Saturday, July 19, 2008

Starting Chapter 6: Exchange,Outlook,SBS 2003 (book excerpt from Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices)

Hi friends!
Today we start Chapter 6 in Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices. This chapter discusses Microsoft Exchanger Server 2003 and Microsoft Outlook 2003. Reade up, go forth and multiply!
FYI - in case you are new tothese postings, I amposting up a few pages a day from my purple book until SBS 2008 ships.
cheers...harrybbbbb
Harry Brelsford, MBA, Microsoft Small Business Specialist (SBSC) and heaps of credentials dating back to the early CNE days! :)
ceo, smb nation, www.smbnation.com
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Chapter 6 Messaging with Exchange Server 2003 and Outlook 2003
Take a bow. Why? Because even before you start reading this chapter on Exchange Server 2003 (“Exchange”) and Outlook 2003 (“Outlook”), you really know more about these two messaging applications than you might admit in public. As the first part of the chapter will show, you’ve darn near completed the configuration of Exchange and Outlook just by deploying SBS 2003 over the past several chapters. So accordingly, I start with what you should likely already know up to this point. And after you finish the chapter and work more with Exchange in the real world, you’ll really know these products inside and out from an SBS 2003 viewpoint.
By the way, this chapter isn’t as SPRINGERS-centric as my other chapters are. This is in part because the SPRINGERS storyline doesn’t need a lot of direct interaction with Exchange Server 2003 for proper SBS 2003 network deployment to occur. So bear with me as I provide you a Texas-size buffet of Exchange and Outlook matters you’re like to lasso up in the real world.
What You May Already Know AboutExchange Server 2003!
This section of the chapter should inspire confidence as you’ll likely comment “I already knew that” about certain Exchange matters. Let’s get started.
• Core SBS component installation. Just prior to the Windows Con­figuration phase outlined in Chapter 3, the setup routine “harvests” the information on the Company Information page (revisit Figure 3-14 in Chapter 3 to see this) for later use in creating Exchange Global Address
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List (GAL) entries (Figure 6-1). This same company information also populates the properties for an Active Directory user object on the Address tab (Figure 6-2).
Figure 6-1
Viewing a Global Address List entry in SBS 2003.
Notes:
Figure 6-2
Viewing the address information in Active Directory for a user.
BEST PRACTICE: Call it a missed opportunity, but this company information would have been great for creating an Outlook contact record for each user that is added to the SBS 2003 network. Said Outlook contact record could then be used by fellow workers to list your home and cellular telephones, making it possible to reach you with ease! Heck - such an Outlook contact record could be synchronized to your personal digital assistant (PDA), such as a sassy HpCompaq iPAQ, allowing you to find co-workers when you’re out of the office. As it stands today, the company information is used to populate the screens in Figures 6-1 and 6-2, but few of us in the small business arena truly get excited about GALs and AD user objects! This good stuff also could have been (but isn’t) used to create a cool list in Windows SharePoint Server (see Chapter 7 for more).
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• SBS application setup information. You will recall, after the Win­dows Configuration reboots at mid-point during the SBS setup phase, you completed a wizard page titled Data Folders (see Figure 3-21) where you redirected the location of the Exchange data (you also had the option to redirect the Exchange logs, but we didn’t). This is an espe­cially cool capability in SBS 2003 because back in the SBS 2000 era, the same screen (see Figure 3-20 in my legacy SBS 2000 Best Practices book) gave you no opportunity to redirect Exchange data and logs. Rather, in the old days, you had to manually redirect Exchange data and logs following the steps in KBase article Q257184.
• Core SBS application installation phase. Who could forget the 20+ minutes you spent during the SBS installation process when you in­serted Disc 2 and Exchange Server 2003 modified the Active Directory Schema-surely you remember the 1 of 10, 2 of 10, 3 of 10 messages? (You can see this in Figure 3-24 back in Chapter 3). And when Exchange itself was installed at this step, the Company archive public folder and the Company contact object were created inside the Exchange public folders.
• E-mail and Internet Connection Wizard (EICW). Of course, the EICW greatly affected Exchange Server 2003 when you completed it in Chapter 4. It was there that you elected to use the built-in firewall and allow e-mail services to flow through the firewall (see the Services Configuration page). The firewall-related page that followed, titled Web Services Configuration, allowed you to invoke Outlook Web Access, Outlook Mobile Access, and Outlook via the Internet (in-depth description of each of these sections are available by clicking More Information on that page). Next up, you selected Enable Internet e-mail on the Internet e-mail page. On the E-mail Delivery Method page, you selected Use DNS to route e-mail. The E-mail Retrieval Method page followed that allowed you to elect SMTP-based e-mail (in effect, you turned Exchange “on” for use). You didn’t configure the POP3 Connector for Exchange (a native SBS 2003 tool that I discuss later in the chapter) on this page because it’s not part of

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the SPRINGERS storyline in this book. This was followed by the E-mail Domain Name page where you provided the Internet domain name you wanted to use for your SMTP-based external messaging. (Note that a BIG ASSUMPTION exists here that you’ve worked closely with your ISP to point a Mail Exchange (MX) record in DNS to your SBS 2003 server to successfully deliver the SMTP e-mail. If you haven’t, please contact your ISP immediately.) Finally, something I’ll discuss later is the e-mail attachment removal process that you implemented on the Remove E-mail Attachments page.
BEST PRACTICE: Actually, this is more humor than serious, but after all the details in the bullet points above about Exchange functionality in the EICW, I kinda feel like I’m listening to the patriarchal parent of the bride in the My Big Fat Greek Wedding movie who claims every word has a Greek origin. Here, after the exhaustive EICW play-by-play above, you might start to think every piece of SBS functionality originates in Exchange.
• Add User Wizard (AUW). Not to be outdone, the AUW holds its own in the Exchange configuration department. Exchange and the AUW are related in the following ways. First, the AUW creates the user object in Active Directory which also creates the Exchange mailbox. The template you select for the user in the AUW would also affect Exchange e-mail functionality. A mobile user would need the Mobile User Tem­plate to remotely access e-mail. The Power User Template provides suf­ficient permissions for the endowed user to create other users with an Exchange mailbox on the system via the Power User Console.
What You May Already Know AboutOutlook 2003
You probably know more about Outlook, including the 2003 version, than you give yourself credit for. Consider the following.
• Pervasive usage. Perhaps the question to ask here is “Who hasn’t used Outlook?” A show of hands would yield a very small data set. Just
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about everyone on Planet Earth has in some way or some how used Outlook. In fact, for that reason, a change from my past books is that I’ll not show you how to send an e-mail message, as I’ll assume you already know this basic function.
• Setup Computer Wizard (SCW). When the AUW spans Setup Com­puter Wizard (SCW), you assign users to the computer for whom Out­look will be available. You also make the decision to install the Outlook application itself. And finally, you may elect to install Active Synch
3.7 which will synchronize Outlook information with your personal digital assistant (which I’ll demonstrate and discuss more later).

1 comment:

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