Disable Exchange/Outlook Clutter

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At the end of 2014, Microsoft released a cool new feature in Office 365 called Clutter.

Clutter learns from your actions to determine the messages you are likely to ignore. As less important messages arrive, they are automatically moved to the Clutter folder. Clutter does this by leveraging Office Graph’s sophisticated machine learning techniques to determine which messages are Clutter. It gets smarter over time, learning from your prior actions with similar messages, and assessing things like the type of content and even how you are addressed in the message. The Clutter experience is personalized to each individual and reflects an email experience that adapts to your actions and preferences without you having to do anything. The information Clutter learns from each user’s actions are only applied to that user’s experience and are not shared with anyone else.

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Installing Exchange 2010 SP3 on an Edge Server

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Well, I’ve run into multiple issues with this task, so I might as well write a post on how to successfully update your Exchange 2010 Edge server to Service Pack 3.  In my scenario, I’m running a single server with the following services:

  • Exchange 2010 SP1 Edge server
  • Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010
  • Forefront Protection for Exchange on the same server

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Change Office 365 Password Expiration and Policy

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In Office 365, the default password policy requires users to change their password every 90 days.  To some users this is a ridiculously short period of time, but to some administrators this is too long.  You can work it out between your users and your security team what the right time period is for password expiry, but here are some ways of changing this in Office 365. Read More →

Managing Outlook Anywhere Per User

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When Exchange 2003 came out, it offered Outlook Anywhere, although it was called “RPC/HTTPS”. This was an all or nothing service. In other words, if you set up Outlook Anywhere on the server then every user was able to use it. This poses a data security risk because users could connect to their mailbox from any Outlook client and download a copy of their mailbox, without using VPN or any other security checks on the remote system.

In Exchange 2007 (after SP1) and 2010, Outlook Anywhere permissions and capabilities are more granular.  You can set up Outlook Anywhere within the environment and then limit the ability on a per user basis. 

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Exchange 2010 Dynamic Distribution Group not working

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There is a bug in the creation process for Dynamic Distribution Groups (DDG) in Exchange 2010.  When you use the Exchange Management Shell to create a DDG and specify the Organizational Unit (OU) where the DDG should reside in Active Directory, you must also specify the –RecipientContainer to search for that DDG.  Otherwise the DDG Recipient Container defaults to the OU where the DDG was created.

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Reporting on ActiveSync

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Exchange logs quite a bit of info about ActiveSync device partnerships and you can use this to create reports about the utilization of mobility features in your organization. Getting this data requires a couple of intermediate steps before you can export it to a CSV for processing in something like Excel (or another script). The PowerShell script below will export all of the ActiveSync device relationships in your organization. Keep in mind that this will include old relationships which are no longer active. Depending on how large your organization is and the number of device relationships out there, it may take a little while for the script to run. Read More →

E2K7: How to Change the Recipient Scope

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When managing Exchange 2007, the recipient scope for Exchange Management Shell (EMS) and Exchange Management Console (EMC) defaults to the domain where the Exchange servers are located. Recipient scope refers to the specified portion of the Active Directory directory service hierarchy that the Exchange Management Console and the Exchange Management Shell uses for recipient management. When you set the recipient scope to a specific location within Active Directory, you can view and manage all recipients stored in that location and all of the containers under it. If your environment has multiple domains, then you may need to change the scope of recipients to find specific accounts. Read More →