See MVP Manu Philip‘s article on Outlook 2010 posted on MVP Award Program Blog – MVP Monday Series. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2012/04/09/use-digital-ids-certificates-to-prove-your-identity-in-outlook-email-transactions.aspx

The Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool (OCAT ) provides a quick and easy method to analyze your Microsoft Office Outlook profile for common configurations that may cause problems in Outlook. This can be very useful for busy Help Desk personnel when end-users call for help with Outlook or when you want to identify possible issues with Outlook proactively

Overview

The Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool provides a detailed report of your current Outlook profile. This report includes many parameters about your profile, and it highlights any known problems that are found in your profile. For any problems that are listed in the report, you are provided a link to a Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) article that describes a possible fix for the problem. If you are a Help Desk professional, you can also export the report to a file. Then, the report can be viewed in the Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool on another client computer where the tool is installed.

System requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7

This download works with the following Microsoft Office programs:

• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
• Microsoft Outlook 2010 (32-bit or 64-bit)

The following minimum version of the Microsoft .NET Framework is required:

• Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0

The tool can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28806

How to start and run the Outlook Configuration Analyzer tool

• To start the Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool, on the Start menu, click the Microsoft OCAT icon. If you do not see the Microsoft OCAT icon on the Start menu, look for the icon on your All Programs menu under Microsoft Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool.

 I have started with the evaluation of the tool by selecting ‘ a new scan’. You may scan your own email account or an account runs in your computer by giving the credentials.

 Scanning in progress..

The screenshot says the ‘Informational Items’ on scanned results. Other than this, we may have the ‘Issues’ page and ‘Critical Issues’ page as follows.

 The Report will help us to trace the issue and link us to the right patches etc.

‘Select a Configuration Scan to view’ will allow you to examine the scan result in a later time. The results are saved as an xml file with similar details as below:

The tool also gives the link: Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer’ : http://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

New-SystemMessage cmdlet can be used in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 to create customized delivery status notification (DSN) or quota messages, in the specified language, on computers that have the Hub Transport server role or Edge Transport server role installed.

This example creates a customized WarningMailbox quota message. This message is displayed to users who meet the following criteria:

• The mailbox has exceeded the warning mailbox limit configured on the mailbox.
• The mailbox is located on a server that uses the English locale.

New-SystemMessage -QuotaMessageType WarningMailbox -Language en -Text “Your mailbox has exceeded the warning limit as determined by the organizational policy. Please do the needful”

I have gone through the bulk mailbox creation for all of the users in AD. The steps included were creation of a CSV file with user atributes and run a PS script which processes the csv file.

1. Crate a CSV with the following fields for all AD user objects: Lastname,Firstname,Name,UserPrincipalName,Password

2. Make the script and save as ps1 and run the script :

Import-CSV C:\users.csv | ForEach-Object -Process {New-Mailbox -Name $_.Name -FirstName $_.FirstName -LastName $_.LastName -OrganizationalUnit $_.OU -UserPrincipalName $_.UPN -Alias $_.alias -Database “Name of database” -Password $Password}

There are two tasks for this:

1. Assign Full access permission to user B on User A’s mailbox

2. Give Send As/Receive As permission to User B on User A’s mailbox.

Full Access Permission:

Run the cmdlet:  Add-MailboxPermission “UserB” -User “UserA” -AccessRights FullAccess -InheritanceType all

Receive As/ Send As permission:

Add-ADPermission “UserB” -User “Domain\UserA” -Extendedrights “Send As”

Add-ADPermission “UserB” -User UserA -Extendedrights “Receive-As”

The following cmdlet will help to generate a list of recipients ‘not hidden’

get-recipient -resultsize unlimited -filter {HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled -eq $false}

If you want to export the result to a csv file,

get-recipient -resultsize unlimited -filter {HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled -eq $false} | Export-CSV c:\recipient.csv

Recently, I have made some research on an issue happened during Exchange Migration (2003 to 2010 or 2007 to 2010)

Issue:

After transitioning from Exchange 2003 (or 2007) to Exchange 2010, you get the following error when trying to create a new e-mail address policy: “You can’t specify the recipient container because legacy servers are detected”.

Resolution:

This happens because there are still traces of the old Exchange server(s) within the orgainisation in Active Directory. If you are certain there are no legacy servers remaining, do the following to remove them:

1. Launch ADSI Edit.
2. Browse to the following location:
3. Configuration [server.domain.local] > CN=Configuration, DC=domain, DC=local > CN=Services > CN=Microsoft Exchange > CN=DOMAIN > CN=Administrative Groups > CN=first administrative group > CN=Servers > CN=server
4. Locate the old server(s) and delete them.
5. You will need to wait for AD replication if you have multiple DC’s.
6. Create the policy.

Information Rights Management (IRM) is enabled by default for internal messages in Exchange 2010. This allows you to create transport protection rules and Microsoft Outlook protection rules to IRM-protect messages in transport and on Microsoft Outlook 2010 clients. Enabling IRM for internal messages is a prerequisite for all other IRM features in Exchange 2010, such as transport decryption, journal rule decryption, IRM in Microsoft Office Outlook Web App, and IRM in Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync.

As the Exchange administrator, it is your responsibility to provide this level of automatic protection to all email messages that pass through the Exchange organization. You need to create a transport rule that complies with this corporate policy.

I have tried to Configure a Transport Rule to Provide RMS Protection to Email Messages Using a Built-in Template in Microsoft virtual lab environment. I have took a note of it to help others to understand it more clearly and to help them to implement it:

The discussion includes the steps like Enabling the IRM Licensing, creation of the transport rule and testing it how it would be using Outlook 2010.

1. Enable IRM licensing for internal messages

Use the cmdlet: Set-IRMConfiguration -InternalLicensingEnabled $true

Note: There is no output after running this command.

Use the cmdlet Get-IRMConfiguration to review the IRM configuration settings and verify that InternalLicensingEnabledis set to true as shown in the given screenshot.

2. Create the transport rule that applies the Do Not Forward RMS template

In Organization Configuration, click Hub Transport. In the Actions pane, click New Transport Rule.

Give a proper rule name and proceed to the Conditions page. Under Step 1: Select condition(s),

when an attachment’s content contains words check box as given below and give the word under observation.

Also select the rights protect message with RMS template check box as below:

Under Step 2: Edit the rule description by clicking an underlined value, click RMS template.

In the Select RMS template window, Select Do Not Forward, and then click OK

No changes are required on the Exceptions page, click Next.

On the Create Rule page, review the rule settings, and then click New as below.

3. Create and send a new email message with an attachment with monitored word

To test the rule, I have sent an email message with an excel document attached with it. The excel has been prepared with the word under monitoring in transport rules.

4: Verify that the transport rule was applied to the message

Open the sent email from the inbox in a new window

Wait while Outlook configures Information Rights Management. You can see the screenshot as below:

You will notice the information along withthe message as in the below screenshot to describe the IRM

In the Ribbon bar, notice that the Forward message option has been disabled.

Click Reply and review the Note in the message body.

Highlight the text Here is the status report, and then right-click the text. Notice how the Copy and Cut options have been disabled.

In the Message, click the File tab. Notice that the Save As, Save Attachment and Print options have been disabled.

In conclusion, we can find that the IRM has been applied successfully. Hope the post will help you out while configuring IRM for your organization.

I will describe small steps to recover a mailbox from Windows Server Backup. It includes steps like restroing the backup file from WSB to an alternate location, creation of recovery database and restoring the mailbox

1. Recovery from backup:

1. Start WSB on the server and select Recover from the Action menu

2. On the Getting Started screen select This server to specify the location of the backups and then I’ll click Next

3. On the Select Backup Date screen select the date and click ‘Next’

4. On the Select Recovery Type screen select Applications and then click Next:

5. On the Select Application screen select ‘Exchange’ for the application to recover, then I’ll click Next

6. On the Specify Recovery Options screen, restore the backup to an alternate location

7. On the Confirmation screen, hit the Recover button to start the recovery

8. When the restore was successful, click Close and navigate to the location to see the files recoverd

2. Check the database state: In order for Exchange to mount a database, it needs to be in a clean shutdown state. Use the following command to view the status: eseutil /mh DB01.edb. If the database state can be seen as Dirty Shutdown, run the following command to do a soft recovery:

eseutil /r e01 /d

The /r specifies that I’m doing a soft recovery. The e01 is the log generation prefix for the database. The /d switch without any arguments to specify the database path, which is in the current directory.

Once the operation has completed successfully, I can run eseutil again with the /mh switch to verify the database is clean shutdown

3. Creating a Recovery Database: Use the New-MailboxDatabase cmdlet with the following syntax:

New-MailboxDatabase -Name RecoveryDB -EdbFilePath E:\RecoveryDB\E_\DB01\DB01.edb -LogFolderPath E:\RecoveryDB\E_\DB01\DB01.edb -LogFolderPath E:\RecoveryDB\E_\DB01 -Recovery -Server mbx1

Mount the database using the following command: Mount-Database RecoveryDB. The Recovery database is now mounted, and ready to restore mailbox data.

4. Finding the mailbox and restore:

To do a complete restore of the mailbox data to the original mailbox that is currently active in the production database use the following command:

New-MailboxRestoreRequest -SourceDatabase RecoveryDB -SourceStoreMailbox ‘user mailbox’ -TargetMailbox recoveredmails

See the progress of the operation by the following cmdlet:

Get-MailboxRestoreRequest | Get-MailboxRestoreRequestStatistics

1. Open the application SCANPST in your computer (If you have outlook pre-installed the application will be the there at your outlook installation folder)

2. Open SCANPST and Browse the required PST or STM file

3. Click ‘Start’ to start repairing the corrupted file