Category Archives: Exchange Online

Outlook and OWA Version and Features

Over on the TechNet Wiki site there is a great comparison chart between Outlook 2003 through to Outlook and OWA 2010.
While the acronym for OWA has stayed the same over the years, the definition has changed from “Outlook Web Access” to “Outlook Web App” in 2010.
Have a look here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/outlook-and-owa-version-and-features.aspx

Locating & recovering a missing folder in Outlook

If you’ve lost a folder in Outlook that you are sure was there before – don’t panic! Quite possibly it is still there, however is corrupt. This happened to me recently when I folder I knew to exist was no longer visible – but I could still do a search for items that existed in it.
Thanks to Glen Cai in the Microsoft BPOS support team, the fix was as such:
1. Download MFCMAPI from http://mfcmapi.codeplex.com/releases/view/59490
2. Extract the downloaded files and double click MFCMAPI.exe, click OK
3. Click Session->Logon and Display Store Table, select the your Outlook profile, click OK
4. Double-click your mailbox username
5. In the new window, expand to Root->IPM_SUBTREE
6. Check whether you can find the missing folder (eg. “MissingFolder”)
7. If you can find it, double-click to open the folder
8. Back in Outlook, create a new destination folder (eg. “MissingFolder2″)
9. Get back to MFCMAPI, select all the messages, right click, then Copy Message
10. Get back to Root->IPM_SUBTREE->Inbox, double click the new folder “MissingFolder2″ to open it
11. Right click , click Paste messages
12. Click OK
13. Go back to Outlook to ensure that the new folder “MissingFolder2″ contains the messages
14. After confirming the messages are there, then you can delete the “MissingFolder” folder in MFCMAPI and recreate it in Outlook

Happy hunting!

Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer

Just because you’ve moved to Exchange Online doesn’t mean you no longer have access to run tests on your (or your customers) Exchange environment.
In case you haven’t seen it – Microsoft have a free online testing service called the Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer (https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com).
If you’re encountering problems with connecting from any device (ie. Outlook on PC, Outlook on Mac, mobile devices, etc.) or simply having difficulties with mail flow – this is the tool for you.
Simply select the test you want to run, type in the relevant details (ie. email address, username, password, etc.) and away it goes.
Apart from testing if services work, it will provide you with a heap of deep level configuration information in the event of a failure.

A great site to keep in your monitoring & testing arsenal.

P.S. Also works with on-premise Exchange servers! (remember those?)

New PowerShell cmdlets available for BPOS

The 4 new PowerShell cmdlets are finally available. They allow you to:
- enable/disable POP3 for an Exchange Online user
- set/remove alternate recipients on an Exchange Online user

Our list of available PowerShell commands has now been updated to include the links for these commands.
In order to get access to the updated cmdlets you will need to download the latest copy of the Microsoft Online Services Migration Tools.

New PowerShell commands for POP access and email forwarding

Something we have to do quite frequently is either enable POP access to Exchange Online mailboxes, or configure a mailbox to forward to another recipient (either local or remote to Exchange Online).

In the past these requests had to be actioned through a Service Request via the BPOS support team – however by the end of January customers and partners will be able to do this themselves using PowerShell scripts as a result of the new features being rolled out to BPOS this month.

The commandlets that give you the control are:

Set-MSOnlineAlternateRecipient
Clear-MSOnlineAlternateRecipient
Enable-MSOnlinePOPAccess
Disable-MSOnlinePOPAccess

The documentation on these will be available via the MOAC interface as the service update is rolled out. Once we get our hands on this we will update our own PowerShell commandlet reference page.

Automatic signatures in Exchange Online

One of the things we get asked from time to time is how to set up automated signatures in Exchange Online.
While with an on-premise Exchange solution you can utilise 3rd party solutions such as Exclaimer – this isn’t possible in Exchange Online due to the shared environment.
However – you can still utilise the Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) to automatically append either a text or HTML footer to the bottom of each message.
If you don’t already have access FOPE – put a service request to be granted access.
Once in, head to your domain service settings and add what you like – as shown below.
Bear in mind that embedded images aren’t possible as you would normally have with Outlook – however you can link to the image.

BPOS Tools site launched

A new website called BPOS Tools has been launched aimed at providing BPOS partners and customers with tools to improve their Microsoft Online Services experience.
A variety of software is currently available that ranges from file migration, monitoring, user management & maintenance, as well as end user usability functionality.
A couple of the key solutions that are beneficial to almost every full BPOS solution are:
- Password synchronisation
- Turning document libraries into email-enabled document libraries
- Migrating file systems to SharePoint Online
- Exchange Online monitoring (above and beyond the Microsoft Online Services Health Dashboard)

Have a look! More products and SharePoint web parts and templates coming soon.

Emails with missing bodies during migration

An interesting quirk we have seen while migrating customers across to Exchange Online – results in an email with no body being received by the recipient.
The customer situation:
- domain is added and validated to Exchange Online
- Type is set to ‘Authoritative’
- Inbound is not yet enabled
- customer has user accounts set up in Exchange Online, but is not yet using them

If anyone outside the organisation is using Exchange Online as well, they will find that when sending an the said customer – the body of the message disappears.

We find this to occur when we (using Exchange Online) send emails to customers when we are performing staged migrations.
If you’re trying to send an email to the customer, a workaround can be to attach your original email as an item to a new email to the customer – as attachments still come through.

Hopefully if you’ve seen these emails without bodies – it’s not a ghost but a common issue. :-)

New capabilities of Exchange Online 2010

There’s a few links around the net listing some of the features coming in Exchange Online with 2010 but they are few and far betwee, so I thought it would be good to summarise them here.
The key components are:

  • Voicemail with Unified Messaging
  • Integrated archiving
  • Retention policies and legal hold
  • Transport rules
  • Multi-mailbox search
  • Conversation View
  • MailTips
  • Enhanced web-based administration
  • Role-based access control
  • Remote PowerShell
  • Free/busy between cloud & on-premise
  • Cross-premises management
  • Native migration tools

Let’s have a look at these in a bit more detail.

Client Access

  • IMAP
  • Customise ActiveSync security policies
  • Full OWA support in Firefox & Safari
  • IM and presence in OWA
  • OWA side-by-side calendar view
  • Mobile free/busy lookup
  • Mobile reply status
  • Mobile SMS sync
  • Over-the-air update for Outlook mobile

Email & Calendaring

  • Conversation view
  • Ingore/move conversation
  • MailTips
  • Mailk aggregation
  • Shared nickname cache across OWA & mobile
  • Message tracking (user self-service)
  • Free/busy interoperability with on-premise
  • Free/busy & calendar sharing with other organisations (ie. Exchange federation)
  • Publish calendar for anonymous access

Contacts & Directory

  • Dynamic distribution groups
  • Restricted distribution groups
  • Moderated distribution groups
  • Share personal contacts
  • Contact information update (user self-service)

Unified Messaging & Fax

  • Hosted voicemail (integrationon with PABX)
  • Outlook Voice Access
  • ‘Play on phone’ button
  • Missed call notifications
  • Caller ID
  • Company auto-attendant
  • Self-service PIN reset
  • Message waiting indicator
  • Voicemail preview
  • Call answering rules
  • Protected voicemail

Security

  • Sign in using AD credentials
  • Route outbound mail via on-premise for filtering
  • Multi-factor authentication (smartcard, soft certificate)
  • Integration with on-premise RMS (for search, pre-licensing)
  • RMS transport rules
  • Journal decryption of RMS messages
  • Outlook Protection Rules

Administration

  • Remote PowerShell
  • Role Based Access Controls
  • Exchange Management Console
  • Enhanced migration tools
  • No OST re-synchronisation after migration
  • Offboarding tools
  • Support for organisations greater than 30,000 users

Compliance & Archiving

  • Exchange Personal Archive
  • E-Discovery (Multi-mailbox search)
  • Message Retention (Archive & Delete policies)
  • Message Retention (Legal Hold poliy)
  • Compliance auditing
  • Transport rules
  • Custom disclaimers