Archive for Exchange – Page 4

Creating a Shared Email Alias in Office 365

Most businesses, large or small, use alias emails, such at sales@contoso.com or support@contoso.com. If some cases, the alias is only managed by a single person (e.g. sally@contoso.com).

But what if you want to assign the alias email address to a group of users, that is, a distribution group?

The simple answer is ‘Yes, it can be done’. However, there is no wizard to do this from the Office 365 Admin portal page. So, you will be required to define the shared mailbox using PowerShell commands.

There are three basic steps required:

  1. Create a distribution group, and assign users
  2. Create a shared mailbox using PowerShell commands
  3. Have each user add the shared mailbox to their Outlook 2010/OWA app

Rather than describing each of these steps, Microsoft provides a very clear, step by step, set of instructional videos for each of these steps:

Create a public email alias in Office 365

E-mail messages

NitroDesk Touchdown for iOS

Connecting smart phones to work with Exchange mail servers these days may seem standard fare. But that was not always the case.

I did not recommend iPhones to my SBS customers until version 3.0. And when one of my customers purchased a Droid back in 2010, I could not make it work reliably to their SBS 2008 server.

Solution? I ended up installing NitroDesk’s Touchdown software. Not only did it solve the reliability and connection issues, but it also provided better syncing of contacts, calendars and tasks. View a list of Touchdown features here.

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Now comes word of a version of Touchdown for iOS. You can trial it free for 30 days. The cost of the software is $20US, and can be downloaded from Apple’s App store. I will be testing it myself in the next month and then post my review.

Note: Touchdown requires that your Exchange server supports the ActiveSync protocol.

SBS 2011 MaxMessageSize Warnings in BPA

If you run the Best Practices analyzer (BPA) on your SBS 2011 server, two warning messages about a conflict in the MaxMessageSize between the Exchange Transport and the Exchange Send/Receive Connectors. Here’s what the BPA warnings look like:

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And if you click on each of them, you will see a detail view:

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Since they are only warnings, you could simply ignore it by clicking on the “Exclude the Result” button for each. But, fixing these warnings is a fairly simple process. More importantly, fixing them will get you better acquainted with Exchange PowerShell. Oh, and one final note: these same commands will work on an SBS 2008 server.

So, let’s get going!

Step 1: Start up Exchange PowerShell

Click Start –> Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 –> Exchange Management Shell

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Give it a few moments to initialize. Once done you will have a black window with a command prompt.
Looks pretty much like the DOS Command Prompt window, doesn’t it?

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Step 2: View current settings

Now we need to type in three PowerShell commands in order to view the current MaxMessageSize values:

  • get-receiveconnector | ft name, maxmessagesize
  • get-sendconnector | ft name, maxmessagesize
  • get-transportconfig | ft maxsendsize, maxreceivesize

Note: the symbol before ft is commonly called the pipeline (|) symbol.
It’s located on the backslash (\) key on most keyboards.

Here’s the result of those three commands on my server:

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In my case, my Receive and send connectors were all set to 10MB maxmessagesize, but my transport maxmessagesize was configured as unlimited. So, I had to ask myself: what do I want to change?

Step 3: Change MaxMessageSize settings

I decided that I wanted to change everything to to a 30MB maxmessage size. So, here are the commands to do that:

  • set-transportconfig –maxreceivesize 30MB –maxsendsize 30MB
  • set-sendconnector “Windows SBS Internet Send SBS1” –maxmessagesize 30MB
  • set-receiveconnector –identity “Windows SBS Internet Receive SBS1” –maxmessagesize 30MB
  • set-receiveconnector –identity “Windows SBS Fax Sharepoint Receive SBS1” –maxmessagesize 30MB
  • set-receiveconnector –identity “Default SBS1” –maxmessagesize 30MB

Here’s a screenshot of entering those commands on my server:

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Step 4: Verify Changes

Rerun the three commands from Step 2 and verify that all maxmessagesize values match!

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Now, rerun BPA and those two warnings should be gone!

Finally, for more information, you may wish to refer to the Microsoft blog post on this same topic.

Office 365 Service Description Documents

Microsoft makes available a list of “service description” documents related to Office 365. The list addresses everything from Exchange Online to Office Web Apps, from Apple Mac/IOS support to SharePoint Online.

Here is the link:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13602

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Rekey GoDaddy SSL Cert

It normally takes very little effort to order and install a GoDaddy SSL certificate on an SBS 2008/2011 server, thanks in part to the Install Certificate wizard that comes with SBS.

I had a situation with an existing UCC SSL cert from GoDaddy that needed a “Subject Alternative Name” (SAN) added. I wasn’t sure how to do it, but GoDaddy’s support desk was quick and responsive. It turns out the solution was easy, if you do it in the right order!

1. Run the SBS wizard to generate a new CSR request. Leave this screen up.

2. Login to the GoDaddy site, and drill down to the SSL cert in question, and select Manage, and then enter the additional SAN names required (in my case, it was autodiscover.xxx.com).

3. Then select the Re-Key option from Godaddy, and once the cert has been re-keyed (a matter of seconds), you can download the Cert zip file – with no waiting for a confirmation email!

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4. Copy and unzip the Cert file on the server, and then complete the SBS Wizard.

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HP Microsoft Windows 2012 Essentials Webcast

Webcast started at 11am EST/July 18, 2012 to review the Windows Server 2012 Beta Essentials. Info on logging in can be found here. Speakers include David Fabritius (Microsoft) and Lucy Ellis (HP).

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Tampa Bay SBS User Group Meeting

The monthly meeting of the Tampa Bay SBS Usergroup (TBSBSUG) takes place tonight (Thursday July 12th). We will gather early for dinner at the Winghouse on 4th street in St Petersburg, followed by our meeting that starts at 6:30pm.

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This is an important meeting, given the announcements this week on the upcoming releases of Windows Server 2012, and it’s impact on those who have been selling and supporting the Small business Server product.

We are honored that Kevin Beares (Microsoft) will be speaking with us to get our feedback and to discuss some of the misconceptions surrounding this week’s announcements.

For more information, please contact Rayanne, the TBSBSUG lead.

ADSI Edit Missing Sections

The good news: the wizards that are built into the Microsoft SBS server product are so good that I rarely have a need to use any of the regular utilities (command-line or GUI) that comes with the Microsoft server products.

The bad news: when I do need to use one of those utilties, I always feel like I’m using it for the first time.

ADSI Edit is one of those utilities. I recently needed to run it on an SBS 2008 server for an Exchange issue I was working on. After starting it up (Start –> Run –> Adsiedit.msc) and using the defaults for the “Connect to:” , something looked wrong. That’s when I realized that the Schema and Configuration sections were not displaying. And it was the Configuration section that I needed.

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Of course, the answer was simple — once I found the answer!

I just needed to go back and select Connect to –> Schema, and then Connect to –> Configuration.

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Office 365 First Birthday!

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Office 365, Microsoft’s subscription-based solution for hosted email and office productivity tools celebrated it’s official Office 365 First Birthday on June 28, 2012. However, Office 365 is just the latest iteration of hosted services from Microsoft.

As far back as 2003 Microsoft was exploring the opportunities for hosted Exchange. By 2007 they had started rolling out hosted Exchange, and in late 2008 they officially announced BPOS.

I have several customers that have already transitioned to Office 365, or are exploring this as a viable alternative to an on-premise Exchange.

Happy birthday, Office 365!

SPF Record Wizard

The OpenSpf organization used to provide a tool for creating an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record for mail server/domain. But that tool has been retired.

Microsoft offers their own Sender Id/SPF Wizard tool that is very easy to use, as seen in these screenshots:

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Step 1: Enter your domain

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Step 2: Obtain current publicly published DNS records

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Step 3: Configure your SPF options

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Step 4: Generate your SPF record

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Now go to your domain control panel or contact your vendor to add your SPF record. You may then test your SPF by sending test emails, as described on the OpenSpf organization’s website.