Howto: Allow Mailbox Access on Exchange 2007

Given our company structure I frequently have to allow User A to read or send as User B. This task is simple enough with the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) but does require two separate commands.

The first command here allows full access to the mailbox:
Add-MailboxPermission "FirstName LastName" -User "UserName" -AccessRights FullAccess
The FrirstName LastName is the mailbox that you are adding permissions to. The Username is the user that will have the permissions that you are adding.

The second command you will need to run is only necessary if you need to send email as that user.
Add-ADPermission -Identity "FirstName LastName" -User "UserName" -ExtendedRights Send-As
Once again the FirstName LastName should be the mailbox that you are adding permissions to and the UserName is the user that will have the permissions you are adding.

Based on how often I have to do this I really need to write a quick little application that will allow me to add these permissions with ease instead of having to type out the commands every time. I will keep you updated if I do.

*You have to have Exchange Organization Administrator role privileges on the Exchange server to make these changes.

Look How Easy Setup Is for Microsoft Exchange 2007

For anyone trying to setup Microsoft Exchange 2007 or thinking about it, or just curious about it. This is a good read for the first timers and even the veterans System Administrators among us.

Releasing queued messages from eTrust SCM (Secure Content Manager)

Today I had an issue with Microsoft Exchange 2007 adding my CA eTrust SCM gateway to it's IP Block List. This caused all inbound emails to be delayed and dropped into Dead mail.

The recovery is pretty simple if you know what you are doing.

First you have to rename all of the .bad files to .inb. To do this simply open up a command window, change directories to (by default) c:\Program Files\eTrust SCM\Workspace\SMTP\Deadmail. Then "rename *.bad *.inb" without the quotes. Now that you have renamed all of the bad files you have to release them from the deadmail queue. To do so run the program "C:\Program Files\CA\eTrust SCM\bin\queues.exe"

Here you need to check the box next to "dead mail" and enter in the IP address of the SMTP server to forward the mail to and the port. Then click on the button. It might take some time to send all of the email through depending on server load and number of stuck emails.

On a side note while it eTrust SCM works on a x64 platform, offically its not supported or recommended.

The operation failed due to a registry or installation problem. Restart Outlook and try again. If the problem persists, please reinstall.

I have seen this error "The operation failed due to a registry or installation problem. Restart Outlook and try again. If the problem persists, please reinstall." pop up twice in the past few weeks. After researching the error online I found numerous posts pointing to Microsoft Knowledge Base Article KB315048.



The solution as told in KB315048 is to create a new Outlook profile with for the user. This however did not fix my problem. I tried doing a "Repair" on Microsoft Office XP once and did a full uninstall, reboot, install of Microsoft Office the second time in an effort to fix the issue (as that is what the error clearly states). Neither of these options worked.



After searching and searching for a solution I tried something different. I rebooted the Microsoft Exchange 2007 server. That did the trick. First I had tried to restart the Microsoft Exchange Information Store Service, but when that failed to stop I had no choice but to restart the entire server.



From what I can tell the problem we had started when the power kicked out and back in really quick. Our Microsoft Exchange 2007 server stayed on due to its UPS as did the workstation, but something went wonky somewhere along the line.

Handy Microsoft related blogs

Over time I have found some Microsoft team web sites to be very handy. These include the Microsoft Exchange Team, the IIS team and most recently the Open Source Software lab team. Below I have the links to these sites so you can check them out and add them to your favorites.

Port 25 The Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft

Microsoft Exchange Team Blog (You had me at EHLO...)

Microsoft Internet Information Services Homepage
Also if you have sites that you find useful please leave them in the comments so I can addt them.

Microsoft Exchange 2007 Catchall Agent

For those of you looking to implement a Catchall agent in Microsoft Exchange 2007 I finally have an answer for you! CatchAllAgent Exchange2007 Transport Protocol Agent does everything I needed it to do. It can handle multiple domains and supports standard .Net tracing for troubleshooting. Granted I didn't write it but it is simple to set up and configure.

The download is not as straight forward as I would have liked (multiple files vs. a Zip file) but the instructions are clear and consise for installation. The bare minimum you need to download is the CatchAllAgent.dll, config.xml, and Readme.txt. The author has included the source code for the CatchAllAgent incase you want to see how it works or if you have enhancements to make. The one issue I had with installation was due to me not reading ALL of the instructions and missing a step ([PS] C:\catchallagent>enable-transportagent "CatchAll Agent").

There are many reasons to NOT have a catchall agent setup. For one you open yourself up to a Denial of Service attack because all email will now be accepted for your domain, which may also lead to the servers storage being filled. But when the CIO and CEO both say we NEED a catchall I fulfill their request and warn them of the dangers. Hopefully I never have to say "I told you so!"