Exchange 2010 : Outlook 2010

Calendar Checking Tool For Outlook

Ruben Nauwelaers — Thu, 31 May 2012 06:48:00 GMT

The Calendar Checking Tool for Outlook (CalCheck) is a program that checks the Microsoft Outlook Calendar and items for problems or for potential problems.

The Calendar Checking Tool for Outlook is a command-line program that checks Outlook Calendars for problems. To use this tool, the Outlook calendar must reside on a Microsoft Exchange Server. The tool does not work with IMAP, with POP3, or with other non-Exchange mail servers.

The tool opens an Outlook profile, opens the Outlook Calendar, and then checks several things such as permissions, free/busy publishing, and auto booking. Then, the tool checks each item in the calendar folder for problems that can cause items to seem to be missing or that might otherwise cause problems in the Calendar.

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Integrating AD RMS with Exchange 2010 (part 3)

Michael Van Horenbeeck — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 20:25:06 GMT

Introduction

In the first part of this article, we talked about what AD RMS was and how to setup a small test-environment. In the second part, I showed how to integrate RMS with Exchange 2010 and how you could/should create and deploy rights policy templates to your users.

Today, I’ll show you how to protect a new mail message using Outlook 2010 or OWA and I will also be talking about the more automated ways of integrating RMS templates: Outlook- & Transport protection Rules.

Outlook- & Transport Protection Rules

If we would use the environment that we created during the past two parts of this article, creating rights-protected content would entirely be up to the user. This would mean that if the user did not apply a RMS template on an outgoing message, the message could still leave the organization without being protected, possibly leaving sensible information unprotected.

There are cases in which you might want content always to be protected (e.g. email coming from the financial department). Outlook- & Transport Protection rules enable you to create “rules” that will automatically apply a RMS template, without any user intervention. The main difference between both is that an Outlook Protection Rule will encrypt the message when it leaves the user’s computer (before hitting the hub transport servers) whereas a Transport Protection Rule will apply a RMS template while the message is in transit (on the hub transport servers). In the latter case, the user will have no idea whether the message will be encrypted or not. Outlook Protection Rules allows the user to see that the message was encrypted and – if configured – also allows the user to modify the template used to encrypt the message.

If you want to use Outlook Protection Rules, you also have to make sure that the template that is defined in the rule also is available on the client’s computer. For more information on how to achieve that, please take a look at my previous article.

Whenever a message is protected with an Outlook Protection Rule, it is encrypted and therefor – normally – not readable to a hub transport server. This would definitely limit processing options during transport (e.g. for message compliancy). Fortunately, Exchange 2010 allows you to enable “transport decryption”. The decryption agent will decrypt the message upon reception, allowing other agents to also process the message (e.g. append a disclaimer etc.). Once processing is complete, the hub transport server will re-encrypt the message with the same AD RMS template that was used to encrypt it in the first place, before sending it out onto the internet.

For more information about transport decryption and –agents, have a look here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638126.aspx and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125012.aspx

Creating Outlook Protection Rules

Creating an Outlook Protection Rule is pretty straightforward, however you can only do this using the Exchange Management Shell (EMS):

New-OutlookProtectionRule –Name <name> –ApplyRightsProtectionTemplate <name_of_the_rms_template>

In the example above, I first queried for all availably RMS templates using the Get-RMSTemplate cmdlet. I then used the “Do Not Print” template to create an Outlook Protection Rule that would apply to all email messages.

If you want to limit the scope of the Outlook Protection Rule, you would use either the –SentTo or –SentToScope parameters:

Notice that I added the –SendToScope “inOrganization” parameter. This will make sure that the Outlook Protection Rule is only applied to messages sent internally.

Note: I replaced the name of the RMS template by the TemplateGUID. This because I created a duplicate RMS-template called “Do Not Forward and wanted to be sure the correct one was selected.

For more information on the New-OutlookProtectionRule and it’s parameters, please check: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd298182.aspx

Creating Transport Protection Rules

Transport protection rules are “no more” than regular transport rules which we use to apply an AD RMS Template to a message. Creating transport rules can either be done through the EMC or the EMS.
In order to alternate between EMS and EMC, I will show you how to perform this task using the EMC. However, if you want to use the EMS, take a look here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125138.aspx

Open the EMC and navigate to “Organization Configuration” > “Hub Transport”; select the “Transport Rules”-tab from the result pane and click “New Transport Rule” from the actions pane.

This will launch the “New Transport Rule”-wizard.

Enter descriptive details and click Next:

Select an appropriate condition that meets your requirement and click Next. In this example I chose to create a condition based on the membership of a Distribution Group “HR”:

Select “Rights Protect Message with RMS Template” and click the underlined text “RMS Template”:

Select the desired RMS Template and confirm:

Click Next.

Add an exception (if required) and click Next:

Click Next again and then click New.

Creating a rights-protected document with Outlook

Besides the automatic application of RMS templates (through Outlook- or Transport Protection Rules), a user can still decide to apply a RMS template to a message himself.

Open a new mail message and navigate to the options-tab. From there, click the arrow under “Permission”:

Select an available template to apply it to the message.

Creating a rights-protected document with OWA

From within OWA, open a new mail message and click the arrow next to the permissions-icon. Select an available template to apply it to the message.

Conclusion

Throughout the past few articles, we created a simple RMS infrastructure and integrated it with Exchange 2010. We deployed some RMS templates and distributed them to a Windows 7 machine.
Afterwards we’ve also taken a look at the more automated ways of integrating RMS through protection rules.

I hope that you feel a bit more confident with regards to RMS/IRM now and if if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to comment or to contact me directly.

See you next time!

Michael

Exchange 2010 SP1 Update Rollup 5 Released

Michael Van Horenbeeck — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 05:13:55 GMT

Today, Microsoft published Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 to the download center.

The Update Rollup includes some fixes amongst which are:

PDF attachments sent from a Mac Mail Client are not shown in
OWA .zip-file download not always working
Unable to delete a folder with a certain character set
…

The next Update Rollup is expected somewhere in October 2011.

For a more detailed overview of the updates and fixes that are included in this update rollup, please check:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2582113

To download the update rollup, check the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27193

If you want to see the original announcement from Microsoft, click here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/08/23/released-update-rollup-5-for-exchange-2010-sp1.aspx

Cached Exchange Mode in a Remote Desktop Session Host environment: planning considerations

Johan Delimon — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:12:29 GMT

Historically, Microsoft Outlook has only been supported in an RDSH environment when it is deployed in Online Mode and connected to a Microsoft Exchange Server. This is still the recommended configuration for Microsoft Outlook 2010 when it is deployed in an RDSH environment. However, customers who deploy Outlook 2010 now have the supported option of enabling Cached Exchange Mode when Outlook 2010 is installed in a Remote Desktop environment. Cached Exchange Mode might be ideal for deployments in which Outlook is connecting over a high latency connection to an Exchange server that is located remotely. For the relatively few users who access Outlook through a remote desktop, this might be the ideal configuration. However, Online Mode against the Exchange server is still the most scalable and optimized configuration for large deployments.

This white paper covers three major areas that you should consider when you deploy Outlook 2010 with Cached Exchange Mode in a Remote Desktop environment:

· Storage footprint

· Performance impact

· Networked Storage

Download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=776e5d50-d35a-483a-a3e5-99944f4bae42

The Exchange product team anounces enhancement foreseen in the future Exchange 2010 SP1

Cedric Depaepe — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:57:00 GMT

SP1 will include fixes and tweaks in areas you've helped us identify, including a roll-up of the roll-ups we've released to date. I also wanted to flag some of the feature enhancements we're excited to bring to you with SP1 including: archiving and discovery enhancements, Outlook Web App (OWA) improvements, mobile user and management improvements, and some highly sought after additional UI for management tasks. This is not an all-inclusive list, so stay tuned for the detailed list coming soon!

A beta of SP1 for download in parallel with TechEd North America this June. This will give you a chance to test drive SP1 and prepare for its official release.

Archiving and Discovery Enhancements

With the release of Exchange Server 2010 last November, we introduced integrated archiving capabilities aimed at helping you preserve and discover e-mail data. In SP1, we've enhanced this archiving functionality based on the great feedback you've given us since our launch. This includes adding the flexibility to provision a user's Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox. This means your organization can now more easily implement separate storage strategies (or tiered storage) for less frequently accessed e-mail. And, we didn't just stop there! We've also added new server side capabilities so you can import historical e-mail data from .PST files, directly into Exchange, as well as IT pro controls to enable delegate access to a user's Personal Archive.

To help streamline the implementation of retention policies, SP1 updates the Exchange Management Console with new tools to create Retention Policy Tags, so you can automate the deletion and archiving of e-mail and other Exchange items. New optional Retention Policy Tags give you even more flexibility in defining your organizations retention management strategy.

Lastly, we've made several improvements to the Multi-Mailbox Search features, which can be used to conduct e-Discovery of e-mail for legal, regulatory or other reasons. A new search preview helps with, for example, early case assessment by providing you an estimate on the number of items in the result set-with keyword statistics-before e-mail located in the search are copied to the designated discovery mailbox. And, you now have a new search result de-duplication option, that when checked, only copies one instance of a message to the discovery mailbox. This can help you reduce the amount of e-mail you need to review following the search. Finally, added support for annotation of reviewed items means you can make your e-Discovery workflow even more efficient and less time consuming or costly.

For those of you that have been holding your breath for this one, we're also happy to let you know that in SP1 timeframe, there will be an update which will enable us to support access to a user's Personal Archive with Outlook 2007.

Learn more about our approach to archiving by reading the Archiving with Exchange 2010 whitepaper.

Outlook Web App - Better Than Ever

We didn't stop working with archiving and discovery, OWA gets a significant facelift with SP1 as well. With new work to pre-fetch message content, the OWA reading experience becomes faster. With delete, mark as read, and categorize operations running asynchronously, these actions feel instantaneous to the user. We've also made sure that certain long running operations, such as attaching a very large file, will not block the rest of the OWA experience, protecting the user from irritating web UI hang-ups. You'll see a number of other UI improvements as well to de-clutter a bit; helping make it easier to find common tasks with updated action icons and menus. The simpler UI will make OWA much friendlier to the smaller screens of ever popular Netbooks. Users will also be able to share their calendars to anonymous viewers via the web, assuming you enable this functionality as the admin.

In RTM, we delivered Information Rights Management (IRM) capabilities in OWA, allowing you to read and compose IRM-protected messages just like you've been able to do with Outlook in the past. In SP1, you'll be able to add Web-Ready Document Viewing of IRM-protected documents as well and you'll be able to do so in Safari on a Mac as well as in Firefox or IE on a PC.

Finally, for those of you who have been dying to change the look and feel of OWA, we're bringing OWA themes back; adding several OWA themes so you can match the OWA experience to your particular style. Oh yeah, and yes, the reading pane can be placed on the bottom or the right side.

All The Mobility, All the Time

While Exchange Active Sync (EAS) has become the de facto standard for mobile communication, there is no resting on any laurels in Redmond here either. In SP1, mobile users will be treated with tether-free IRM support in EAS, enabling you to send and receive IRM-protected mail without having previously connected your device to Windows Mobile Device Center to provision IRM. Updated EAS capabilities also enable support for send-as, support for notifying the user if their device has been placed on block or quarantine by their admin, full implementation of conversation view including the ability to sync only unique parts of messages. Also, for those users who need help setting up their mobile device to access mail via POP/IMAP/SMTP, we've added information in OWA to provide them the server names for these services. For those of you who haven't already seen Michael Higashi's blog post from March, take a look to read about all the updated Outlook Mobile capabilities already delivered.

New Management UI

We know you all love PowerShell, as do we, but SP1 will bring several new management UI enhancements to enable a number of management tasks in the Exchange Management Console (EMC) and Exchange Control Panel (ECP). Here's a taste:

Create/configure Retention Tags + Retention Policies in EMC
Configure Transport Rules in ECP
Configure Journal Rules in ECP
Configure MailTips in ECP
Provision and configure the Personal Archive in ECP
Configure Litigation Hold in ECP & EMC
Configure Allow/Block/Quarantine mobile device policies in ECP
RBAC role management in ECP
Configure Database Availability Group (DAG) IP Addresses and Alternate Witness Server in EMC
Recursive public folder settings management (including permissions) in EMC

Many of the improvements we are delivering in the SP1 are in direct response to the feedback you've provided since RTM. I am excited about how, in a very short period time, we've been able to quickly respond and introduce these improvements and innovation to Exchange 2010. A full list of what's coming in SP1 will be on TechNet soon.

As always, let us know what you think!

-- Michael Atalla

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Outlook 2010 Screenshot

Johan Delimon — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:54:00 GMT

Some new Screenshots for Office 2010 are available on Neowin.net
You can see the new Voicemail preview (The voicemail is converted into text so you do not have to listen to the voicemail but can read it directly from within the voicemail message)

Also note the hovering over the Phone numbers and users pops up a new dialog to contact people using OCS

More screenshots for Office 2010:
http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/27/office-2010-screenshots-emerge