Gerod Serafin's WebLog

Helping to keep large organizations' e-mail running

January, 2009

  • Part 12 - I used to do it this way… Now how do I do it? Administering Exchange 2003 vs. Exchange 2007

    To return to part 1 click here

     

    Administrative Tasks – Public Folder Management and Public Folder Permissions

     

    Public Folder Management

    Here is how you managed public folders in 2003. I’m sure you are all very aware of how to do this.

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    In Exchange 2007, public folders are optional if you only have Outlook 2007 clients.  Exchange does not require you to use public folders to distribute OAB downloads and free and busy data.  OABs can now be distributed by a Web-based method. Free and busy data is now provided by the Availability service.

    In SP1 on Exchange 2007 we added the Public Folder Management Console which is found in the toolbox.

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    If I view the properties of Public Folders here, it looks very similar to what we saw in Exchange 2003.

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    Public Folder Permissions

    To change client permissions on public folders in Exchange 2003 you could use Outlook or ESM.

    In addition, public folder administrative rights were administered in both the Exchange System Manager and Active Directory.

     

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    In Exchange 2007, public folder client permissions can be administered by using Outlook and the Exchange Management Shell.

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    Here a public folder was created using New-PublicFolder and then owner client permissions were added using the Add-PublicFolderClientPermission. To add Administrator permissions, you can use Add-PublicFolderAdministratorPermission.

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    Next: Part 13 – Administrative Tasks: Recovery Storage Groups

  • Part 13 - I used to do it this way… Now how do I do it? Administering Exchange 2003 vs. Exchange 2007

    To return to part 1 click here

    Administrative Tasks: Recovery Storage Groups

    In Exchange 2003, you had the option of mounting a second copy of a database in a Recovery Storage Group to extract data from one or more mailboxes.

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    In Exchange 2007, you do not create recovery storage groups the same way. You use the Database Recovery Management tool, which is found in the Toolbox.  The screenshots are included below for you to peruse…

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    Next: Part 14 – Administrative Tasks: Creating Mailboxes and Exmerge

  • Part 14 - I used to do it this way… Now how do I do it? Administering Exchange 2003 vs. Exchange 2007

    To return to part 1 click here

     

    Administrative Tasks: Creating Mailboxes and Exmerge

     

    Creating Mailboxes

    In Exchange 2003, you created a mailbox for a user by using Active Directory Users and Computers.

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    In Exchange 2007, you can use the Exchange Management Shell or the Exchange Management Console to create a mailbox for an existing user.

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    As you can see there are a number of different type of mailboxes that can be created.

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    Here are some example cmdlets to create mailboxes. The first is the way to do it when you want to create a mailbox with a new user account.

    New-Mailbox -Alias chris -Database "Storage Group 1\Mailbox Database 1" -Name ChrisAshton -OrganizationalUnit Users -FirstName Chris -LastName Ashton -DisplayName "Chris Ashton" -UserPrincipalName ChrisAshton@contoso.com

    If you want to just mailbox enable an account then, you would use the enable-mailbox cmdlet.

    Enable-Mailbox john@contoso.com -Database "MyServer\First Storage Group\Mailbox Database"

    Exmerge (or Merging Mailboxes)

    In Exchange 2003, you used Mailbox Merge to extract data from mailboxes on an Exchange server, and then merged this data into mailboxes on another Exchange server.

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    In Exchange 2007, you cannot use ExMerge.exe to export mailboxes. You must use the Export-Mailbox cmdlet to export all message types, including messages, calendar items, contacts, distribution lists, journal entries, tasks, notes, and documents.

    If you want to export files to a .pst that means that you will need to install the 32 bit Exchange Tools and also install an Outlook client.  You will also need to use Add-MailboxPermission to grant access to the account that you are doing this with.

    Let’s walk through this whole process of exporting the data of a mailbox to a pst.

    It is very simple to run: Export-Mailbox, the ID (in this case I used the alias), and the folder path to the filename.pst. This is what you get when you just run the command from a machine that has the Exchange 32 bit tools installed but no Outlook.

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    I then installed Outlook.

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    Ok, this went further, but then gave me this <Sarcastic> “Very descriptive” </Sarcastic> error. ID no: all zeros… Nice. Turns out that means that I don’t have permissions to do this.

    So I added the necessary permissions using Add-MailboxPermission and it runs successfully after that.

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    Next: Part 15 – Administrative Tasks: Mailbox Permissions and Query-Based \  Dynamic Distribution Groups