Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory Blog
In Outlook 2013, the default reminder time for all-day appointments is 0.5 days, in Outlook 2010 even 16 hours. This is sometimes "somewhat" unfavorable for appointments on Monday. Unfortunately, there is no direct setting option to adjust the default setting, but it also works quite well with a small macro: Public WithEvents olAppointmentItems As Outlook.Items Private Sub ... Read more
A small recommendation in passing: With the Z-Zire tool, accounts for Active Directory, Exchange. Lync and Office 365 automatically according to a configurable template. So if you don't always want to use several consoles to create users, you can take a look at the tool. The tool is freeware, all you need is a ... Read more
The Server Role Calculator, which is very helpful for sizing, has now also been released for Exchange 2013. With the Role Calculator it is possible to determine the hardware requirements for an Exchange 2013 organization. The Role Calculator can be downloaded here: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Exchange-2013-Server-Role-f8a61780 The Exchange Server 2013 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager has also been released, ... Read more
The first detailed sizing information about Exchange Server 2013 has appeared in the Exchange Team Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2013/05/06/ask-the-perf-guy-sizing-exchange-2013-deployments.aspx There is not yet a calculator like Exchange 2010, but according to the article this will come. Since I wanted to make my life a little easier, I made a little Excel spreadsheet myself, I'm ... Read more
Ingenious, a script for testing the Exchange VSS Writer has been published in the Exchange Team Blog. I have already spent a lot of time analyzing backup problems. Sometimes it was faulty databases, sometimes faulty volumes, sometimes faulty VSS writers, it's all been there. Some time ago I described here how a manual VSS backup ... Read more
Outlook profiles can be created and distributed via OCAT and PRF files, which also works quite well, but sometimes it is a bit of a crap shoot. If you "just want to swap" the Exchange server name, you should take a look at RichProfile. The tool is free and makes swapping the server name very easy (also via the command line in ... Read more
Today was one of those days... let's not go there. It caught me cold today. The monitoring of the Exchange environment was not running properly and the impending catastrophe was only noticed when it had already occurred. Within a few hours the Exchange log partition was full of transaction logs. When users reported that no more mails were being received and ... Read more
Note: This information resulted from a conversation and is therefore to be understood as an unfiltered transcript. The Exchange 2013 environment consists of the "All-in-One" Mailbox Server role and the CAS role, which has little in common with the 2010 CAS role. The CAS role in the sense of 2010 is also located on the Mailbox Server, which ... Read more
The long-awaited update for Sophos UTM was released today. Michel has published a detailed article with changes. With regard to Exchange, this feature is particularly interesting: WAF: Outlook Anywhere Passthrough Support 15089 Support for Outlook Anywhere via the Webapplication Firewall The Webapplication Firewall now supports Outlook Anywhere (RPCoverHTTPS). I will test it ... Read more
The out-of-office assistant can also be conveniently managed via Exchange Management Shell, so if a user has forgotten to switch on the assistant before going on vacation... Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration frank -AutoReplyState Enabled -InternalMessage "I'm not here" -ExternalMessage "Dear customer I'll be back soon" to switch off Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration frank -AutoReplyState Disabled You could also build a nice template, ... Read more
