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
