BIS & other EWS applications in Exchange 2007 to 2010 coexistence
I have received comments about my "Installing your first Exchange 2010 CAS" 3 parts - tutorial that it didn't include any reference to services other than OWA. The reason behind this is simply because other services like ActiveSync, POP3, IMAP4, will work through proxying without the need for any additional configuration other than what has already been covered.
However I have faced a strange issue with Exchange Web Services and coexistence of Exchange 2007 and 2010. Since it is clearly stated on technet that
Clients that use Exchange ActiveSync, Exchange Web Services, POP3, and IMAP4 can't use redirection.
I thought it is safe to assume that EWS traffic will be proxied just like it is the case of ActiveSync, POP3 and IMAP4. My thoughts were further confirmed by the same technet article stating that Proxying supported between Client Access servers in the same Active Directory Site for the Exchange Web Services protocol (check section "Client Access protocols for redirection and proxying"), but obviously my thoughts were wrong!
Doing some tests with requests hitting the Exchange 2010 CAS server & using the famous test exchange connectivity website showed failures for users who's mailboxes are still on Exchange 2007 with the following error, while the test passed for users who's mailboxes are now on Exchange 2010.
The Client Access server version doesn't match the Mailbox server version of the resource that was being accessed. To determine the correct URL to use to access the resource, use Autodiscover with the address of the resource.
So it seems that the only way for EWS to work in a mixed Exchange 2007-2010 environment is that the application itself should support Autodiscover.
This is bad news, it means that my client will need to edit manually the settings for all its Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) users!
At this point I am still unsure if it is a bug but it looks like one, so if someone has more insight about it I would really appreciate the feedback.
Exclude hidden mailboxes from a Dynamic Distribution Group
Another interesting finding I made thanks to an Expert Exchange question I was involved with.
The question sounded pretty simply
I can create new dynamic distribution groups using powershell and the Exchange Console, but I cannot figure out how to filter the hidden mailboxes so they are not added.
I logically started by trying to use the msExchHideFromAddressLists attribute trying to get the list of mailboxes where it is set to false using the following powershell script to create the Dynamic Distribution List
New-DynamicDistributionGroup -Name "test" -OrganizationalUnit 'mydomain/Distribution Groups' -RecipientContainer mydomain -RecipientFilter { recipienttype -eq 'usermailbox' -and HiddenfromAddresslistsEnabled -eq $false}
But I was surprised to noticed it didn't work! It was actually returning only mailboxes the ones hidden from the address lists. There was something wrong in my OPATH query but wasn't able to find out what up front...
To double check I was not missing something I tried creating another DDG with the same command as above just with HiddenfromAddresslistsEnabled -eq $true and both groups where giving exactly the same results! Here is the full powershell command I used to create test1
New-DynamicDistributionGroup -Name "test1" -OrganizationalUnit 'mydomain/Distribution Groups' -RecipientContainer mydomain -RecipientFilter { recipienttype -eq 'usermailbox' -and HiddenfromAddresslistsEnabled -eq $true}
That was pretty weird !
Bug revealed in Dynamic Distribution Groups on Exchange 2007
I have been lately involved in a question on Experts-Exchange that turned into a very interesting adventure that led me to discover a bug in the Dynamic Distribution Groups on Exchange 2007.
I have tested the below on Exchange 2007 SP2 rollup 2 and the bug was still there, however I need to mention that tests also proved it was solved on Exchange 2010.
The Setup
First let me give you a very brief idea about the setup, for the lab I have setup an EBS server and created 2 mailboxes on it "John Doe" and "Jane Jackson".
Running Get-Recipient shows the 3 mailboxes in this organization
Taking a look at Active Directory Users and Computers also reveals that "John Doe" and "Jane Jackson" are located in the TestOu, the Administrator is located in the Users containter
