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Hosted Messaging and Collaboration Knowledge Base Articles

This page used to provide just the HMC related updates but now it has been updated to provide the specific product service packs, rollup updates, hotfixes that have been tested by the HMC product group. With this, I will no longer provide any quarterly Read More...

Yes, you should use web-based distribution OAB.

HMC has been in the market for a while and as it grows, we are beginning to see many HMC providers are expanding their infrastructure and having more users and companies subscribing to their environment. I also observed that the growth is especially obvious Read More...

HMC 4.5 and Exchange 2007 SP1 - Part #6 - Conclusion (for now)

Introduction So far, we have discussed what and how we have tweaked Exchange 2007 SP1 for HMC 4.5 so that it can be catered for multi-tenants. However, I should highlight that there are still more to be discussed, for example Unified Messaging, Free/Busy and Availability Services and OWA segmentation. Here, I am going to conclude this series but before doing so, there are a few topics that I like to briefly cover. There is more? Yes, there is more. :) If you read through the HMC 4.5 Solutions help file, you may find some of the following there but I thought I should highlight this again (after all, who read Help file, right?) and it may make the blog more complete to cover some of those topics here. Read More...

HMC 4.5 and Exchange 2007 SP1 - Part #5 - Autodiscover in the Multi-tenancy environment

Introduction So, we have covered quite a fair bit by now. In part #1, we talked about how we can properly partition the Active Directory so that each company or tenant can coexist in the same environment but yet remain isolated and segregated. In part #2, we talked about how we have tweaked the address list so that each tenant will only see what they are supposed to see. In part #3, we further explore how Offline Address Book needs to be tweaked in to work in a multi-tenant environment and in part #4, we discussed about how Out-of-Office doesn't work completely out of the box in a hosted Exchange environment and what HMC has introduced to make it work better. So, what's next? Read More...

Troubleshooting Tip: How to enable Exchange 2007 Provider debug trace?

What Exchange 2007 cmdlets are being executed when I submit a mailbox creation request or a create public folder request or create contact request to the MPS engine? Those who has been working with HMC before know that most of the time, there will be Read More...

HMC 4.5 and Exchange 2007 SP1 - Part #4 Internal and External Out of Office

Internal and External OOF in HMC Environment So, the 4th main customization that HMC introduces to Exchange 2007 is the OOF Transport Agent. What is OOF? Here is the text book definition, "The Out-of-Office (OOF) feature is commonly used by end-users to let other people know when they are not available to respond to e-mail." Now, I don't intend to go into the working of OOF in Exchange 2007 because I think there are better articles out there that talk about it. Here, I want to briefly explain how Exchange 2007 OOF, out of the box isn't really working complete in a HMC environment and how we make it work. Read More...

HMC 4.5 and Exchange 2007 SP1 - Part #3 - Offline Address Book Generations

Introduction In the last part, we discussed about Address List segregation, which is an important concept to understand in Hosted Exchange environment. It is my belief that if you understand that clearly, you have understood 70% of the Hosted Exchange concept in HMC. The rest will be just easy. :) In this part, we will continue to discuss about Offline Address Book (OAB) Generations in a HMC environment. I don't intend to talk about the OAB generation process in Exchange 2007 because I think Dave Goldman's web log has covered most of them (http://blogs.msdn.com/dgoldman/default.aspx). Now, for those who are interested to know more, I think the following is a good starting point (although the content is mainly Exchange 2003, the whole OAB generation process hasn't changed much) Overview of the OABgen process http://blogs.msdn.com/dgoldman/archive/2005/03/31/Overview-of-the-OABgen-process.aspx My primary objective in this blog is to discuss about the customization of OAB components in Exchange 2007 SP1 done by HMC. Read More...

HMC 4.5 and Exchange 2007 SP1 - Part #2 - Address Lists Segregation

Introduction In part #1, I spent a fair bit of time explaining how HMC was introduced into Exchange as part of the multi-tenant enablement process for service provider. I also spent some time discussing about how the Active Directory was partitioned and what the primary attributes that are essential to the Exchange 2007 SP1 multi-tenant enablement. So far, there wasn't anything complicated about it. Now, I am going to move on to the 2nd part of the customizations, which is probably one of the more important ones, that is the Address List Segregation. Let's look at what address lists we need to segregate and why. Address list is about contact information which is very important because it makes managing and finding your contacts (internal as well as external) easier and hence makes communication easier. There are a few places where you will use Outlook to locate the contact information, Contacts folder - this folder is created within the mailbox itself if you have an Exchange account. Think of this folder like a normal Inbox or Calendar folder in your mailbox. This is a private folder. If you don't use a Microsoft Exchange Server e-mail account, Outlook stores your Contacts with the rest of your Outlook data in a Personal Folders file that has a PST file extension. Personal Address Book (PAB) - Outlook also supports Personal Address Books (PAB). Like Contacts, a Personal Address Book can store a contact's name, address, e-mail address, phone, and other information. Outlook stores the Personal Address Book in a file with a PAB file extension. The PAB is completely separate from your other Outlook data stored in your PST file (or in an Exchange Server store). You can add more than one PAB to an Outlook profile. Server-side Address Lists - in Exchange 2007 environment, you have 2 types of address lists, Global Address List (GAL) - The GAL contains information for all email users, distribution groups, and Exchange resources. Outlook needs this to work and Outlook can only see one GAL at a time. Other Address Lists - Sometimes, Exchange Server administrator might create other address lists to organize Exchange users by department, surname, or other criteria. These additional address lists show up under the All Address Lists group in the Show Names from the drop-down list in the Outlook Address Book. Read More...

HMC 4.5 and Exchange 2007 SP1 - Part #1 - Overview and Active Directory

Introduction One of the frequently asked questions about Hosted Messaging & Collaboration (HMC) is this, "What do you do to Exchange to make HMC work?" So, here I will attempt to demystify this. HMC started long way back but the concept has not deviated much. I want to note that this specific blog focuses mainly on HMC 4.5 and Exchange 2007 SP1 and it should be noted that things discussed here probably is applicable to this specific version only unless mentioned otherwise. There are quite a few customizations that we set in Exchange 2007 for HMC and it is probably too much to do it in one blog, so, I will split this into a few parts, Part #1: Overview and Active Directory Part #2: Address Lists Segregation Part #3: Offline Address Book generations Part #4: Internal and External Out of Office Part #5: Autodiscover in the Multi-tenancy environment Part #6: Conclusion Read More...