BES 5 SP3 MR1– already available

Just 2 days after releasing BES 5 SP3 for Exchange, now BES 5 SP3 MR1 has hit the web. Just a couple of updates which I have copied and pasted below.

Release notes: http://docs.blackberry.com/en/admin/deliverables/26577/BlackBerry_Enterprise_Server_for_Microsoft_Exchange-Maintenance_Release_Notes--1561918-0404053903-001-5.0.3-US.pdf

Software download: https://swdownloads.blackberry.com/Downloads

What's new

The BlackBerry® Enterprise Trait Tool includes a new trait named ExchangeEnablePropertyPromotion. This trait specifies if and how the BlackBerry Messaging Agent promotes MAPI properties. The possible values are:

• 0 – Disabled
• 1 - The BlackBerry Messaging Agent promotes MAPI properties on all folder reloads, if required.
• 2 - The BlackBerry Messaging Agent promotes MAPI properties on all folder reloads, if required, except for the first folder reload. On the first folder reload the BlackBerry Messaging Agent does not promote MAPI properties.

Example: To disable the promotion of MAPI properties for the BlackBerry Domain, type traittool -global -trait ExchangeEnablePropertyPromotion -set 0.

Example: To disable the promotion of MAPI properties for a BlackBerry® Enterprise Server instance, type traittool -server <server_name> -trait ExchangeEnablePropertyPromotion -set 0.

For information about using the BlackBerry Enterprise Trait Tool, see the BlackBerry Enterprise Server Administration Guide.

Fixed issues

BlackBerry Administration Service
If one BlackBerry® Administration Service instance sent a reconciliation task to a second instance, and the connection between the instances dropped before the second instance could notify the first that the reconciliation was complete, reconciliation stopped on all BlackBerry Administration Service instances. The first BlackBerry Administration Service instance then wrote the following error to its log file: “org.jboss.remoting.CannotConnectException: Can not get connection to server. Problem establishing socket connection for InvokerLocator [sslsocket:”. The BlackBerry Administration Service checks for unprocessed reconciliation events every 24 hours and restarts them at that time. For more information, contact RIM Support. (DT 1159175)

BlackBerry Messaging Agent
In some circumstances email messages were not delivered promptly because of high disk I/O on Microsoft® Exchange 2010 mailbox servers. (DT 1141515)

Happy patching.

Daniel Noakes

Converting a mailbox to a linked mailbox, improvements in Exchange 2010 SP1

In Exchange 2007 and 2010 you have to perform two actions to accomplish this. First Disable-Mailbox and then Connect-Mailbox, specifying the linked account to convert the mailbox upon re-attachement into a linked mailbox.

The problem with this method is that it removes all Exchange attributes, basically resetting them. The mailbox is in a disconnected state and until you re-attach the mailbox and re-apply Exchange attributes (email addresses just one example) you can potentially bounce mail.

Exchange 2010 SP1 has a new feature that isn't spoken of (infact TechNet documentation here still points to the above method!) This new command will automatically convert the mailbox to a linked mailbox without any disconnection or loss of Exchange attributes, and will automatically disable the account when applying the linked user.

Set-User -Identity Oliver@contoso.com -linkeddomaincontroller UserAccoundForestDC -LinkedCredential $(Get-Credential accountforestdomainadmin) -linkedmasteraccount Oliver@fabrikam.com

Try it, it works great!

Enjoy,
Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server

Lync Server 2010 Visio Stencil: What is your favourite shape?

In February Microsoft published the Lync Server 2010 Visio Stencil, which I have been using to produce designs for our hosted solution.

My favourite shape has to be Microphone, it just looks a bit funny to me and I’m sure not many people have free standing devices like this. What is your favourite shape?

Microphone - Lync Server 2010 Visio Stencil

You can download the Lync Server 2010 Visio Stencil here, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=65b5a396-2c87-445d-be23-d324727d19cb.

Daniel Noakes

Exchange 2010 holiday calendar with delegate approval

After a recent migration from dedicated to hosted Exchange 2010 we needed to provide solutions for a few shared public folder calendars, one of which was used for booking holiday. The solution was a resource mailbox with the addition of delegate approval.

This should work with any Exchange 2010 service that supports remote PowerShell access.

The mailbox can be easily created in ECP, although I chose to use PowerShell. I also created a distribution group for the delegates, don’t forget to add members.

New-Mailbox –Name “Holiday” –Room

New-DistributionGroup –Name HolidayAdmins | Set-DistributionGroup -HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled $true

I then setup the calendar processing parameters.

Set-CalendarProcessing –Identity “Holiday” –ResourceDelegates “HolidayAdmins”

Set-CalendarProcessing –Identity “Holiday” –AllBookInPolicy $false –AllRequestInPolicy $true –AutomateProcessing AutoAccept –AdditionalResponse “Holiday request has been submitted. Confirmation will be sent separately.” –EnforceSchedulingHorizon $false –AllowConflicts $true

Users can now book holiday by adding the Holiday resource to meeting. Members of the distribution group (managers/HR) will receive a delegated meeting request which can be accepted or declined.

Daniel Noakes

Populating Lync 2010 Contact Lists

Lync does a great job at searching for contacts, as well as displaying team and frequent contacts. If you work for a smaller organisation or a group of people with no particular hierarchy you may want to populate the contact list with a bunch of people for different groups.

Can you believe there doesn’t appear to be a way to do this out of the box. Luckily Microsoft have built a great product with a load of really clever people who can help. Jeff Guillet has posted just a solution on his blog, http://www.expta.com/2011/01/introducing-lyncaddcontacts.html.

With 3 lines I have been able to pre-populate contacts for groups of users.

CScript LyncAddContacts.vbs /backup backup.xml
CScript LyncAddContacts.vbs daniel.noakes@noak.es
CScript LyncAddContacts.vbs /import “OU=noak.es,OU=Microsoft Exchange Hosted Organizations,DC=exchangegeek,DC=com”

Daniel Noakes

Exchange 2010 SP1 RU3 pulled until BlackBerry issue resolved

If you haven’t already picked up on it, Microsoft have withdrawn Exchange 2010 SP1 RU3 due some problems highlighted with BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Read more from Kevin Allison on The Exchange Team Blog, http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/03/14/exchange-2010-sp1-rollup-3-and-blackberrys-sending-duplicate-messages.aspx

Daniel Noakes

Free BES for Office 365 Users

BPOS and Office 365 users will be getting BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) for free based on the information in this slide deck, http://www.slideshare.net/jessiethe3rd/blackberry-now-free-with-bposoffice-365.

Blackberry now free with BPOS/Office 365

View more presentations from jessiethe3rd

I get the impression this will be built on BES 6, as the slide deck makes reference to the service being hosted and managed by RIM. It will probably be the “Express” edition, but the difference between it and the full product a diminishing anyway.

If you have requirement for BES in business you should work with a partner who can develop a complete solution from devices to air-time and app development to hosting.

Daniel Noakes
twitter.com/dannoakes

HMC: Autodiscover works but Exchange 2007 users cannot download the OAB

Hi,

A few months back I was hit with an OAB issue, I actually raised a case to PSS as it was so odd but ended up resolving it myself before they called.

I was tasked with performing a 'staged migration' from HMC3.5 and Exchange 2003 to HMC4.5 and Exchange 2007 for a Customer. This was theoretically possible because Cobweb have both solutions deployed in the same Forest (cool huh).

Normally we would perform the HMC upgrade and then move mailboxes to Exchange 2007 with a period of confirmed outage to the customer, moving them in a big bang migration approach. But this customer was so large and needed continous messaging that this was not possible.

So I devised the following.

1. Upgrade the mailboxes for their users during the day to Exchange 2007
2. Keep them under HMC3.5 (this went through major testing in our Labs) and locking them out from Control Panel Management
3. Once all mailboxes we upgraded, confirm all was OK and then perform a 30 second 'flip' moving all their HMC data to HMC4.5 and the corresponding panel.


This needed pin point accuracy as not to cause them any outages. It was also crucial the permission group changes from HMC3.5 to 4.5 was performed flawlessly as access to Public Folders, the GAL, and other objects was controlled this way.

When in the lab I noticed an issue IF the customer was an HMC3.5 and Exchange 2003 customer prior to HMC4.5 and Exchange 2007 going into the Forest and Exchange Org.

Any customer I upgraded in testing that were created after the HMC4.5 installation worked fine. It just affected pre-4.5 customers. It caused an issue with the Offline Address Book.

Here is what Autodiscover gave back when looking at an upgraded mailbox

















It’s missing the OAB URL.

The OAB was there and accessible for all Exchange 2003 users yet to have their mailboxes moved, and version4 was available. If I checked connection status I could see the Public Folder referral happen before I download the OAB from the Exchange 2003 server. So I knew this was working. It just didn't work once for users once their mailbox was moved to Exchange 2007.

Exchange 2007 CAS and Mailbox can perform a referral to an OAB on an Exchange 2003 server. So I knew this wasn't an incompatibility problem. This was also a single AD site, so there was no crazy Exchange 2007 to 2003 referrals happening across AD sites.

So what was the issue?

It turns out that the 'Exchange Domain Servers' Security Group was not granted permissions on the legacy OAB. This was due to the OAB existing prior to HMC4.5 and Exchange 2007 going into the Forest and Exchange Org. Any customer created after this had no issues.

Adding the correct permissions to allow this Security Group access fixed the issue. Adding the permissions via ADSIEdit, "Configuration Container, Services, Microsoft Exchange, Address List Containers, Offline Address Book, select customer OAB"

Now when I go back to Outlook I can see OAB availability and download it successfully.

As a side note both the GAL and AL also had this permission discrepancy. But it did not seem to create any ill side effects. As a best practice measure I also set the correct permisssions on these objects also.

Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server

duplicate SID from OS templates during Active Directory creation

I built a new test Forest in my Test Lab, deploying from a template Windows 2003 and 2008 images.

The Forest consisted of a Root and 2 childs, an example:

contoso.com
tailspintoys.contoso.com
forthcoffee.contoso.com

I had read an article on the myth of changing the SID of a machine when deploying or cloning from a template. The article is here

However when I came to build my first child domain, I had major issues during the DCPROMO process. The Active Directory installation wizard informed me that the specified domain already existed.


















Now this was news to me :-) and a quick double take confirmed it indeed did not exist, and then I realised both the root Domain Controller that was already running and this new Child DC were spun from the same template.

I remembered that when you DCPROMO a server the SID for the domain is taken from the first server to be promoted - and there was my issue.

So ensure that you use Newsid (retired now and not supported for Windows 2008 R2 or Windows 7) or ensure you properly sysprep any of your templates in your test or production virtualized environments.

Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server

Disable EHLO on an Exchange Send Connector

I recently had an incident where a client running Exchange 2007 could not send mail to his chosen smarthost. In this instance the customer did not want to use DNS to route outbound internet mail but rather through their ISP - using the free and not premium service.

Exchange could not send email through the smarthost, however using that smarthost in an email client allowed mail to pass without any authentication.

It turned out that the smarthost didn't support pipelining (see here) so the Send Connector was modified to send out via SMTP instead of EMSTP.

This simply means Exchange sent a HELO rather than an EHLO.

To modify a Send Connector to send via HELO perform these steps in Powershell.

Set-SendConnector -Identity [Send Connector Here] -ForceHELO $true

More information here

Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server