Good day everyone - I am posting up a few pages per day from my book Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices (da purple book) for your pleasure until SBS 2008 ships!
Today in Chapter 8 we explore Exchange ActiveSync - enjoy the ride...
cheers...harrybbb
HArry Brelsford CEO at SMB NAtion www.smbnation.com
Microsoft Small Business Specialist - SBSC - MBA - MCSE - MCP - CNE - MCT - CLSE - CNP
PS - did u know we are holding a big SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 launch party in early October 2008 in Seattle at our SMB Nation 2008 conference!
###
Exchange Server ActiveSync
Sync directly and with high levels of security to your Exchange mailboxes from Microsoft Windows powered devices such as Pocket PC 2002, the Pocket PC Phone, and Windows Powered SmartPhone. Stay in direct contact over the air with a server running Exchange 2003 so you can:
• Work both online and offline. Synchronize your e-mail messages, calendar, and contacts based on various settings from your device. Syn¬chronization can be on-demand or scheduled. When coupled with Out¬look Mobile Access, you can gain access to your Tasks list and the Global Address List.
• Get up-to-date notifications. Receive specially formatted short mes¬sage service (SMS) messages from Exchange 2003 that wake up your Windows-powered device and prompt your device to initiate a synch.
This feature, new in Exchange 2003, enables you to set the conditions of these alerts by using your Inbox rules.
• Choose your synchronization method. Select from on-demand or scheduled synchronization. This includes remote access to your e-mail messages, calendar, and contacts list, and when coupled with Outlook Mobile Access, you can gain access to Tasks list and the Global Address List.
Those of you who have had Pocket PCs for a while are familiar with cradling the device at your desktop as you synchronize. You must have Outlook running on the desktop while you use Outlook to synchronize and connect to the Exchange Server, and as soon as you remove that device from the cradle, you’re out of sync. That’s not the case anymore with Exchange ActiveSync. You can still use the cradle, but you can also synchronize directly to Exchange over a wireless connection. Exchange ActiveSync does integrate with the desktop ActiveSync. So any settings you’ve created from your desktop translate over to the device and can be altered there. Any settings from the device translate over to the desktop.
Showing posts with label exchange. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exchange. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
More Outlook stuff inSBS 2003 [book excerpt]
Thanks for reading this weekend! Just posting up heaps of Outlook in SBS 2003 from my Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best PRactices book. Lots of stuff today:
Public folder procedures, sending Outlok e-mails to yourmobile telephone, using theJunk Mail and attachment blocking features inside Outlook, deleted item recovery - whew!
Enjoy the read...I am posting up a few pages per day until SBS 2008 ships (SBS 2008 is part of the new Essential Business Solutions family from Microsoft)
cheers...harrybbb
Harry Brelsford, CEO at SMB NAtion www.smbnation.com and your fellow Microsoft Small Business Specialist (SBSC),MBA, MCSE, MCT, CNE and smb consultant!
PS - our SMB Nation fall confernece is right around the corner - we are looking to host a community-basedSBS 2008 and EBS launch party on the Saturday night!
###
Public Folder Procedure
Before we go too much further, I need you to create a public folder called “fax” so that we can direct the faxes to this public folder a few chapters down the road. Because your screen should show the public folders at this point (from the completion of the procedure above), please right-click All Public Folders and select New Folder. Make the folder configured for Mail and Post Items. Click OK to complete the setup. You’ve just created something we both need in the faxing chapter to complete an example.
By the way, that “fax” public folder object you just created is SMTP mail enabled as fax@springersltd.com automatically. Very cool.
Attachment Blocking
Something folks love and curse is the native attachment blocking in Outlook 2003. They love it because it protects them from harmful e-mail attachments. They curse it because, in the heat of business battle, you can’t get to your darn tootin’ attachment that is mission-critical. But let’s fight fire with facts here.
There are two levels of attachment blocking in Outlook 2003. Level 1 is fixed, can’t be changed, and includes the following attachments (these are the file extensions): ade, adp, app, bas, bat, chm, cmd, com, cpl, crt, csh, exe, fxp, hlp, hta, inf, ins, isp, js, jse, ksh, lnk, mda, mdb, mde, mdt, mdw, mdz, msc, msi, msp, mst, ops, pcd, pif, prf, prg, reg, scf, scr, sct, shb, shs, url, vb, vbe, vbs, wsc, wsf, wsh, xsl.
BEST PRACTICE: These file types are defined when you type
“attachment blocking” in the Outlook 2003 help system and select
the Attachment file types blocked by Outlook link.
Level 2 is more liberal and prompts the user to save the file type to a hard disk. An Exchange administrator can allow a file type to be moved from Level 1 to Level 2 to allow this saving (the Exchange administrator can also modify the above list of Level 1 files). Note that the native SBS 2003 attachment blocking capability discussed earlier in this chapter will come into play interacting with Outlook on the network and the most conservative attachment blocking list will win between Outlook and SBS 2003.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
BEST PRACTICE: You can get an offending attachment around the blockade by simply renaming it to an acceptable file format, such as *.doc (for a Word document). Then rename the file type back to its original name once you’ve saved it to your C: drive. This is commonly done with file attachments ending in *.exe because this attachment type might be a legitimate business program that need to be received.
Junk E-mail
Microsoft has one of the largest research and development (R&D) budgets in the corporate world. Sometimes, shareholders get a little fussy with billions being spent on R&D because they want to see things that immediately contribute to current earnings. One positive R&D payoff is the sophisticated junk e-mail management approach built in to Outlook 2003 (this was actually spelled out as one of the points in the Outlook 2003 welcome e-mail you were asked to read earlier). Since I won’t sit here and retype the online help system in Outlook 2003, if you’d like to learn more about the Junk E-mail capability at a deep level, simply search on the term “Junk e-mail” in Outlook 2003 Help and select the About the Junk E-mail Filer link.
Back to the real world. You’re probably interested in knowing how to configure the Junk E-mail capabilities in Outlook 2003. It’s simple. Just select Tools, Options, Junk E-mail in Outlook 2003. The Junk E-mail Options dialog box will appear, as seen in Figure 6-23. You can then change the default setting (Low) to a different level.
Notes:
Figure 6-23
This figure shows all of the settings on Junk E-mail Options. But, equally important, look over to the left and observe the Junk E-mail folder under the Folder List. This is where e-mails are moved.
So if you’re a Microsoft shareholder, now you know how your R&D dollars are being spent!
BEST PRACTICE: You simply must read this white paper/analysis on the internals of Outlook spam blocking. I first learned of this from the W2KNews newsletter (www.w2knews.com) that goes out to about a half-million readers (as an author, I can tell you that is a very large number of readers!). So click over to http://www.mapilab.com/articles/ outlook_spam_filter.html and see the report from MAPI Lab. Excellent!
Junk Users
Maybe you can relate to the following situation. I’m on an e-mail list that has some annoying and verbose members. For business purposes, I can’t leave the list, but I often become frustrated with the quantity of e-mails (often of a soap
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
opera nature) that clog my Inbox. Because I’m committed to staying focused on core business operations, and I’d rather review these distracting e-mails at a future decade (I mean date), I use a rule to move them to a folder titled “Much Later, Dude.”
If you’d like to implement a similar approach in the management of your e-mails (or perhaps your SBS users would like to do this), then select Rules and Actions from the Tools menu in Outlook 2003. Then select New Rule and click Move messages from someone to a folder under Stay Organized (Figure 6-24).
Figure 6-24
This is the first step to bringing better management to many of the e-mails you receive from known babblers!
You would then click Next and complete the Rules Wizard where you’ll configure e-mails from certain people to be moved to a folder and out of your Inbox (for example, you’ll enter the e-mail address of folks whose e-mail you want moved).
BEST PRACTICE: Perhaps you’re just discovering this cool capability later in life and you’ve got an Inbox full of distracting e-mails you want to move. On the final page of the Rules Wizard, you have an option called Run this rule now on messages already in “Inbox” so that, post-hoc, you can improve the quality of your Inbox life.
Recovery Movement
No, this isn’t about a battle with the bottle. Rather, this is how to recover deleted e-mail and move it back into the Inbox or the folder of your choice. To learn this capability using Exchange’s delete item recovery capability (set to retain e-mails for 30-days by default in SBS 2003), complete the following procedure:
1 If necessary, have NormH log on to PRESIDENT with the password Purple3300.
2 In Outlook 2003, delete the e-mail from Norm Hasborn by dragging it to the Deleted Items folder.
3 Right-click the Deleted Items folder and select Empty “Deleted Items” Folder. Select Yes when asked in the Microsoft Office Outlook dialog box if you really want to delete the item. Observe the Deleted Items folder is now empty and would appear you’ve lost this e-mail forever.
4 Now you will recover the deleted e-mail by selecting the Deleted Items folder and then selecting the Recover Deleted Items menu option under the Tools menu.
5 NormH’s e-mail appears in the Recover Deleted Items from Deleted Items dialog box that appears (Figure 6-25). Make sure this e-mail is highlighted and click the Recover Selected Items button. The e-mail will be returned to the Deleted Items folder.
6 Move the e-mail from Deleted Items back to Inbox.
Notes:
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
Figure 6-25
E-mails that have been deleted within the retention period (30-days by default in SBS 2003) will appear here.
Forwarding E-mail to Your Mobile Telephone
Something that is increasingly popular is the ability to forward e-mails to your telephone. That’s because numerous technologies are converging and breaking down functional and feature barriers. Heck - many brands of mobile telephone now include cameras, so why not e-mail too?
The key would be to forward the e-mails to your telephone. Of course, you’d want to keep a copy of it in your server-based mailbox, because telephones aren’t a good permanent repository and reading a large attachment on a telephone is darn near impossible! So here are the steps you’d take to forward e-mails to your mobile telephone (using the SPRINGERS methodology of course).
1. If necessary, have NormH log on to PRESIDENT with the pass
word Purple3300.
2. In Outlook 2003, select Rules and Alerts from the Tools menu.
Visit www.smbnation.com for additional SMB and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.
1 Select Send an alert to my mobile device when I get a message from someone and click Next.
2 Under the Step 1: Select conditions list, deselect the default selection of “from people or distribution list” and select “where my name is in the To or Cc box” and then click Next. This will effectively forward all e-mail sent to you.
3 On the following Select actions page, keep the default selection of “forward it to people or distribution list” and click Next. On the lower part of this page, click the people or distribution list hyperlink
4 The Rule Address dialog box appears. Type the e-mail address of your mobile telephone in the To -> field. For example, you might type something like 2065551212@tmobile.com. Click OK.
5 Click Finish followed by OK to close Rules and Alerts.
BEST PRACTICE: Related to the forwarding concept, note that I’ve used the Active Directory contact object forwarding capability when a customer has a remote office that uses (and will continue to use) POP3 e-mail. The good folks at the home office, seeking to create a uniform e-mail organization/image, will create an Active Directory user for the employee at the remote site. That allows the internal employees to e-mail the remote employee directly from the GAL in Exchange and so on. But this remote employee also has an associated Active Directory contact object that is really the e-mail address for their POP3 account. And voila, the forwarding occurs from the Active Directory user to the Active Directory contact object. How? On the property sheet for an Active Directory user (let’s say Norm), click the Exchange General tab, click the Delivery Options button, and complete the Forwarding address box. Be sure to leave a copy on the server!
Cached Exchange Mode
Something you’ll readily appreciate in Outlook 2003 will be Cached Exchange Mode that is set by default for all SBS 2003 users. This allows you to work offline with Outlook 2003 when Exchange is down for maintenance, you are traveling, or you have a slow link (56K modem) connection back to the server. What’s cool is that this is implemented by default and removes a task that you
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
and I performed manually at each user machine in the past: configuring offline storage (OST files). Bottom line: You can work with Outlook 2003 very effectively while on a plane, train, automobile, or “no-tell” motel room full of swimsuit models!
Microsoft does a dandy job of explaining Cached Exchange Mode at http:// office.microsoft.com/assistance/preview.aspx?AssetID=HP052516521033 &CTT=98 (this can also be found by drilling down into Outlook from www.microsoft.com/office and then clicking the Assistance link). I encourage you to read more about this.
It’s Client, Not Server!
If you completed the initial online SBS 2003 hands-on lab offered at www.microsoft.granitepillar.com/partners in the early fall of 2003, you would recall that the Part #3 of that courseware had you run Outlook 2003 on the SBS 2003 server machine and click past an important warning message. The point I want to make is that you should not run Outlook 2003 on the SBS 2003 server machine, and that warning message you receive, seen in Figure 6-26, is to be honored. Bottom line: Run Outlook 2003 on the client computer, not the SBS 2003 server machine.
Notes:
Figure 6-26
This message discusses why Outlook 2003 should not be run on the SBS 2003 server machine. There are TechNet KBase articles that also discuss this issue you might want to read.
BEST PRACTICE: Some of you will recall that, in my Small Business Server 2000 Best Practices book, I had you run Outlook 2000 on the SBS 2000 server machine to save time. I was wrong, and I didn’t do it again!
Public folder procedures, sending Outlok e-mails to yourmobile telephone, using theJunk Mail and attachment blocking features inside Outlook, deleted item recovery - whew!
Enjoy the read...I am posting up a few pages per day until SBS 2008 ships (SBS 2008 is part of the new Essential Business Solutions family from Microsoft)
cheers...harrybbb
Harry Brelsford, CEO at SMB NAtion www.smbnation.com and your fellow Microsoft Small Business Specialist (SBSC),MBA, MCSE, MCT, CNE and smb consultant!
PS - our SMB Nation fall confernece is right around the corner - we are looking to host a community-basedSBS 2008 and EBS launch party on the Saturday night!
###
Public Folder Procedure
Before we go too much further, I need you to create a public folder called “fax” so that we can direct the faxes to this public folder a few chapters down the road. Because your screen should show the public folders at this point (from the completion of the procedure above), please right-click All Public Folders and select New Folder. Make the folder configured for Mail and Post Items. Click OK to complete the setup. You’ve just created something we both need in the faxing chapter to complete an example.
By the way, that “fax” public folder object you just created is SMTP mail enabled as fax@springersltd.com automatically. Very cool.
Attachment Blocking
Something folks love and curse is the native attachment blocking in Outlook 2003. They love it because it protects them from harmful e-mail attachments. They curse it because, in the heat of business battle, you can’t get to your darn tootin’ attachment that is mission-critical. But let’s fight fire with facts here.
There are two levels of attachment blocking in Outlook 2003. Level 1 is fixed, can’t be changed, and includes the following attachments (these are the file extensions): ade, adp, app, bas, bat, chm, cmd, com, cpl, crt, csh, exe, fxp, hlp, hta, inf, ins, isp, js, jse, ksh, lnk, mda, mdb, mde, mdt, mdw, mdz, msc, msi, msp, mst, ops, pcd, pif, prf, prg, reg, scf, scr, sct, shb, shs, url, vb, vbe, vbs, wsc, wsf, wsh, xsl.
BEST PRACTICE: These file types are defined when you type
“attachment blocking” in the Outlook 2003 help system and select
the Attachment file types blocked by Outlook link.
Level 2 is more liberal and prompts the user to save the file type to a hard disk. An Exchange administrator can allow a file type to be moved from Level 1 to Level 2 to allow this saving (the Exchange administrator can also modify the above list of Level 1 files). Note that the native SBS 2003 attachment blocking capability discussed earlier in this chapter will come into play interacting with Outlook on the network and the most conservative attachment blocking list will win between Outlook and SBS 2003.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
BEST PRACTICE: You can get an offending attachment around the blockade by simply renaming it to an acceptable file format, such as *.doc (for a Word document). Then rename the file type back to its original name once you’ve saved it to your C: drive. This is commonly done with file attachments ending in *.exe because this attachment type might be a legitimate business program that need to be received.
Junk E-mail
Microsoft has one of the largest research and development (R&D) budgets in the corporate world. Sometimes, shareholders get a little fussy with billions being spent on R&D because they want to see things that immediately contribute to current earnings. One positive R&D payoff is the sophisticated junk e-mail management approach built in to Outlook 2003 (this was actually spelled out as one of the points in the Outlook 2003 welcome e-mail you were asked to read earlier). Since I won’t sit here and retype the online help system in Outlook 2003, if you’d like to learn more about the Junk E-mail capability at a deep level, simply search on the term “Junk e-mail” in Outlook 2003 Help and select the About the Junk E-mail Filer link.
Back to the real world. You’re probably interested in knowing how to configure the Junk E-mail capabilities in Outlook 2003. It’s simple. Just select Tools, Options, Junk E-mail in Outlook 2003. The Junk E-mail Options dialog box will appear, as seen in Figure 6-23. You can then change the default setting (Low) to a different level.
Notes:
Figure 6-23
This figure shows all of the settings on Junk E-mail Options. But, equally important, look over to the left and observe the Junk E-mail folder under the Folder List. This is where e-mails are moved.
So if you’re a Microsoft shareholder, now you know how your R&D dollars are being spent!
BEST PRACTICE: You simply must read this white paper/analysis on the internals of Outlook spam blocking. I first learned of this from the W2KNews newsletter (www.w2knews.com) that goes out to about a half-million readers (as an author, I can tell you that is a very large number of readers!). So click over to http://www.mapilab.com/articles/ outlook_spam_filter.html and see the report from MAPI Lab. Excellent!
Junk Users
Maybe you can relate to the following situation. I’m on an e-mail list that has some annoying and verbose members. For business purposes, I can’t leave the list, but I often become frustrated with the quantity of e-mails (often of a soap
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
opera nature) that clog my Inbox. Because I’m committed to staying focused on core business operations, and I’d rather review these distracting e-mails at a future decade (I mean date), I use a rule to move them to a folder titled “Much Later, Dude.”
If you’d like to implement a similar approach in the management of your e-mails (or perhaps your SBS users would like to do this), then select Rules and Actions from the Tools menu in Outlook 2003. Then select New Rule and click Move messages from someone to a folder under Stay Organized (Figure 6-24).
Figure 6-24
This is the first step to bringing better management to many of the e-mails you receive from known babblers!
You would then click Next and complete the Rules Wizard where you’ll configure e-mails from certain people to be moved to a folder and out of your Inbox (for example, you’ll enter the e-mail address of folks whose e-mail you want moved).
BEST PRACTICE: Perhaps you’re just discovering this cool capability later in life and you’ve got an Inbox full of distracting e-mails you want to move. On the final page of the Rules Wizard, you have an option called Run this rule now on messages already in “Inbox” so that, post-hoc, you can improve the quality of your Inbox life.
Recovery Movement
No, this isn’t about a battle with the bottle. Rather, this is how to recover deleted e-mail and move it back into the Inbox or the folder of your choice. To learn this capability using Exchange’s delete item recovery capability (set to retain e-mails for 30-days by default in SBS 2003), complete the following procedure:
1 If necessary, have NormH log on to PRESIDENT with the password Purple3300.
2 In Outlook 2003, delete the e-mail from Norm Hasborn by dragging it to the Deleted Items folder.
3 Right-click the Deleted Items folder and select Empty “Deleted Items” Folder. Select Yes when asked in the Microsoft Office Outlook dialog box if you really want to delete the item. Observe the Deleted Items folder is now empty and would appear you’ve lost this e-mail forever.
4 Now you will recover the deleted e-mail by selecting the Deleted Items folder and then selecting the Recover Deleted Items menu option under the Tools menu.
5 NormH’s e-mail appears in the Recover Deleted Items from Deleted Items dialog box that appears (Figure 6-25). Make sure this e-mail is highlighted and click the Recover Selected Items button. The e-mail will be returned to the Deleted Items folder.
6 Move the e-mail from Deleted Items back to Inbox.
Notes:
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
Figure 6-25
E-mails that have been deleted within the retention period (30-days by default in SBS 2003) will appear here.
Forwarding E-mail to Your Mobile Telephone
Something that is increasingly popular is the ability to forward e-mails to your telephone. That’s because numerous technologies are converging and breaking down functional and feature barriers. Heck - many brands of mobile telephone now include cameras, so why not e-mail too?
The key would be to forward the e-mails to your telephone. Of course, you’d want to keep a copy of it in your server-based mailbox, because telephones aren’t a good permanent repository and reading a large attachment on a telephone is darn near impossible! So here are the steps you’d take to forward e-mails to your mobile telephone (using the SPRINGERS methodology of course).
1. If necessary, have NormH log on to PRESIDENT with the pass
word Purple3300.
2. In Outlook 2003, select Rules and Alerts from the Tools menu.
Visit www.smbnation.com for additional SMB and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.
1 Select Send an alert to my mobile device when I get a message from someone and click Next.
2 Under the Step 1: Select conditions list, deselect the default selection of “from people or distribution list” and select “where my name is in the To or Cc box” and then click Next. This will effectively forward all e-mail sent to you.
3 On the following Select actions page, keep the default selection of “forward it to people or distribution list” and click Next. On the lower part of this page, click the people or distribution list hyperlink
4 The Rule Address dialog box appears. Type the e-mail address of your mobile telephone in the To -> field. For example, you might type something like 2065551212@tmobile.com. Click OK.
5 Click Finish followed by OK to close Rules and Alerts.
BEST PRACTICE: Related to the forwarding concept, note that I’ve used the Active Directory contact object forwarding capability when a customer has a remote office that uses (and will continue to use) POP3 e-mail. The good folks at the home office, seeking to create a uniform e-mail organization/image, will create an Active Directory user for the employee at the remote site. That allows the internal employees to e-mail the remote employee directly from the GAL in Exchange and so on. But this remote employee also has an associated Active Directory contact object that is really the e-mail address for their POP3 account. And voila, the forwarding occurs from the Active Directory user to the Active Directory contact object. How? On the property sheet for an Active Directory user (let’s say Norm), click the Exchange General tab, click the Delivery Options button, and complete the Forwarding address box. Be sure to leave a copy on the server!
Cached Exchange Mode
Something you’ll readily appreciate in Outlook 2003 will be Cached Exchange Mode that is set by default for all SBS 2003 users. This allows you to work offline with Outlook 2003 when Exchange is down for maintenance, you are traveling, or you have a slow link (56K modem) connection back to the server. What’s cool is that this is implemented by default and removes a task that you
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
and I performed manually at each user machine in the past: configuring offline storage (OST files). Bottom line: You can work with Outlook 2003 very effectively while on a plane, train, automobile, or “no-tell” motel room full of swimsuit models!
Microsoft does a dandy job of explaining Cached Exchange Mode at http:// office.microsoft.com/assistance/preview.aspx?AssetID=HP052516521033 &CTT=98 (this can also be found by drilling down into Outlook from www.microsoft.com/office and then clicking the Assistance link). I encourage you to read more about this.
It’s Client, Not Server!
If you completed the initial online SBS 2003 hands-on lab offered at www.microsoft.granitepillar.com/partners in the early fall of 2003, you would recall that the Part #3 of that courseware had you run Outlook 2003 on the SBS 2003 server machine and click past an important warning message. The point I want to make is that you should not run Outlook 2003 on the SBS 2003 server machine, and that warning message you receive, seen in Figure 6-26, is to be honored. Bottom line: Run Outlook 2003 on the client computer, not the SBS 2003 server machine.
Notes:
Figure 6-26
This message discusses why Outlook 2003 should not be run on the SBS 2003 server machine. There are TechNet KBase articles that also discuss this issue you might want to read.
BEST PRACTICE: Some of you will recall that, in my Small Business Server 2000 Best Practices book, I had you run Outlook 2000 on the SBS 2000 server machine to save time. I was wrong, and I didn’t do it again!
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Exchange MX records, migrations, IM in SBS 2003
Today's book excerpt (Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices) has a messaging buffet:
Multiple MX records
Instant Message
Exchange Migrations
Extending Exchange
Whew -enjoy the read....there is a lot here!
cheers...harrybbbb (your fellow Microsoft Small Business Specialist - SBSC)
Harry Brelsford, CEO of SMB Nation, www.smbnation.com
###
Mail Bagging and Multiple MX Records
No, this isn’t a paragraph that will replay a tale of sassy Samantha (a lead character on HBO’s popular program Sex in the City) having a racy encounter with a postal worker. Rather, this is about having a backup location for your e-mail to flow to when your SBS 2003 server machine (properly running Exchange for SMTP e-mail) is offline. Instead of the senders in the “offline SBS 2003 server machine” situation receiving an NDR or bounced e-mail
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
message, these incoming e-mails can temporarily reside on another mail server. Later on, you would retrieve and properly distribute these e-mails using a tool such as the POP3 Connector in SBS 2003 that was discussed above.
BEST PRACTICE: If you think you might like to have this form of messaging redundancy, consult with your ISP to arrange it. Your ISP, who I assume is holding your DNS records, will need to enter a second MX record with a lower priority that points to a backup mail server (typically maintained by the ISP).
I’ll cover this topic more, including more procedural steps, in my
forthcoming advanced SBS 2003 book due in mid-2004.
Exchange Migrations
This topic, another one way outside the SPRINGERS story line, merits mention nonetheless. You might find yourself in a situation where you need to move Exchange data because of an upgrade or migration. While I discuss upgrades and migrations more in Appendix B, the point is that you’ll possibly encounter such a scenario and you need at least some basic guidance.
The tools that you’ll use to migrate Exchange data is the ExMerge tool. For the latest discussion on the use of ExMerge, visit www.microsoft.com/technet and search on the “exmerge” term. You’ll see the page in Figure 6-13 that advises you to download the Exchange 2003: Mailbox Merge Wizard (ExMerge) tool.
BEST PRACTICE: Yes - you read correctly. The ExMerge tool is now downloaded. In the SBS 2000 time frame, it was found on the SBS setup disc that contained the Exchange application. Such is not the case in the SBS 2003 time frame.
Notes:
Figure 6-13
Go here for the ExMerge tool to migrate your all-important Exchange data.
So a few pointers to send you forward with respect to Exchange’s ExMerge tool:
• This version of ExMerge requires an “ExMerge” user account with administrator-level permissions to function correctly. This wasn’t the case in the SBS 2000 timeframe.
• ExMerge can be run against older versions of Exchange (5.5, 2000) and thus serves as an effective migration tool.
• ExMerge interacts with mailboxes, not public folders or Internet favorites. This interaction is basically import and export capabilities. You will need to manually import and export the content of public folders using the Import and Export option on the File menu in Outlook. Internet favorites, accessible from Outlook and considered by some to be part of the messaging migration mix, can be either manually migrated or migrated by using the profile migration capabilities of the Add User Wizard that was explored in Chapter 4.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
BEST PRACTICE: There is a key, public folders point to make about that bullet above. As you’ll learn later, the SBS development team has dramatically increased the visibility of public folder usage by creating company-related objects in SBS 2003. So it’s a reasonable assumption that you will put important data in the company-related public folder objects (such as maintaining a company-wide customer contacts). Given that, you will need to manually migrate such data.
• If ExMerge fails with a mailbox (this can happen when a PST file you’re working with has been flagged to read-only and would occur if you moved a PST file by writing it to a CD disc), then you can always revert back to the manual import/export capability in Outlook as described in the bullet above.
BEST PRACTICE: Microsoft has posted additional migration guidance at www.microsoft.com/exchange. As of this writing, there is a scenario for migrating from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003.
Instant Messaging - NOT!
It’s unfortunate but true in SBS 2003 that the Exchange Server 2003 component has removed the instant messaging capability that many of us enjoyed in the SBS 2000 time frame. Many readers will recall that my prior book, Small Business Server 2000 Best Practices, provided the procedures for configuring this wonderful cool tool.
In the SBS 2003 time frame, you will now need to supply Instant Messaging functionality differently. You can purchase Microsoft’s new Live Communications Server, starting at $1,059 with five CALs (your rich SBS CALs do not cover this server application). Live Communication Server information is shown in Figure 6-14.
BEST PRACTICE: A member of the SBS development team has confirmed that Live Communications Server does install and function for internal messaging in SBS 2003. However, users will need to logon to the instant messaging client with their internal name (e.g. Normh@springersltd.local). There will be a white paper out that
Visit www.smbnation.com for additional SMB and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.
will teach you how to intregrate SBS 2003 and Live Communications Server (no publication date available at my press deadline).
Figure 6-14
Those SBS legacy sites that utilize Instant Messaging will need to strongly consider Live Communications Server to deliver the same functionality in the SBS2003 time frame.
BEST PRACTICE: There is a poor man’s way to deliver instant messaging on an SBS 2003 network: Use MSN. That’s right! The Internet-based MSN instant messaging capability, described in Figure 6-15, may be just the cheapo ticket you’re looking for. Visit www.msn.com/people, but be advised one drawback of this approach is that your chat traffic will result in increased Internet traffic, and there is a huge assumption that you have Internet connectivity!
Note that some readers have reported that they prefer the instant messaging solution from Yahoo! at www.yahoo.com.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
Figure 6-15
Consider MSN to restore basic instant messaging (called IM by some folks) to SBS 2003.
Extending Exchange
Some topics fit better under a heading about extending Exchange, rather than peeking under the hood as the last section did. In this section, I’ll share some thoughts about implementing Exchange in SBS 2003 on a storage area network (SAN), support for multiple Exchange servers, and use of Exchange Conferencing Server.
Storage Area Networks
The consultants and trainers in the readership of this book will appreciate the following sentiment. Because of your numerous customers, you see and hear a lot of things you might not otherwise think of yourself. Such was the case recently in Phoenix (the city, not the bird) where a keen student attending the SBS 2003 hands-on labs asked about redirecting the Exchange Store database to a SAN during the setup of SBS 2003. The answer is that this is supported. On
the SBS 2003 Setup page that speaks towards data folder redirection (see Figure 3-21), you would redirect the Exchange Store to a SAN via a Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) path such as \\server2\storage\exchange.
Multiple Exchange Servers
This is the type of paragraph I like to insert in a book such as this for the SBS gurus out there who aren’t happy with a text until the find something they don’t know. Then these same gurus are your friends for life. So here is such an opportunity. You CAN have multiple Exchange servers on the same SBS 2003 network. You might want do this to shoehorn SBS 2003 into a multiple office scenario or to gain some form of messaging database redundancy. This would be accomplished by purchasing a second copy of Exchange Server 2003 (standard edition) and installing it on a second server running Windows Server 2003 (which you would also need to purchase). You would then link the Exchange servers together as part of the Exchange Server site.
The bottom line for introducing another Exchange server machine into your SBS 2003 network? You’d be out the following “hard costs”:
• Exchange Server 2003 standard edition: $699 USD
• Exchange 2003 User CAL: $67 USD/each user
• Windows Server 2003: $999 USD
• HP ML 350 Server Machine (adequately equipped): $1,500
If you total the above figures, you’ll see that you’ll pay a handsome price to introduce a second Exchange server machine in the small business. But it can be done.
BEST PRACTICE: Having a need to discuss the use of multiple Exchange servers might really be a customer’s cry for more information about whether SBS with its Exchange Server 2003 SKU is really the best fit. Consider visiting the comparison chart of all Exchange Server 2003 SKUs (including SBS 2003) at www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/Mail_compare.asp as
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
seen in Figure 6-16 below to answer your own Exchange right
sizing questions.
Figure 6-16
Use this page to, at a glance, line up Exchange features and better understand what the capabilities and limitations are in SBS 2003.
Multiple MX records
Instant Message
Exchange Migrations
Extending Exchange
Whew -enjoy the read....there is a lot here!
cheers...harrybbbb (your fellow Microsoft Small Business Specialist - SBSC)
Harry Brelsford, CEO of SMB Nation, www.smbnation.com
###
Mail Bagging and Multiple MX Records
No, this isn’t a paragraph that will replay a tale of sassy Samantha (a lead character on HBO’s popular program Sex in the City) having a racy encounter with a postal worker. Rather, this is about having a backup location for your e-mail to flow to when your SBS 2003 server machine (properly running Exchange for SMTP e-mail) is offline. Instead of the senders in the “offline SBS 2003 server machine” situation receiving an NDR or bounced e-mail
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
message, these incoming e-mails can temporarily reside on another mail server. Later on, you would retrieve and properly distribute these e-mails using a tool such as the POP3 Connector in SBS 2003 that was discussed above.
BEST PRACTICE: If you think you might like to have this form of messaging redundancy, consult with your ISP to arrange it. Your ISP, who I assume is holding your DNS records, will need to enter a second MX record with a lower priority that points to a backup mail server (typically maintained by the ISP).
I’ll cover this topic more, including more procedural steps, in my
forthcoming advanced SBS 2003 book due in mid-2004.
Exchange Migrations
This topic, another one way outside the SPRINGERS story line, merits mention nonetheless. You might find yourself in a situation where you need to move Exchange data because of an upgrade or migration. While I discuss upgrades and migrations more in Appendix B, the point is that you’ll possibly encounter such a scenario and you need at least some basic guidance.
The tools that you’ll use to migrate Exchange data is the ExMerge tool. For the latest discussion on the use of ExMerge, visit www.microsoft.com/technet and search on the “exmerge” term. You’ll see the page in Figure 6-13 that advises you to download the Exchange 2003: Mailbox Merge Wizard (ExMerge) tool.
BEST PRACTICE: Yes - you read correctly. The ExMerge tool is now downloaded. In the SBS 2000 time frame, it was found on the SBS setup disc that contained the Exchange application. Such is not the case in the SBS 2003 time frame.
Notes:
Figure 6-13
Go here for the ExMerge tool to migrate your all-important Exchange data.
So a few pointers to send you forward with respect to Exchange’s ExMerge tool:
• This version of ExMerge requires an “ExMerge” user account with administrator-level permissions to function correctly. This wasn’t the case in the SBS 2000 timeframe.
• ExMerge can be run against older versions of Exchange (5.5, 2000) and thus serves as an effective migration tool.
• ExMerge interacts with mailboxes, not public folders or Internet favorites. This interaction is basically import and export capabilities. You will need to manually import and export the content of public folders using the Import and Export option on the File menu in Outlook. Internet favorites, accessible from Outlook and considered by some to be part of the messaging migration mix, can be either manually migrated or migrated by using the profile migration capabilities of the Add User Wizard that was explored in Chapter 4.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
BEST PRACTICE: There is a key, public folders point to make about that bullet above. As you’ll learn later, the SBS development team has dramatically increased the visibility of public folder usage by creating company-related objects in SBS 2003. So it’s a reasonable assumption that you will put important data in the company-related public folder objects (such as maintaining a company-wide customer contacts). Given that, you will need to manually migrate such data.
• If ExMerge fails with a mailbox (this can happen when a PST file you’re working with has been flagged to read-only and would occur if you moved a PST file by writing it to a CD disc), then you can always revert back to the manual import/export capability in Outlook as described in the bullet above.
BEST PRACTICE: Microsoft has posted additional migration guidance at www.microsoft.com/exchange. As of this writing, there is a scenario for migrating from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003.
Instant Messaging - NOT!
It’s unfortunate but true in SBS 2003 that the Exchange Server 2003 component has removed the instant messaging capability that many of us enjoyed in the SBS 2000 time frame. Many readers will recall that my prior book, Small Business Server 2000 Best Practices, provided the procedures for configuring this wonderful cool tool.
In the SBS 2003 time frame, you will now need to supply Instant Messaging functionality differently. You can purchase Microsoft’s new Live Communications Server, starting at $1,059 with five CALs (your rich SBS CALs do not cover this server application). Live Communication Server information is shown in Figure 6-14.
BEST PRACTICE: A member of the SBS development team has confirmed that Live Communications Server does install and function for internal messaging in SBS 2003. However, users will need to logon to the instant messaging client with their internal name (e.g. Normh@springersltd.local). There will be a white paper out that
Visit www.smbnation.com for additional SMB and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.
will teach you how to intregrate SBS 2003 and Live Communications Server (no publication date available at my press deadline).
Figure 6-14
Those SBS legacy sites that utilize Instant Messaging will need to strongly consider Live Communications Server to deliver the same functionality in the SBS2003 time frame.
BEST PRACTICE: There is a poor man’s way to deliver instant messaging on an SBS 2003 network: Use MSN. That’s right! The Internet-based MSN instant messaging capability, described in Figure 6-15, may be just the cheapo ticket you’re looking for. Visit www.msn.com/people, but be advised one drawback of this approach is that your chat traffic will result in increased Internet traffic, and there is a huge assumption that you have Internet connectivity!
Note that some readers have reported that they prefer the instant messaging solution from Yahoo! at www.yahoo.com.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
Figure 6-15
Consider MSN to restore basic instant messaging (called IM by some folks) to SBS 2003.
Extending Exchange
Some topics fit better under a heading about extending Exchange, rather than peeking under the hood as the last section did. In this section, I’ll share some thoughts about implementing Exchange in SBS 2003 on a storage area network (SAN), support for multiple Exchange servers, and use of Exchange Conferencing Server.
Storage Area Networks
The consultants and trainers in the readership of this book will appreciate the following sentiment. Because of your numerous customers, you see and hear a lot of things you might not otherwise think of yourself. Such was the case recently in Phoenix (the city, not the bird) where a keen student attending the SBS 2003 hands-on labs asked about redirecting the Exchange Store database to a SAN during the setup of SBS 2003. The answer is that this is supported. On
the SBS 2003 Setup page that speaks towards data folder redirection (see Figure 3-21), you would redirect the Exchange Store to a SAN via a Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) path such as \\server2\storage\exchange.
Multiple Exchange Servers
This is the type of paragraph I like to insert in a book such as this for the SBS gurus out there who aren’t happy with a text until the find something they don’t know. Then these same gurus are your friends for life. So here is such an opportunity. You CAN have multiple Exchange servers on the same SBS 2003 network. You might want do this to shoehorn SBS 2003 into a multiple office scenario or to gain some form of messaging database redundancy. This would be accomplished by purchasing a second copy of Exchange Server 2003 (standard edition) and installing it on a second server running Windows Server 2003 (which you would also need to purchase). You would then link the Exchange servers together as part of the Exchange Server site.
The bottom line for introducing another Exchange server machine into your SBS 2003 network? You’d be out the following “hard costs”:
• Exchange Server 2003 standard edition: $699 USD
• Exchange 2003 User CAL: $67 USD/each user
• Windows Server 2003: $999 USD
• HP ML 350 Server Machine (adequately equipped): $1,500
If you total the above figures, you’ll see that you’ll pay a handsome price to introduce a second Exchange server machine in the small business. But it can be done.
BEST PRACTICE: Having a need to discuss the use of multiple Exchange servers might really be a customer’s cry for more information about whether SBS with its Exchange Server 2003 SKU is really the best fit. Consider visiting the comparison chart of all Exchange Server 2003 SKUs (including SBS 2003) at www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/Mail_compare.asp as
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
seen in Figure 6-16 below to answer your own Exchange right
sizing questions.
Figure 6-16
Use this page to, at a glance, line up Exchange features and better understand what the capabilities and limitations are in SBS 2003.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Exchange server POP3, Queue management in SBS 2003 (book excerpt)
POP3 Connector
It’s with great pride that the SBS development team created the POP3 Connector that allows external POP3 e-mail to be downloaded on a schedule and “mapped” to an Exchange SMTP account. Translation: You’re using POP3-based e-mail at your ISP today (say my POP3 account of harryb@nwlink.com) and you want that mail delivered seamlessly to your SBS network e-mail (in my case, harryb@nethealthmon.com). It’s the POP3 Connector that facilitates this mapping between disparate e-mail accounts (and account types) and performs the download delivery function.
Configuring the POP3 Connector in SBS 2003 is much simpler than prior SBS 2000 releases, because it’s now got a direct link in the Server Management console! In the Server Management console, click Internet and E-mail under Standard Management. Then select Manage POP3 E-mail followed by a click on the Open POP3 Connector Manager link. The result is displayed in Figure 6-8.
Notes:
Figure 6-8
The POP3 Connector is configured on this property sheet via the Mailboxes and Scheduling. Because it’s not really part of the SPRINGERS storyline, this figure is a simple “look and see.”
BEST PRACTICE: In its heart of hearts, the POP3 Connector is best used as a transition tool to help you migrate your POP3-based e-mail (and associated Internet identity, such as harryb@nwlink.com) to your SBS-based Exchange SMTP e-mail and Internet identity (e.g., harryb@nethealthmon.com). There is much power in having an Internet identity that closely relates to the name of your organization and isn’t a generic e-mail domain name (e.g., JUNO and other large ISP identities). In fact, one of the slides in the Microsoft Partner PPT in late 2003 widely circulated in the public SBS 2003 hands-on labs and other venues cites hosting your own SMTP e-mail as a true benefit to SBS 2003. It’s the POP3 Connector that can help facilitate this transition.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
But hey - that’s not to say that some folks don’t use the POP3 Connector on a permanent basis to maintain POP3 e-mail on an on-going basis. This can be done without harm, without foul.
I know across this book I sound like a broken record, but I’ll delve deeper into the POP3 Connector in my advanced SBS 2003 book.
BEST PRACTICE: Oops. I almost forgot a late-breaking discovery regarding the POP3 Connector. There I was in late 2003 teaching a bunch of attentive and smart Microsoft Partners in Bangalore, India, when I was asked the following question: Can the POP3 Connector be configured to leave a copy of the e-mail on the e-mail server at the ISP? After horsing around with it, the answer appears to be no.
Queue Management
While I’ll go into more detail on Exchange queue management in my forthcoming Advanced SBS 2003 book, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least pay lip service to this matter in this more introductory text. Inbound and outbound e-mails awaiting processing live in queues. A point of failure in Exchange can occur at the queue, and it’s not uncommon for someone to post to the newsgroups that e-mail is “stuck in the queue.”
BEST PRACTICE: As an example, when outbound e-mail gets stuck in the queue, it can slow down the entire SBS server machine. One cause for this can be that spammers have sent e-mail into your Exchange organization to a nonexistent e-mail account (say superuser@springersltd.com) and you have somehow configured Exchange to send a nondeliverable report (NDR) back to the spammer (over the Internet) that basically says said user doesn’t exist in your organization. Well, when the spammers return e-mail address is itself fake, Exchange will try and try again to deliver the NDR and queue blockage will result.
Pardon me while I shout, but NDRs are ENABLED BY DEFAULT IN SBS 2003! This could create the above situation out of the box on your SBS 2003 network. So, clearly the point of the above story and
Visit www.smbnation.com for additional SMB and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.
shouting is to turn off NDR delivery that will go out over the Internet. This occurs by deselecting the Allow non-delivery reports checkbox on the Default Properties dialog box (this is the property sheet for the Default object under Internet Message Formats under Global Settings in the Exchange System Manager under Advanced Management in the Server Management console). This is shown in Figure 6-9 after the correction has been made.
Figure 6-9
Please promise you’ll turn off the Allow non-delivery reports checkbox here to prevent queue build-up.
Possibly you’re a reader from Missouri (the “Show Me” state) and you need to see e-mails in the queue to better understand what we’re talking about here. Or perhaps you’re sinister and want to see to whom users are e-mailing messages (this is SPYING and could be considered bad behavior). That is accomplished by drilling down from Server Management, Advanced Management, selecting the Exchange System Manager, selecting the SPRINGERS1 domain object, and clicking Queues. Then select the queue of your choice, such as Messages
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
queued for deferred delivery followed by clicking the Find Messages button. You’ll see the messages that exist in that queue.
BEST PRACTICE: One last point about Figure 6-9 above. Did you know that SBS 2003 and Exchange are contributing by default to the health, welfare, and safety of your home? That is accomplished by an ounce of prevention. What? Look closely at Figure 6-9 and notice that Allow Out of Office responses are disabled by default. That way, if one of your users utilizes the Out of Office response capability in Outlook 2003 when he travels for business or pleasure, the bad guys who spam said user don’t receive notification that the user is out of town and his home is wide open for theft! Seriously, an Out of Office response that is sent over the Internet is an open invitation for bad guys to rip you off! If you think that’s bad, it could be worse, as a woman real estate agent once pointed out to me. What if you were using your vacation time at home and the bad guys, having received your Out of Office reply, decided to come by for a quick burgle. Her point was that she’d rather get ripped off while not at home than to risk personal harm when the bad guys appear. A valid point!
16GB Store Limit
Something that really freaks out some SBSers is the fact that Exchange Server 2003 standard edition, which is the SKU placed in SBS 2003 (both standard and premium edition) has a 16GB data storage limit for all stores combined. In the old days, 16GB was a ton of space, but now with a mailbox approaching 1 GB or more per user, you can easily see how you might overtax Exchange’s storage limitation at the information store level. Why have mailbox sizes increased so much in the early 21st century? Well, a generation ago, the Church Lady (played by Dana Carvey) on Saturday Night Live (a popular US comedy show that won’t die) would have blamed...SATAN! I’d rather put my faith in the fact that folks are using their Exchange-based mailboxes as filing systems to manage their business information. In this case, the Outlook application accessing the Exchange-based mailbox has replaced traditional NTFS-folders viewed from Windows Explorer as the information repository of choice. Yours
truly is truly guilty as seen in Figure 6-10, where the offline data storage file for Outlook (OST file), which is representative of my Exchange mailbox, is approaching 1.2 GB in size!
Figure 6-10
All you would need is 16 users like Harry (that’s me) in your organization with SBS 2003 to exceed the information store-level storage limit in Exchange. Ouch!
BEST PRACTICE: Did ya’ catch my point in passing above? Multiple Exchange stores are allowed in SBS 2003. That question came up during the SBS 2003 hands-on lab tour by a bright student in Phoenix, Arizona. The reason you might create multiple stores relates back to another hands-on lab tour titled “Go To Market” in early 2003. The example the student completed in the Exchange section related to creating a second Exchange store titled “executives” that allowed a restoration, performed at the store-level, to be first accomplished for the executives whilst the proletariat waited and ate cake.
Respecting the Dearly Departed
A network administration trick as old as the origins of NetWare and ArcNet (some of you probably join me going back to the early days of local area networks) is the idea that you disable but not delete user accounts when someone departs from a organization (such as leaving a job). Later, at a future date when you’re convinced the individual won’t return, you can delete the user account that you’ve previously placed on disabled status.
So here is the dilemma. One day, I received a call from a client complaining that an employee who had been terminated recently still appeared when the To: button in a new Outlook e-mail message was selected and the GAL was
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
displayed. I was accused of not addressing a client request to “eliminate” this user. Further investigation revealed that a user account, once disabled, still appears in the GAL. To hide a dearly departed but disabled user from the GAL, you would need to select the Hide from Exchange address lists checkbox on the Exchange Advanced tab on a user’s property sheet, as seen in Figure 6-11.
Figure 6-11
This figure suggests that Norm Hasborn, the owner of SPRINGERS, has been terminated. This is highly unlikely, of course, but does allow you to see how to hide a user from the Exchange GAL.
BEST PRACTICE: Why on earth did my telephone ring again from this client accusing me a second time of not terminating the terminated employee from the system? I had correctly selected the checkbox listed above. It turns out the secretary at this client site had double-checked my work very shortly after I reported I’d fixed the situation. The lesson learned is this. If you hide a user from the GAL, there is a propagation period before the change takes effect.
But there is a way to accelerate the propagation period. Figure 6-12 displays the Update Now secondary menu option on the Recipient Update Service (SPRINGERSLTD). Selecting this would make the change take effect immediately and you would then escape the wrath of the somber secretary I’ve shared with you here.
Figure 6-12
If you look closely at this figure, especially on the left, you can see where Recipient Update Services is located under the Advanced Management part of the Server Management console.
It’s with great pride that the SBS development team created the POP3 Connector that allows external POP3 e-mail to be downloaded on a schedule and “mapped” to an Exchange SMTP account. Translation: You’re using POP3-based e-mail at your ISP today (say my POP3 account of harryb@nwlink.com) and you want that mail delivered seamlessly to your SBS network e-mail (in my case, harryb@nethealthmon.com). It’s the POP3 Connector that facilitates this mapping between disparate e-mail accounts (and account types) and performs the download delivery function.
Configuring the POP3 Connector in SBS 2003 is much simpler than prior SBS 2000 releases, because it’s now got a direct link in the Server Management console! In the Server Management console, click Internet and E-mail under Standard Management. Then select Manage POP3 E-mail followed by a click on the Open POP3 Connector Manager link. The result is displayed in Figure 6-8.
Notes:
Figure 6-8
The POP3 Connector is configured on this property sheet via the Mailboxes and Scheduling. Because it’s not really part of the SPRINGERS storyline, this figure is a simple “look and see.”
BEST PRACTICE: In its heart of hearts, the POP3 Connector is best used as a transition tool to help you migrate your POP3-based e-mail (and associated Internet identity, such as harryb@nwlink.com) to your SBS-based Exchange SMTP e-mail and Internet identity (e.g., harryb@nethealthmon.com). There is much power in having an Internet identity that closely relates to the name of your organization and isn’t a generic e-mail domain name (e.g., JUNO and other large ISP identities). In fact, one of the slides in the Microsoft Partner PPT in late 2003 widely circulated in the public SBS 2003 hands-on labs and other venues cites hosting your own SMTP e-mail as a true benefit to SBS 2003. It’s the POP3 Connector that can help facilitate this transition.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
But hey - that’s not to say that some folks don’t use the POP3 Connector on a permanent basis to maintain POP3 e-mail on an on-going basis. This can be done without harm, without foul.
I know across this book I sound like a broken record, but I’ll delve deeper into the POP3 Connector in my advanced SBS 2003 book.
BEST PRACTICE: Oops. I almost forgot a late-breaking discovery regarding the POP3 Connector. There I was in late 2003 teaching a bunch of attentive and smart Microsoft Partners in Bangalore, India, when I was asked the following question: Can the POP3 Connector be configured to leave a copy of the e-mail on the e-mail server at the ISP? After horsing around with it, the answer appears to be no.
Queue Management
While I’ll go into more detail on Exchange queue management in my forthcoming Advanced SBS 2003 book, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least pay lip service to this matter in this more introductory text. Inbound and outbound e-mails awaiting processing live in queues. A point of failure in Exchange can occur at the queue, and it’s not uncommon for someone to post to the newsgroups that e-mail is “stuck in the queue.”
BEST PRACTICE: As an example, when outbound e-mail gets stuck in the queue, it can slow down the entire SBS server machine. One cause for this can be that spammers have sent e-mail into your Exchange organization to a nonexistent e-mail account (say superuser@springersltd.com) and you have somehow configured Exchange to send a nondeliverable report (NDR) back to the spammer (over the Internet) that basically says said user doesn’t exist in your organization. Well, when the spammers return e-mail address is itself fake, Exchange will try and try again to deliver the NDR and queue blockage will result.
Pardon me while I shout, but NDRs are ENABLED BY DEFAULT IN SBS 2003! This could create the above situation out of the box on your SBS 2003 network. So, clearly the point of the above story and
Visit www.smbnation.com for additional SMB and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.
shouting is to turn off NDR delivery that will go out over the Internet. This occurs by deselecting the Allow non-delivery reports checkbox on the Default Properties dialog box (this is the property sheet for the Default object under Internet Message Formats under Global Settings in the Exchange System Manager under Advanced Management in the Server Management console). This is shown in Figure 6-9 after the correction has been made.
Figure 6-9
Please promise you’ll turn off the Allow non-delivery reports checkbox here to prevent queue build-up.
Possibly you’re a reader from Missouri (the “Show Me” state) and you need to see e-mails in the queue to better understand what we’re talking about here. Or perhaps you’re sinister and want to see to whom users are e-mailing messages (this is SPYING and could be considered bad behavior). That is accomplished by drilling down from Server Management, Advanced Management, selecting the Exchange System Manager, selecting the SPRINGERS1 domain object, and clicking Queues. Then select the queue of your choice, such as Messages
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
queued for deferred delivery followed by clicking the Find Messages button. You’ll see the messages that exist in that queue.
BEST PRACTICE: One last point about Figure 6-9 above. Did you know that SBS 2003 and Exchange are contributing by default to the health, welfare, and safety of your home? That is accomplished by an ounce of prevention. What? Look closely at Figure 6-9 and notice that Allow Out of Office responses are disabled by default. That way, if one of your users utilizes the Out of Office response capability in Outlook 2003 when he travels for business or pleasure, the bad guys who spam said user don’t receive notification that the user is out of town and his home is wide open for theft! Seriously, an Out of Office response that is sent over the Internet is an open invitation for bad guys to rip you off! If you think that’s bad, it could be worse, as a woman real estate agent once pointed out to me. What if you were using your vacation time at home and the bad guys, having received your Out of Office reply, decided to come by for a quick burgle. Her point was that she’d rather get ripped off while not at home than to risk personal harm when the bad guys appear. A valid point!
16GB Store Limit
Something that really freaks out some SBSers is the fact that Exchange Server 2003 standard edition, which is the SKU placed in SBS 2003 (both standard and premium edition) has a 16GB data storage limit for all stores combined. In the old days, 16GB was a ton of space, but now with a mailbox approaching 1 GB or more per user, you can easily see how you might overtax Exchange’s storage limitation at the information store level. Why have mailbox sizes increased so much in the early 21st century? Well, a generation ago, the Church Lady (played by Dana Carvey) on Saturday Night Live (a popular US comedy show that won’t die) would have blamed...SATAN! I’d rather put my faith in the fact that folks are using their Exchange-based mailboxes as filing systems to manage their business information. In this case, the Outlook application accessing the Exchange-based mailbox has replaced traditional NTFS-folders viewed from Windows Explorer as the information repository of choice. Yours
truly is truly guilty as seen in Figure 6-10, where the offline data storage file for Outlook (OST file), which is representative of my Exchange mailbox, is approaching 1.2 GB in size!
Figure 6-10
All you would need is 16 users like Harry (that’s me) in your organization with SBS 2003 to exceed the information store-level storage limit in Exchange. Ouch!
BEST PRACTICE: Did ya’ catch my point in passing above? Multiple Exchange stores are allowed in SBS 2003. That question came up during the SBS 2003 hands-on lab tour by a bright student in Phoenix, Arizona. The reason you might create multiple stores relates back to another hands-on lab tour titled “Go To Market” in early 2003. The example the student completed in the Exchange section related to creating a second Exchange store titled “executives” that allowed a restoration, performed at the store-level, to be first accomplished for the executives whilst the proletariat waited and ate cake.
Respecting the Dearly Departed
A network administration trick as old as the origins of NetWare and ArcNet (some of you probably join me going back to the early days of local area networks) is the idea that you disable but not delete user accounts when someone departs from a organization (such as leaving a job). Later, at a future date when you’re convinced the individual won’t return, you can delete the user account that you’ve previously placed on disabled status.
So here is the dilemma. One day, I received a call from a client complaining that an employee who had been terminated recently still appeared when the To: button in a new Outlook e-mail message was selected and the GAL was
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
displayed. I was accused of not addressing a client request to “eliminate” this user. Further investigation revealed that a user account, once disabled, still appears in the GAL. To hide a dearly departed but disabled user from the GAL, you would need to select the Hide from Exchange address lists checkbox on the Exchange Advanced tab on a user’s property sheet, as seen in Figure 6-11.
Figure 6-11
This figure suggests that Norm Hasborn, the owner of SPRINGERS, has been terminated. This is highly unlikely, of course, but does allow you to see how to hide a user from the Exchange GAL.
BEST PRACTICE: Why on earth did my telephone ring again from this client accusing me a second time of not terminating the terminated employee from the system? I had correctly selected the checkbox listed above. It turns out the secretary at this client site had double-checked my work very shortly after I reported I’d fixed the situation. The lesson learned is this. If you hide a user from the GAL, there is a propagation period before the change takes effect.
But there is a way to accelerate the propagation period. Figure 6-12 displays the Update Now secondary menu option on the Recipient Update Service (SPRINGERSLTD). Selecting this would make the change take effect immediately and you would then escape the wrath of the somber secretary I’ve shared with you here.
Figure 6-12
If you look closely at this figure, especially on the left, you can see where Recipient Update Services is located under the Advanced Management part of the Server Management console.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Exchange server interaction with SBS 2003 backup program (book excerpt)
We continue our journey into chapter five of Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best PRactices! I am the author of this *purple book* and I am posting up a few pages a days for your reading pleasure....let me know what you thinking. I believe giving is a good thing!
cheers...harrybbb
Harry Brelsford
CEO at smb nation, www.smbnation.com and a fellow Microsoft Small Business Specialists (SBSC)
###
Exchange Interaction With SBS Backup
Later in this book in Chapter 11, you’ll complete the Backup Configuration Wizard to configure the backup capabilities in SBS 2003. So while I’m jumping the gun a little, let me share with you that you’ll affirm Exchange’s deleted item retention capability to store deleted e-mail. The default setting, which is actually in place before you run the Backup Configuration Wizard, is 30 days. (I’ll have you increase it to 60 days just to be extra safe.) This is a very useful approach for quickly retrieving a piece of e-mail that a user might have deleted (later in the chapter in the Outlook discussion I’ll share with you the procedure for this). The setting for deleted item retention is shown on the Limits tab of the Mailbox Store Properties screen (seen in Figure 6-7).
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
Figure 6-7
Observe that the ability to recover deleted e-mails is much more “foreground” in SBS 2003 with its Exchange Server 2003 application. In the SBS 2000 era, this capability wasn’t as widely known and utilized.
BEST PRATICE: Interestingly, the deleted item retention setting that you can set via the Backup Configuration Wizard only applies to the Mailbox Store and not the Public Folder Store. The Public Folder Store is set automatically to seven days to retain deleted items. I recommend you set this to 60 days on the Limits tab of the Public Folder Store Properties screen. And why do I recommend that? Later in the chapter when we look more closely at Outlook 2003, you’ll see the crack SBS development team implemented two public folder objects based on the organization name you inputted during the SBS setup phase. Translation: You are being encouraged to use public folders for storing important information.
The backup store gets even more interesting when discussing Exchange interaction with the native backup program in SBS 2003. Essentially, what occurs
Visit www.smbnation.com for additional SMB and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.
is that the Shadow Volume Copy Restore capability in the SBS 2003 backup approach takes a two-second snapshot of the Exchange information store and then makes its backup from said snapshot. That allows Exchange to function without noticeable interruption.
BEST PRACTICE: Note that the SBS 2003 backup approach is not backing up Exchange at the “bricks” or mailbox level. For that form of backup, you might need some of the third-party backup software (provided by Veritas, Computer Associates), which I’ll discuss in Chapter 11. By the way, this whole discussion area of whether to use the native SBS 2003 backup program versus a third-party backup solution was asked in each city in the late 2003 SBS 2003 hands-on lab USA tour (a very common question).
But note that you can effectively simulate a really low-level backup capability (even lower than bricks level) by taking full advantage of the deleted item retention capability in Exchange to recover an individual piece of e-mail some 60 days out as discussed in the prior section.
A final point related to Exchange backup activity concerns Exchange transaction log growth. Without fail, I have client whom I hear from only when something goes wrong (and usually at all the wrong times like when I’m enjoying a sunny summer day off). One case related to Exchange shutting down and not allowing e-mails to be sent or received. Upon close examination, the culprit was excessive Exchange transaction log growth. What occurred was this el cheapo client wasn’t getting successfully backed up (and wouldn’t pay us for monitoring to know whether they were getting sufficiently backed up, etc.). When Exchange isn’t successfully backed up, it continues to build transaction logs that are basically 5MB in size each as a form of self-preservation. Not surprisingly, over the course of 300 days, with the logs growing in multiples of 5MB at a time, the system drive was consumed and it ran out of room. When Exchange tries to operate on a drive with less than 10MB free space, it shuts down. And that’s how this client learned they weren’t getting good backups: All of the disk space had been consumed by excessive Exchange transaction log growth.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
BEST PRACTICE: Don’t forget that you had the option to direct where the Exchange transaction logs should be stored when you initially ran the SBS 2003 Setup Wizard and viewed the Data Folders Redirection screen. But simply placing the Exchange transaction logs on a huge hard disk to let them grow like weeds is no substitution for having beautiful bona fide backups!
cheers...harrybbb
Harry Brelsford
CEO at smb nation, www.smbnation.com and a fellow Microsoft Small Business Specialists (SBSC)
###
Exchange Interaction With SBS Backup
Later in this book in Chapter 11, you’ll complete the Backup Configuration Wizard to configure the backup capabilities in SBS 2003. So while I’m jumping the gun a little, let me share with you that you’ll affirm Exchange’s deleted item retention capability to store deleted e-mail. The default setting, which is actually in place before you run the Backup Configuration Wizard, is 30 days. (I’ll have you increase it to 60 days just to be extra safe.) This is a very useful approach for quickly retrieving a piece of e-mail that a user might have deleted (later in the chapter in the Outlook discussion I’ll share with you the procedure for this). The setting for deleted item retention is shown on the Limits tab of the Mailbox Store Properties screen (seen in Figure 6-7).
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
Figure 6-7
Observe that the ability to recover deleted e-mails is much more “foreground” in SBS 2003 with its Exchange Server 2003 application. In the SBS 2000 era, this capability wasn’t as widely known and utilized.
BEST PRATICE: Interestingly, the deleted item retention setting that you can set via the Backup Configuration Wizard only applies to the Mailbox Store and not the Public Folder Store. The Public Folder Store is set automatically to seven days to retain deleted items. I recommend you set this to 60 days on the Limits tab of the Public Folder Store Properties screen. And why do I recommend that? Later in the chapter when we look more closely at Outlook 2003, you’ll see the crack SBS development team implemented two public folder objects based on the organization name you inputted during the SBS setup phase. Translation: You are being encouraged to use public folders for storing important information.
The backup store gets even more interesting when discussing Exchange interaction with the native backup program in SBS 2003. Essentially, what occurs
Visit www.smbnation.com for additional SMB and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.
is that the Shadow Volume Copy Restore capability in the SBS 2003 backup approach takes a two-second snapshot of the Exchange information store and then makes its backup from said snapshot. That allows Exchange to function without noticeable interruption.
BEST PRACTICE: Note that the SBS 2003 backup approach is not backing up Exchange at the “bricks” or mailbox level. For that form of backup, you might need some of the third-party backup software (provided by Veritas, Computer Associates), which I’ll discuss in Chapter 11. By the way, this whole discussion area of whether to use the native SBS 2003 backup program versus a third-party backup solution was asked in each city in the late 2003 SBS 2003 hands-on lab USA tour (a very common question).
But note that you can effectively simulate a really low-level backup capability (even lower than bricks level) by taking full advantage of the deleted item retention capability in Exchange to recover an individual piece of e-mail some 60 days out as discussed in the prior section.
A final point related to Exchange backup activity concerns Exchange transaction log growth. Without fail, I have client whom I hear from only when something goes wrong (and usually at all the wrong times like when I’m enjoying a sunny summer day off). One case related to Exchange shutting down and not allowing e-mails to be sent or received. Upon close examination, the culprit was excessive Exchange transaction log growth. What occurred was this el cheapo client wasn’t getting successfully backed up (and wouldn’t pay us for monitoring to know whether they were getting sufficiently backed up, etc.). When Exchange isn’t successfully backed up, it continues to build transaction logs that are basically 5MB in size each as a form of self-preservation. Not surprisingly, over the course of 300 days, with the logs growing in multiples of 5MB at a time, the system drive was consumed and it ran out of room. When Exchange tries to operate on a drive with less than 10MB free space, it shuts down. And that’s how this client learned they weren’t getting good backups: All of the disk space had been consumed by excessive Exchange transaction log growth.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
BEST PRACTICE: Don’t forget that you had the option to direct where the Exchange transaction logs should be stored when you initially ran the SBS 2003 Setup Wizard and viewed the Data Folders Redirection screen. But simply placing the Exchange transaction logs on a huge hard disk to let them grow like weeds is no substitution for having beautiful bona fide backups!
Monday, July 21, 2008
Exchange e-mail attachment blocking in SBS 2003 (book excerpt, chapter 5)
Good Monday to you!
Each day, I am posting up a few pages from my Windows Small Buisness Server 2003 Best PRactices book until SBS 2008 ships. Today we look at the native e-mail attachment blocking in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 in SBS 2003 and also discuss content filtering....this is actually one ofthe really cool features in SBS 2003 (the atachement blocking capability).
Anyways - enjoy the read and the ride....harrybbbb
Harry Brelsford, ceo at SMB Nation, www.smbnation.com
###
Blocking Attachments, E-mails, and Content
There are some interesting capabilities that you might not know about in Exchange in SBS 2003 relating to attachment and domain blocking. Content filtering is another matter I’ll close this section with.
BEST PRACTICE: CRN reported in “Rivals Face Challenge As Microsoft Extends Its Antispam Technology” (http://crn.channelsupersearch.com/news/crn/46130.asp) that Microsoft will offer stronger anti-spam technology in Exchange Server 2003 in the first half of 2004. No other details available at press time but monitor Microsoft’s Exchange and TechNet sites for updated information. CRN at www.crn.com should be monitored as well.
Attachment Blocking
You likely recall the Remove E-mail Attachments page (Figure 4-14) in the EICW from Chapter 4. The function it performs is relatively straightforward: remove e-mail attachments of a certain type. But a question that continually arose during the fall 2003 hands-on labs for SBS 2003 concerned where this setting was being made in the background. Students asked if they could see where the EICW was setting this.
So I researched this by consulting with the Microsoft SBS program manager who owns this functionality and found that:
• An SMTP “sink” is trapping the attachments and handling them according to the rule you set on the Remove E-Mail Attachments page.
• There is no user interface (UI) to “see” where these settings are made or where this activity is occurring (other than the outcome, such as the attachment being removed or saved to a folder).
And don’t forget that we have Outlook 2003 as a backstop to also block common attachments in e-mail. This is covered later in the Outlook 2003 section of this chapter.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
Junk E-mail Blocking
Another popular question is what native ability Exchange has to block offensive e-mail domains as a poor man’s form of spam blocking (that is, using it instead of purchasing a third-party spam blocking tool). This is most easily accomplished by select and configure the Connection Filtering and Sender Filter tabs on the Message Deliver Properties dialog box that you see in Figure 6-6 (right-click Message Delivery and select Properties under Global Settings in the Exchange System Manager under Advanced Management in the Server Management console).
Figure 6-6
Get to know the Message Delivery Properties sheet if you want to engage in basic e-mail blocking inside of Exchange.
This e-mail blocking can also be accomplished painfully by creating an Active Directory contact object that has the offending e-mail name (such as player@gamblinggreen.com) and then adding it via the Delivery Restrictions tab (click the Add button beneath Reject messages from) on the Small Business SMTP connector Properties screen.
BEST PRACTICE: Of course, I saved perhaps the best junk e-mail blocking discussion for last. Near the end of the fall 2003 SBS 2003 hands-on lab tour in the US, a few students, already having worked with SBS 2003 at that point, waxed poetically about the effectiveness of the Outlook 2003 spam blocking capability. The consensus was it just works. A Microsoft employee echoed the same sentiment as “your Microsoft Research division dollars at work.” Couldn’t have put it better myself!
Content Filtering
Now for the bad news. Content filtering-as many of us know it in third-party spam filters that eliminate offensive e-mails selling Viagra and Vicodin-is not natively available in Exchange (but should be around mid-2004 as per the Best Practice earlier). Don’t be confused because some might think that the Content Restrictions tab on the Small Business SMTP connector Properties screen (Figure 6-6 above) is really performing a filtering function. It is not. It is allowing
e-mail of different priorities, etc. Note that I’ll cover spam blocking in it various forms (attachment blocking, e-mail and domain blocking, and content filtering) more in Chapter 11. You’ll recall that I briefly mentioned spam in Chapter 5. Stand by!
Each day, I am posting up a few pages from my Windows Small Buisness Server 2003 Best PRactices book until SBS 2008 ships. Today we look at the native e-mail attachment blocking in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 in SBS 2003 and also discuss content filtering....this is actually one ofthe really cool features in SBS 2003 (the atachement blocking capability).
Anyways - enjoy the read and the ride....harrybbbb
Harry Brelsford, ceo at SMB Nation, www.smbnation.com
###
Blocking Attachments, E-mails, and Content
There are some interesting capabilities that you might not know about in Exchange in SBS 2003 relating to attachment and domain blocking. Content filtering is another matter I’ll close this section with.
BEST PRACTICE: CRN reported in “Rivals Face Challenge As Microsoft Extends Its Antispam Technology” (http://crn.channelsupersearch.com/news/crn/46130.asp) that Microsoft will offer stronger anti-spam technology in Exchange Server 2003 in the first half of 2004. No other details available at press time but monitor Microsoft’s Exchange and TechNet sites for updated information. CRN at www.crn.com should be monitored as well.
Attachment Blocking
You likely recall the Remove E-mail Attachments page (Figure 4-14) in the EICW from Chapter 4. The function it performs is relatively straightforward: remove e-mail attachments of a certain type. But a question that continually arose during the fall 2003 hands-on labs for SBS 2003 concerned where this setting was being made in the background. Students asked if they could see where the EICW was setting this.
So I researched this by consulting with the Microsoft SBS program manager who owns this functionality and found that:
• An SMTP “sink” is trapping the attachments and handling them according to the rule you set on the Remove E-Mail Attachments page.
• There is no user interface (UI) to “see” where these settings are made or where this activity is occurring (other than the outcome, such as the attachment being removed or saved to a folder).
And don’t forget that we have Outlook 2003 as a backstop to also block common attachments in e-mail. This is covered later in the Outlook 2003 section of this chapter.
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
Junk E-mail Blocking
Another popular question is what native ability Exchange has to block offensive e-mail domains as a poor man’s form of spam blocking (that is, using it instead of purchasing a third-party spam blocking tool). This is most easily accomplished by select and configure the Connection Filtering and Sender Filter tabs on the Message Deliver Properties dialog box that you see in Figure 6-6 (right-click Message Delivery and select Properties under Global Settings in the Exchange System Manager under Advanced Management in the Server Management console).
Figure 6-6
Get to know the Message Delivery Properties sheet if you want to engage in basic e-mail blocking inside of Exchange.
This e-mail blocking can also be accomplished painfully by creating an Active Directory contact object that has the offending e-mail name (such as player@gamblinggreen.com) and then adding it via the Delivery Restrictions tab (click the Add button beneath Reject messages from) on the Small Business SMTP connector Properties screen.
BEST PRACTICE: Of course, I saved perhaps the best junk e-mail blocking discussion for last. Near the end of the fall 2003 SBS 2003 hands-on lab tour in the US, a few students, already having worked with SBS 2003 at that point, waxed poetically about the effectiveness of the Outlook 2003 spam blocking capability. The consensus was it just works. A Microsoft employee echoed the same sentiment as “your Microsoft Research division dollars at work.” Couldn’t have put it better myself!
Content Filtering
Now for the bad news. Content filtering-as many of us know it in third-party spam filters that eliminate offensive e-mails selling Viagra and Vicodin-is not natively available in Exchange (but should be around mid-2004 as per the Best Practice earlier). Don’t be confused because some might think that the Content Restrictions tab on the Small Business SMTP connector Properties screen (Figure 6-6 above) is really performing a filtering function. It is not. It is allowing
e-mail of different priorities, etc. Note that I’ll cover spam blocking in it various forms (attachment blocking, e-mail and domain blocking, and content filtering) more in Chapter 11. You’ll recall that I briefly mentioned spam in Chapter 5. Stand by!
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
###
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
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
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).
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
• 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
Visit www.smbnation.com for additional SMB and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.
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
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
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).
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
###
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
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
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).
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the latest updates for any Microsoft product.
• 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
Visit www.smbnation.com for additional SMB and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.
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).
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