want to change your expired passwords in OWA... for details. Since then you've sent us...

You may have noticed a change in the behavior of the Safe Senders list within Outlook starting in Exchange 2010. Users can no longer add accepted domains to Outlook’s Safe Senders list. Figure 1: Adding an accepted domain to Outlook's Safe Senders list This was done as an anti-spam deterrent as we have...

Organizations often need to share availability (aka Free/Busy) information with other Exchange organizations. Depending on the version of Exchange Server you're on, there are different ways to do this. Let's take a look at three common scenarios and go through the exact steps required in order to achieve...

Some of you may have seen stories about higher than expected data usage for a very small percentage of Windows Phone 7 users being caused by an inefficiency between Windows Phone 7 client and Yahoo! Mail. You may have also seen that these stories mention that there is a separate Exchange ActiveSync ...

I am very pleased to let you all know that in response to your feedback we are adding support for User Datagram Protocol (UDP) notification functionality back into Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. While Outlook 2010 is the best way to experience all that Exchange 2010 has to offer, you have been very...