Following up on my recent articles covering the MFCMAPI and EWSEditor tools, both of which help administrators gain an insight into mailbox contents, I note that Microsoft has released the Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool (OCAT), another program to help administrators. In this case, OCAT is designed to scan a PC and gather details from Outlook profiles and registry entries to pick up any inconsistencies or potential issues that might cause problems when Outlook 2007 or 2010 clients connect to Exchange. OCAT looks very like the Exchange Best Practice Analyzer (ExBPA) that’s been around for several versions of Exchange and was written by two Microsoft support engineers to help address what they perceived as a gap in the support infrastructure – how to extract reliable information from a PC running Outlook that can then be used as the basis for troubleshooting problems. Although OCAT comes with “as-is” (no) support, you can send problem reports to the OCAT development team at OCATsupp@microsoft.com . A Twitter feed is available to broadcast news of OCAT updates. Obviously the OCAT team had to make some tough choices when they developed the tool, one of which was to exclude Outlook 2003 from the supported versions (an error message is generated if you attempt to run OCAT on a PC with Outlook 2003). This is a pity because Outlook 2003 is still in use in many large Exchange deployments. You’ll need to have .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 installed on a PC before OCAT can be installed. Windows XP SP3, Vista SP2, and Windows 7 are the supported client platforms. Once installed (a matter of just a few minutes), running OCAT is simple. First, make sure that Outlook is running and then start OCAT. At the home screen, opt to create a new scan, give it a name, and start. The time required for a scan depends on the complexity of the profile being analyzed (for example, how many accounts, mailboxes, and archive mailboxes are opened), the version of Outlook that’s install...
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When the first Roll-up Update (RU1) appeared for Exchange 2010 SP2 this week, some commentators were taken by the fact that Microsoft includes 58 individually documented fixes in the release. I wasn’t worried by what could be taken to be a large number of fixes for an update as I had successfully tested RU1 and it seemed very stable in my environment. Accordingly, I went ahead and wrote up an endorsement of RU1 and then left for a short vacation. How quickly things change. Ever since, my mailbox has been humming with the arrival of new messages to describe a somewhat esoteric problem that affects deployments that have Client Access Servers (CAS) in Internet-facing Active Directory sites that have to proxy incoming client traffic to CAS servers located in other, internal. Active Directory sites. The problem? Quite simply, Exchange refuses to proxy the traffic. Eeek! At least my original article contained the caveat: “Should you deploy Exchange 2010 SP2 RU1 now? I believe that you should, with the caveat that you should first test the new software by running it within an environment that replicates the essential characteristics of your production systems. That way you’ll find out whether the software works for you and make sure that you don’t encounter one of the edge cases that cause problems for just your users.” ...
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In addition to the welcome extended by many, the much-heralded and long-delayed arrival of Microsoft’s PST Capture tool was always likely to generate comment from the software vendors who already have offerings to help companies control the spread of dreaded PSTs. It therefore came as no surprise to see Dan Clark, the CTO of Transvault Software, post some notes about PSTs in general as well as the limitations he sees in PST Capture on the Transvault blog. I’m sure that the “congratulations” echoed by Dan in opening his piece reflects the satisfaction that the software vendors in this space feel now that Microsoft has implicitly affirmed that companies do have a problem dealing with PSTs. After all, once Microsoft publishes a solution, there must be a problem for it to solve....
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The best thing about MAPI is the extensive feature set it enables for clients such as Outlook and, in its server-side variants, Exchange server. I guess you could argue that MAPI has been very persistent in that the name first appeared as “simple MAPI” in Microsoft Mail way back in the dim and distant early nineties. Of course, the functionality that you can build on the twelve functions supported by simple MAPI is barely sufficient to create and send messages and can’t come near the kind of feature set that’s found in Outlook 2010, but it was a start. Powerful as it is, MAPI has never attracted much developer enthusiasm and has been viewed as an API that should only be approached when absolutely necessary. The lack of good documentation is possibly one reason (the book “Inside MAPI” has been out of print for many years) and the upshot is that only heavy-duty engineering projects such as those to create MAPI providers that allow Outlook to access non-Microsoft servers have used MAPI. Over the last twenty years Microsoft has shipped many other messaging-related APIs, including esoteric offerings such as Collaborative Data Objects (CDO) Routing (released with Exchange 5.5) and WebDAV (which was going to be the “next great thing” when Exchange 2000 came along). However, MAPI remains the king of the hill, which is why tools such as MFCMAPI remain so important. If pressed, I imagine that Microsoft would acknowledge that their track record in releasing other APIs to work with Exchange has not been stellar. Things might well be changing with Exchange Web Services (EWS), which is now the recommended API for developers who want to access and work with the contents of the Exchange Store. Microsoft uses EWS for clients such as Outlook 2011 for Macintosh and Outlook Web App (OWA) and plans are in place to extend EWS further as new versions of Exchange appear, probably to close the functionality gap between EWS clients and the MAPI-based Outlook 2010. As far as I am aware, ...
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Microsoft, or rather the program’s author Stephen Griffin, has published an updated version of the venerable MFCMAPI utility on Codeplex. The new version is dated January 2012 and is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants. MFCMAPI depends on Outlook being installed on the workstation where it runs and you need to match the correct versions of Outlook and MFCMAPI before MFCMAPI can run. The current version (as shown by the version running on my 64-bit Windows 7 system is 15.0.0.1031. You can read about the latest fixes and updates on the MFCMAPI blog. Because of its unique ability to unveil the mysteries of mailbox contents, MFCMAPI is an essential component of a serious Exchange administration toolkit. The program’s name official name is the “Microsoft Exchange Server Messaging API Editor”, but this doesn’t do the program justice as its name should really be something like “Exchange Mailbox Internals Spy”. MFCMAPI goes back to the earliest days (2001) of the utility when it began as a training exercise for Stephen Griffin to learn how to program in the Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI). I believe that the MFC prefix indicates that he used the Microsoft Foundation Class Library as a framework. MFC is a library that encapsulates parts of the Windows API in C++ classes and so makes it easier for programmers to work with the Windows API (or so the theory goes). Over the past decade Stephen Griffin has done an incredible job of maintaining MFCMAPI to keep it up to date with the latest versions of Exchange, fix bugs, and add new features. This is truly a labor of love. In 2007, Microsoft placed MFCMAPI into Codeplex and you can download the program executable and source code from there. Although Stephen has been working hard to improve MFCMAPI’s user interface, don’t expect it to work like Outlook. The advantage delivered by MFCMAPI is that it exposes mailbox internals using MAPI, so you can expect to encounter MAPI structures and names. Fortun...
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A couple of recent questions about the exact nature of archive mailboxes prompted consideration of the topic. It’s the nature of software deployment that the finer points of technology are left until the basics are covered and an increase in interest in archive mailboxes is possibly due to the number of Exchange 2010 deployments that have reached the point where they have completed the migration off a previous version and are now in a pure Exchange 2010 environment. Or it might just be that curious minds have started to think about archive mailboxes at a level past the perspective of “wow, I can stuff lots of stuff into an archive mailbox”. Here are the top six things to know about archive mailboxes. First, archive mailboxes are only available to Exchange on-premises customers if they hold enterprise CALs. At least, Microsoft’s licensing requirements are that everyone who uses an archive mailbox and the other retention features built into Exchange 2010 must have an enterprise CAL, which is accretive to the standard CAL that you must have to use the basic features of Exchange. Users who hold Office 365 Plan P and Plan E subscriptions automatically have access to online archives. Plan K (kiosk) subscribers will be able to add archive capability soon. Second, no one receives an archive mailbox by default. An administrator has to specifically assign an archive when the mailbox is created or enable the archive for mailboxes that already exist....
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Microsoft has scheduled a one-hour overview on Wednesday, February 15 at 9AM Pacific to brief interested parties in the training that leads to Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) accreditation in Exchange 2010. You can view details about the briefing and register on Microsoft’s web site. In November 2011, I wrote about the economics involved in committing yourself to the three-week intense training that leads to MCM accreditation. If you can raise the finance or justify the expense to your management, there’s no doubt that this training will lead to a sharp increase in your knowledge of Exchange 2010 and potentially, if you succeed in the demanding exams, to membership of an exclusive group who have a tight connection with the development group. Although there were some complaints about the stress that trainees were put under in early iterations of MCM training, more recent reaction seems to be very positive, albeit with the caveat that you very much have to prepare properly to be able to deal with the information fire hose, extended hours, homework, and exams. I understand that Microsoft has reviewed the material covered in MCM and now include more Office 365 content, especially in the area of interoperability. I think that this is wise because on-premises/cloud hybrid configurations are likely to become very common in the medium to large enterprise space over the next few years. It also reflects the engineering direction for Exchange with more work currently being done to support Office 365 than the on-premises variant. This overview should be very interesting if you’ve been thinking about going for MCM accreditation. The more knowledge you have, the better a decision you’ll make – and the better a case you’ll be able to construct to bring to management to secure those all-important budget dollars to fund three weeks in sunny (or snowy, but more likely rainy) Redmond....
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Some good news for both Office 365 and the embattled RIM company arrived today with the formal launch of RIM’s BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 (that’s quite a mouthful). The service has been in beta since last October and its availability removes a hurdle that has existed in some companies that prevented them moving from on-premises Exchange to Office 365. ...
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I’ve written about the positive aspects of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program in the recent past. It’s time to address the balance and point out where some improvement is necessary. I was disappointed but not surprised to read Rob Eisenberg’s long and detailed blog post describing his experience of having his MVP status not renewed followed by a groundswell of opinion that forced Microsoft to do the right thing and then Rob’s own decision to decline the belated award. The post is worth reading in its entirety because it highlights some of the problems that afflict the MVP program and make it less than effective for some Microsoft product groups. I hope that those associated with the MVP program, including every MVP lead, reads the post and vows to make things better, but I bet that they don’t. I should preface my remarks by saying that the experience of any individual MVP is highly influenced by two factors. First, the interest and attention of their MVP lead. Second, the willingness of a Microsoft product group to interact with MVPs. An MVP lead is a Microsoft employee whose job it is to take care of the MVP community. This might be at a global or country level. Each MVP is associated with a technology area or expertise and that is tied back in turn to a product group. ...
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Reading the Financial Times report saying that Brazil has introduced a new law requiring companies to pay overtime to employees who make or receive work phone calls or email outside office hours got me thinking about how much I would have had to be paid to compensate for email and conference calls in this category that I’ve had over the years. It’s kind of in the class “if I had a cent for every email, I’d be a millionaire by now”. I therefore conclude that I could never now work in Brazil. Oh well, end of plans for carnival in Rio! I wonder whether this attempt at government regulation will be any more successful than France’s attempt to limit the number of hours that people worked after the introduction of the famous 35-hour working week in 2000. This law was greeted with joy by many workers and seemed pretty socially progressive at the time. However, it posed all manner of practical challenges in terms of operation, especially for international companies. How, for instance, should one deal with foreign workers who visited France and wanted to work longer than the seven hours allocated to each day, perhaps because of jet-lag? And how could one deal with the foreign influence of conference calls scheduled in places like Palo Alto that didn’t take account of the shortened working day? Things got so bad that labor inspectors monitored the arrival and departure of people in car parks to measure the hours spent at work and then attempted to fine companies when too many hours were clocked up. Of course, today’s working life meshes seamlessly with social interaction at so many levels in such a way that it is impossible to separate communications into clearly defined buckets, especially when those communications are directed to devices such as a BlackBerry. Is an incoming call from a fellow worker something to do with a work project or just an invitation to some after-work drinks? And could that social gathering be construed as work if someone chats about some aspect of...
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