• Mobility Improvements in Exchange Server 2007
• Henrik Walther's Exchange Server 2003 Security book -- Order Today!
• MSExchange.org Learning Zone Articles of Interest
• KB Articles of the Month
• Tip of the Month
• MSExchange Links of the Month
• Ask Henrik Walther a question

1. Mobility Improvements in Exchange Server 2007

Welcome to the August edition of the MSExchange.org newsletter! This month I want to let you know about some of the Exchange ActiveSync improvements included in Exchange Server 2007. There are a lot but unfortunately many of them require the next version of Windows Mobile (currently code-named Crossbow).

Direct Push
Well Direct Push isn't exactly a new feature since this new OTA "true" over the air push technology was introduced in Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2, which was released back in October 2005. Actually not much has changed when it comes to the Direct Push technology, at least none of changes are visible to either you or your end-users. Okay one of the things your end-users might notice is that synchronization happens even faster than was the case back in Exchange Server 2003 SP2.

AutoDiscover
Just as is the case with Outlook 2007, Exchange ActiveSync supports the new AutoDiscover service (which I explain how you configure as well as use in Outlook 2007 in this article), which means that you can configure your mobile devices with ease. Actually you only need to specify your username, password and the external URL to the Client Access server and that's about it. There's no need to connect the device to your client machine using Desktop ActiveSync, in order to set up your device.

Faster Message Retrieval
When synchronizing a device with an Exchange 2007 Server using ActiveSync, the device only downloads a part of large messages. This way the synchronization happens a lot faster and you also reduce bandwidth use. Should you for some reason want to download the whole message, you can do so immediately without doing a full synchronization again.

Document Access
As some of you who have read this article series already know, OWA 2007 supports direct file access to either a Windows SharePoint Services Server or a UNC share (ordinary Windows file share). But did you know that this feature is also supported from a mobile device? Yes, I'm not kidding here, and to make things even better, you can send a document located on an internal Windows SharePoint Services or file share server without downloading the document to the mobile device! You can also read document attachments using the new WebReady feature, which basically takes the respective document and coverts it to an HTML ready format.

HTML Messages
If you have used (or are still using) a Windows mobile devices to synchronize your mailbox on a regular basis, you're probably aware that all HTML formatted messages you either replied to or forwarded on to another recipient using your devices got converted to plain text. With Exchange Server 2007 HTML formatted messages are kept intact, even on old devices!

Out of Office (OOF)
In the past the only way you could enable the Out of Office feature from a mobile device was by using Outlook Mobile Access (OMA). As most of you know the Exchange Product group has dropped support for OMA in Exchange Server 2007. But luckily you can configure OOF messages directly in the Outlook mobile client. When synchronizing your device using Exchange ActiveSync the device will retrieve the current OOF settings from your mailbox on the Exchange Server, which means you can change, enable or disable the current settings.

More Device Policies
As most of us remember Exchange Server 2003 SP2 not only introduced the Direct Push technology, but also provided several different device security policies which allowed us to configure PIN codes, password length, time-outs, remote wipe and more for a device. Exchange Server 2007 provides us with additional device policies such as password expiration, password history and an option of prohibiting simple passwords such as 1234 or abcd.

Exchange Search
The default synchronization time period is three days, which means you can't search for e-mail messages older than three days locally on your device. With the introduction of Exchange Search you can now search all folders in your mailbox on the Exchange 2007 Server directly, and any hits will be downloaded to your device.

Follow-Up Flags
As is the case with Outlook Web Access 2007 as well as Outlook 2007 it's now possible to flag as well as see which messages has been flagged on your device. A great addition to the mobile experience if you ask me.

Tasks Synchronization
Exchange Server 2007 now also supports synchronization of Tasks between your mailbox and the mobile device. There's not much more to say about this other than Finally!

Improved Calendaring
The calendaring feature on the mobile device has been improved further. You can see information about attendee availability as well as see GAL information for selected attendees, etc.

As you can see this was a very superficial overview of the new mobility improvements included in Exchange Server 2007, but you can look forward to several articles, that go a lot deeper into not only the above mobility improvements but also Exchange ActiveSync Policies etc., here on MSExchange.org in the near future

That was all for this time. Should you have any ideas for content in future editions of the MSExchange.org newsletter or on my blog, you're more than welcome to shoot me an email at Henrik@msexchange.org.

2. Henrik Walther's Exchange Server 2003 Security book - Order Today!

By Henrik Walther Are you among the persons who like the articles I write for MSExchange.org? Then this book is definitely for you. It provides you with step by step instructions on how you get your Exchange Server properly secured. The book covers topics such as how to: Secure OWA 2003 (including many real world tips and tricks) Configure and secure SMTP Setup protocol and client encryption Delegate and control permissions Combating spam and virus

Click here to Order your copy today

3. MSExchange.org Learning Zone Articles of Interest

We have a great group of articles in the Learning Zone that will help you get a handle on your most difficult configuration issues. Here are just a few of the newer and more interesting articles:

• Drilldown of the new OWA Direct File Access Feature in Exchange Server 2007: Part 2 (Client-side)
• Public Folder Basics (Part 1)
• Installing Exchange 2007 (Part 2)
• Drilldown of the new OWA Direct File Access Feature in Exchange Server 2007: Part 1 (Server-side)
• How to use Transport Rules in Exchange Server 2007
• Installing Exchange 2007 (Part 1)
• A Closer Look At Directory Service Access (DSAccess) - Part 1

4. KB Articles of the Month

Here are some interesting and useful MSExchange related articles posted by Microsoft in the last month:

• Some mailboxes are not cleaned when you use Mailbox Manager in Exchange Server 2003
• Bandwidth usage is much lower than expected after you configure the offline address book Bandwidth Threshold registry entry in Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 or in Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 1
• Overview of the Exchange Server 2003 Connector for Lotus Notes
• E-mail messages become stuck in the "Awaiting directory lookup" queue in an Exchange Server 2003 organization:
• Installation fails and you may be prompted for the Exchange Server 5.5 Service Account password when you upgrade to Exchange Server 2003
• The SMTP resource may not start, and Event ID 1005 is recorded when you fail over an Exchange Server 2003 virtual server
• A GroupWise user does not receive an NDR message when a message that exceeds the configured size limit is not delivered to an Exchange Server 2003 user
• Blocks of time may be off by one hour when you view free/busy information for a user of a third-party messaging system in Exchange Server 2003
• The DeliveredTo table in the Exchange Server 2003 mailbox store database may continue to grow
• The originator of a message from an Internet host cannot reply when the originator receives a reply message from an Outlook user in an Exchange Server 2003 organization
• Error message when a user tries to view a contact's properties in the GAL in Outlook Web Access on Exchange Server 2003: "HTTP 500 - Internal server error"
• A migrated user receives a 5.2.1 non-delivery report when the user tries to send e-mail to a public folder in Exchange Server 2003
• Missing or corrupted files cause the body of an e-mail message to be a gray box that has a red X in the upper-left corner in Exchange Server 2003
• System folders for removed sites remain in the public folder hierarchy when you migrate from Exchange Server 5.5 to Exchange Server 2003 or to Exchange 2000 Server
• A DBCS character may appear as a question mark in event messages in Exchange Server 2003
• If you are running the .NET Framework version 2.0 on Exchange Server 2003, you receive errors messages when you enable the Synthetic OWA Logon rule in MOM 2005
• A migrated mailbox cannot send on behalf of Exchange Server 5.5 mailboxes in Exchange 2000 Server and in Exchange Server 2003
• Description of the Microsoft Exchange Server Disaster Recovery Analyzer tool for Exchange Server 2003
• Default folders in Outlook Web Access are incorrectly displayed in English instead of in Spanish in Exchange Server 2003
• You cannot locate contacts when you try to use the "Search" or the "Look For" feature in Outlook to locate contacts in Exchange Server 2003
• Messages are not moved to the Junk E-mail folder of a mailbox in Exchange Server 2003
• Duplicate appointments appear in your calendar when you accept an update to a meeting invitation in Outlook Web Access
• You receive a non-delivery report when you try to send an e-mail message to an e-mail address that starts with an apostrophe in Exchange Server 2003
• A feature is available to disable MAPI program access to a computer that is running Exchange Server 2003
• A downloaded .xfd file is empty when you use Outlook Web Access to access a mailbox on a computer that is running Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2
• A hard return is inserted after every 72 characters in a plain text message in Exchange Server 2003
• Outlook Web Access users cannot view free/busy information after the site folders are rebuilt in Exchange Server 2003
• A recipient filter in Exchange Server 2003 does not work when you use Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 3.5
• Error Message when you a users uses the Send/Receive operation in Outlook:"Unknown error 0x8004011B"
• You receive error 8004010F, and event IDs 3043, 3048, 9335, and 9331 are logged when you try to download the offline address book in Exchange Server 2003 or in Exchange 2000 Server

5. Tip of the Month

Exchange Server 2007 supports the use of multiple Exchange ActiveSync policies in the organization. For example, you could have one for each country, department or company, if speaking about a shared hosting environment. Since there's no way of applying an Exchange ActiveSync policy to users in bulk using the Exchange Management Console, I want to show you how this is done using the Exchange Management Shell (setting a policy for one user at a time is a bit cumbersome to say the least).

Let's start by applying an Exchange ActiveSync policy called EAS - Default Policy for user HEW. We do this by opening the Exchange Management Shell and then executing the below CMDlet.

Get-Mailbox HEW | Set-CASMailbox -MobileMailboxPolicy "EAS - Default Policy"

This gives you an idea of the syntax used for the SetCASMailbox CMDlet. Notice we pipe the information collected using the Get-Mailbox CMDlet to the Set-CASMailbox CMDlet. Now if we want to apply this policy to all users on the particular Exchange 2007 Server, we would type:

Get-Mailbox | Set-CASMailbox -MobileMailboxPolicy "EAS - Default Policy"

Personally I like using the Exchange Management Shell, but I think it's a serious limitation that you can't apply Exchange ActiveSync policies etc. to users in bulk using the Exchange Management Console, and I know I'm definitely not the only one. So let's hope the Exchange Product Group will take this into consideration, when developing Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (nope sorry guys this will not make it into Exchange Server 2007 RTM since Beta 2 is more or less feature complete).

6. MSExchange Links of the Month

The Changing Landscape of E-mail Security
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/articles/emailsecurity.mspx

Video series - Exchange 2007 Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR)
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/08/09/428642.aspx

Mail Flow Troubleshooter in Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant (ExTRA) - A closer look
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/08/07/428616.aspx

Free Busy generation process
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/08/04/428597.aspx

Exchange 2007 Language Support
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/07/31/428538.aspx

7. Ask Henrik Walther a question

QUESTION: I only got one single Exchange 2007 Server deployed in my environment, and don't have any plans on putting an Edge Transport Server in the perimeter network. Is there any way of making use of the Exchange 2007 antispam agents without using an Edge Transport Server?

ANSWER: As a matter of fact there is. Actually you can install the Exchange 2007 antispam agents on the Hub Transport Server. This is done by opening the Exchange Management Shell, then typing CD C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts. Now type .\Install-AntispamAgents.msh. When the script has finished, you can control the antispam agent settings under Organization Configuration > Hub Transport > Anti-spam tab in the Exchange Management Console, as shown in the Figure below.

Figure 1: Anti-spam agents on the Exchange 2007 Hub Transport Server