Beyond Messaging

Making and Managing Shared Mailboxes using Exchange Management Console and PowerShell

These will work for both Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013, 2016 and Office 365.

 

Make a new shared mailbox:

New-mailbox "Mailbox Name" -shared –userprincipalname [email protected] -OrganizationalUnit "domain.com/OU1/OU2/OU3" -Database MBX-DB-1

 

If you already have the mailbox and want to set it to a shared mailbox use this:

Get-Mailbox -Identity alias@ccompany.com | Set-Mailbox -Type Shared

 

Grant Full Access Permissions to your new shared mailbox:

Add-MailboxPermission -Identity Mailbox Alias -User User Alias -AccessRights FullAccess

 

 

Grant Send As permissions to your new shared mailbox:

Get-user -identity mbx-alias| Add-ADPermission -User username -ExtendedRights "Send As"

 

List Users with Full Access to a Mailbox
 
Get-Mailbox -identity "alias" | Get-MailboxPermission | where { ($_.AccessRights -eq "FullAccess") -and ($_.IsInherited -eq $false) -and -not ($_.User -like "NT AUTHORITY\SELF") | List User, DisplayName, PrimarySmtpAddress }
 

List Mailboxes a user has full access to:
List all mailboxes to which a particular user has Full Access permissions:
Get-Mailbox | Get-MailboxPermission -User alias

 

Export an Exchange mailbox to a PST file via Exchange Management Console

There are times that you may be asked to export the contents of an Exchange mailbox to a pst.  Other times accounts may be being merged and you may need to export the contents of an account being merged and import the mails to the account which will be kept.

Before you begin, your account needs to have the Mailbox Import Export role and you need a folder to export to that the Exchange server has rights to.  I like to have a drive on an Exchange server itself to use for the exports.  Just make sure the Exchange servers have rights to that folder and you have a unc path - the ones that begin with backslash backslash.  (\\)

See here for how to Add the Mailbox Import Export Role to a Role Group

 https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee633452(v=exchg.141).aspx

To initiate the export:

New-MailboxExportRequest –Mailbox alias -FilePath \\servername\PST_Export\alias_date_filename.pst

Where alais is the user's alias.

Check status of queued export

Get-MailboxExportRequest

To import a pst to a mailbox

New-MailboxImportRequest -Mailbox destinationalias -FilePath \\servername\PST_Export\alias_date_filename.pst -TargetRootFolder "SourceAlias Imported"

Marianne's Quick and Dirty Exchange Scriptmaker Full Access and Send As Permissions

If your organization uses lots of shared mailboxes in Exchange (On-Prem or Office 365) one thing you probably do a lot of is grant full access and send as permissions to shared mailboxes.  Being a busy admin, I like one liner scripts and shortcuts.   I decided to use Excel's concatenate function and a really simple spreadsheet to automate adding users to have rights to shared maiboxes.  

Instructions:

Add your values to Mailbox Alias and User Alias and drag down script result field.  Select and copy the results from the results column.  Then open Exchange Management Console and paste in all of the one liners one by one to test or all at once if you feel good about it.

How it works:

The one liner PowerShell script we are using is:

Add-MailboxPermission -Identity Mailbox Alias -User User Alias -AccessRights FullAccess

 

Then we are using Excel's Concatenate function to put it all together.

=CONCATENATE("Add-MailboxPermission -Identity ", A1," -User ", B1, " -AccessRights FullAccess")

 

Here is a screenshot and you can download a sample spreadsheet here -  Download Mariannes Quick and Dirty Exchange Script Maker Full Access and Send As Permissions

Exchange 2010 Powershell Script to Make Multiple Rooms at Once

A company I worked for had been using a 3rd party tool to manage rooms and resources and decided to move all their rooms to Exchange.  Great decision, as it makes sense to take advantage of Exchange and Outlook's integrated calendaring.  Why pay extra to manage rooms scheduling when Exchange does it so well?

I found myself needing to make hundreds of rooms for multiple locations across the globe - time for PowerShell and the Exchange Management Shell!  These scripts were written for Exchange 2010 but they would work in newer versions of on-premise Exchange and Exchange 365 as well.

1.  Fill out the csv file with your room information for as many rooms as you need to make.  Save the file to C:\scripts or wherever you like and edit the script to reflect the new location.

Download "rooms" csv file 

2.  Save the following as roomsfromcsv.ps1.  Tip: It's usually a good idea to paste the script into a text editor and then save as your .ps1 file to get rid of any weird formatting.

 

Import-CSV “C:\scripts\rooms.csv” | foreach {new-mailbox –Name $_.name -DisplayName $_.DisplayName –Alias $_.alias –OrganizationalUnit $_.organizationalunit  –UserPrincipalName $_.userprincipalname –SamAccountName $_.SamAccountName –Database $_.Database –Office $_.Office –Phone $_.Phone –ResourceCapacity $_.ResourceCapacity -room}

 

3.  This second script turns on the Room Attendant feature that allows the room to accept or decline meetings.  I call this one setattendantfromcsv.ps1. Tip: Wait a few minutes before you run this one as there is some processing that needs to occur on the new rooms before it will run successfully.

 

Import-CSV “C:\scripts\rooms.csv” | foreach {Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity $_.alias -AutomateProcessing AutoAccept}

 

4.  Open Exchange Management Shell and cd to c:\scripts.  Then run the script by typing .\roomsfromcsv.ps1.  Wait a few minutes and then run the second script setattendantfromcsv.ps1.

 

Congratulation, you just made a bunch of rooms. 

 

 

Get a Nicer Looking Easier to Remember URL for OWA w/ 2010

Exchange 2010 with IIS 7.0 makes it easier to clean up your Outlook Web Access URL.  Here's instructions on how to do it, from Henrik Walther on the MSExchange.org blog.

New Certificate Management Features in Exchange 2010

Here is an interesting blog post about the new certificate management features in the Exchange 2010 release candidate.

Video: High Availability in Microsoft Exchange 2010

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a good video is priceless.  Here is a series of four videos from the MS Exchange Team covering High Availability in Exchange 2010.  I think the database availability group (DAG)features in 2010 are going to be very important as we find companies looking for cost effective ways to achieve increased reliability.

The four videos cover:

1. Database Mobility, Incremental Deployment, Database Availability Groups, Mailbox Database Copies
2. Creating a database availability group (DAG) and adding two Mailbox servers to the DAG.
3. Creating a mailbox database copy and monitor the health and status of the copy.
4. Performing a database switchover using the Exchange Management Console and Exchange Management Shell. Also demonstrating the Outlook Web Access experience during a database switchover using Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Exchange 2010 Release Candidate is Here

CRN.com reports that Microsoft has released Exchange 2010 Release Candidate is now publicly available.  A release candidate is the next step after beta testing, but before the actual official product release to manufacturing, (RTM) which is scheduled later this year.
 

Here is the post from the Microsoft Exchange Team blog and check out the "What's new in Exchange 2010" page on TechNet.

Download Exchange 2010 Release Candidate Here

What new features of Exchange 2010 am I excited about?  The improved IO performance, database availability groups for increased failover are two big ones on the server side.  Users will be excited about faster searching, and great new features like "Ignore Conversation" and automatic transcription previews of voicemails.

I wonder if there is an "Ignore Conversation" feature for real life?  Or is that "talk to the hand?"