Tuesday 23 February 2010

Dude, where's my single instance? - msexchangeteam blogpost on the removal of SIS in 2010

As most of you know, SIS was de-emphasized in Exchange 2007, being used for attachments only. Exchange 2010 took this further and removed it entirely.

Ross Smith IV has written a very good post on the official Exchange Teams Blog, going all the way back to Exchange 4.0.

You can read it here

Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server



Tuesday 16 February 2010

Thursday 4 February 2010

Using ExDeploy

Following on from the announcement that this web tool is now available. I thought I would go through the steps in upgrading an Exchange 2003 Environment to 2010.

From the first page i select my chosen scenario, to upgrade from Exchange 2003














Once you have chosen your selected scenario you will be presented with questions concerning your environment. You can see here I am asked certain important questions, including, am I planning to support Public Folders? Am i planning to support the Unified Messaging role? and am I planning to move all users at once?















Once you have selected your chosen upgrade path options we can proceed.

You will now see the Navigation checklist page - this can be taken as a general FAQ and contains some well written information to help you on your way.

















The first step ExDeploy will start you with is the installation of the Client Access Server role, and then subsequently adding SSL certificates to secure services




























It will show you take you through the steps to enable Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTPs for those that would be more familiar with this term when coming from Exchange 2003).


















I'll move onto the next role, the Hub Transport role, but ExDeploy will carry on with the Client Access Server, helping configure OAB and Web Services directories, including detail on virtual directories.

ExDeploy contains the right amount of detail for deployment, and in some cases showing actual screenshots from the Exchange Management Console















Moving on to the Mailbox Server role. ExDeploy allows you to minimise information, which is a handy feature - just giving you the deployment steps you need for your immediate needs. You can see i have minimised all information here on the steps for installing the Mailbox Server role.

















Once you have gone through the steps you can tick each one off, leaving you to finally reach the Checklist Complete stage, with hopefully a deployed Exchange 2010 infrastructure in a working state.















There's a feeback submittal option - it shows Microsoft is listening.








Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server

Wednesday 3 February 2010

Exchange Server Deployment Assistant

Microsoft have released a great web based tool via TechNet to simplify upgrade scenarios when moving to Exchange 2010 from Exchange 2003 or 2007.





















Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server

Monday 1 February 2010

Disabling 'Reply All' in Outlook

This was being discussed on a private list today and I didn't realise you could use the the Office Admin templates for this very function.

We all appreciate their use in disabling automatic archiving and the use off PSTs so I thought I would echo the post located here, as I see this as another nice 'value add'.


1. Download the admin templates from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspxFamilyId=92D8519A-E143-4AEE-8F7A-E4BBAEBA13E7&displaylang=en

2. Extract the templates into a directory

3. Modify the outlk12.adm file with the following changes

Goto line 2459 (KEYNAME Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Security
Move the line VALUENAME PromoteErrorsAsWarnings below this line (it should located under VALUEOFF NUMERIC 0 which causes an error when Group Policy reads the file)
Find the line CATEGORY !!L_Disableitemsinuserinterface
Add the following lines immediately after that line (this will add the ability to disable the Reply to All button)
POLICY "Disable command bar buttons and menu items" KEYNAME Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\DisabledCmdBarItemsList PART "Enter a command bar ID to disable" LISTBOX VALUEPREFIX TCID END PART END POLICY

4. Create a GPO

5. Add the outlk12.adm template

6. Browse to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007\Disable items in user interface

7. Open the Properties for Disable command bar buttons and menu items. Enable this object
Click the Show button and Add 355



UPDATE: Microsoft have a good article on it also. Read it here:

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/09/29/452689.aspx



Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server