Enabling Remote File Access in Outlook Web Access on SBS 2008

One of the nice features of Exchange Server 2007 that helps eliminates those irksome VPN clients (and the associated configuration pain) is the WSS and Windows File Share Integration.

This facility gives you read-only access to WSS sites and file servers sitting inside your network. Very handy if you need a file when you're on the road and no-one is in the office to e-mail it to you, or you can't use Remote Web Workplace to connect to an internal PC.

By default, Exchange Server 2007 on SBS 2008 is configured to allow access to files on remote file servers, but additional configuration is needed. Specifically, the names of the  servers need to be added.

Fire up the Exchange Management Console, expand Server Configuration and select Client Access.

Right-click on "owa (SBS Web Applications)" and select Properties.

Click on the Remote File Servers tab and click on Public Computer File Access and/or Private Computer File Access and confirm that file access is enabled accordingly.

The settings in these tabs relates to the features available depending on whether you select Private Computer or Public Computer when you log in to Outlook Web Access. Take this into consideration when deciding what you want to enable/disable.

Click on the Remote File Servers tab and click Allow...

Enter the server name you want to allow access, click Add, then click OK. If you want to allow access to the SBS server, enter its name here. Please note that all shares will be available to Outlook Web Access, depending on the user's access to those shares.

Similarly you can click on the Configure... button in the Remote File Servers tab and add "<company>.local" to enable access any WSS applications you have additional to the companyweb application. Replace <company>.local with the DNS suffix used by your SBS 2008 network.

Test your configuration by logging into Outlook Web Access, selecting the appropriate security profile. Now click on the Documents shortcut (you may need to click on the >> link under the OWA graphic to expand the Navigation Pane).

Click on Open Location.

Type in the UNC path to the file share (e.g. \\SERVER\Shared) and click Open.

Outlook Web Access will then display the shared folder contents. Click on "Add to Favorites" if you want to add the shared folder to your Documents Favourites list for quicker access on return visits.

 

Again, please note that this is read-only access - you will need to save any changes you make locally, then copy the changed file when you get back to the office. If you need read/write access without bothering with a VPN client then using companyweb via Remote Web Workplace is the preferred option.

Customising the Error Message for IP Block List Providers in Exchange Server 2007

One of the things I did for blocklist error messages in Exchange Server 2003 was to provide the lookup URL for the affected IP address. This makes life easier for the other end when they try to diagnose why their mail wasn't delivered.

Microsoft's Knowledge Base article 823866 details how to go about doing this by using the variables %0, %1 and %2.

When I performed my SBS2003 to SBS2008 migration, I went to do customise the blocklist error messages, but found that %0, %1 and %2 don't work. After some mucking around I found that {0}, {1} and {2} work instead.

Here's the Powershell command I used to add a custom error message for lookups done against the Spamhaus list:

Add-IPBlockListProvider -Name zen.spamhaus.org -LookupDomain zen.spamhaus.org -AnyMatch $True -Enabled $True -RejectionResponse "{1} has blocked your IP address ({0}) using the list '{2}'. Please see http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip={0} for further information."

Recovering Public Folder Items Easily in Exchange Server 2003

I occasionally get requests from clients and colleagues asking me to recover Public Folder items from Exchange Server 2003.

Thankfully for me I performed the ultimate fubar while performing a test migration from NT4.0 + Exchange 5.5 to SBS 2003 Premium back when SBS 2003 first came out. That's right, I managed to blow away the majority of the Public Folder store in one fell swoop, simply because I wasn't following my own instructions properly and wasn't used to the new Exchange System Manager interface.

Thankfully, I had just been getting familiar with the new capabilities of Outlook Web Access and had used the Recover Deleted Items feature to get familiar with it and to be able to instruct clients on how to use it.

I didn't really want to have to spend the time re-copying the Public Folder store from the Exchange 5.5 install, so I looked for the Public Folder equivalent of the Recover Deleted Items feature for the mailbox. It appeared to be missing. Or was it?

I had noticed that the Recover Deleted Items window had essentially opened the Deleted Items folder in the mailbox and had set a URL variable. The variable and its setting was:

cmd=showdeleted

Being the lazy kind of guy I am - as well as being inquisitive - I thought I would give some link hacking a try. I opened up the Public Folders link, navigated to the parent folder of the folder I deleted, right-clicked on the parent folder and selected Open in new... This opened the folder in a new window. The URL of this folder was of the form:

https://server/public/Public%20Folder/?Cmd=contents

I then replaced contents with showdeleted. The URL then looked like:

https://server/public/Public%20Folder/?Cmd=showdeleted

Ta da! The folder I trashed was now visible and capable of being recovered, which saved me additional copying time. Sometimes screwing up a test environment is a great way to learn a new, lazy technique :-)

Stopping Sophos PureMessage 3.0 from Generating an NDR Storm

I upgraded to the latest version of Sophos PureMessage (v2.6.1 upgrade to v3.0) on an SBS 2003 server.

The upgrade went smoothly as per usual. Hats off to Sophos for providing good quality products and excellent documentation.

This version now includes AD integration and allows for recipient validation. I enabled this, as well as verifying the upgraded settings. I kept an eye on progress for about 90 minutes as I was performing other administrative tasks.

When I came back to it the next morning, the server was being sluggish. Investigation showed that the were several thousand NDRs queued up, and further investigation revealed that the Exchange journal mailbox was bouncing Read Receipts with a Permission Denied error back to PureMessage. Unfortunately, the Read Receipts had no From header, so PureMessage was generating an NDR and trying to send it to an address of '<', which is a completely invalid address. This was then escalating an alert message to the Alert address, which had filled up the resulting mailbox. The mail bounce that was occuring was also generating an unscannable error due to too many nested attachments, which also queued up an alert message.

The remedial action was to remove the administrator alert address. This stopped the queuing. I then turned off administrator alerts for the On Unscannable action for the Exchange Store scanning and the Transport scanning. This helped stopped further NDR flooding.

The final action I performed that finally killed the NDR storm was to fire up the Exchange System Manager, go into the SmallBusiness SMTP Connector properties, go into Content Restrictions and turn off System Messages.

I also opened up the Delivery Restrictions placed on the mailbox that I'm using for Exchange Journalling until I can verify what the appropriate restrictions should be on the mailbox such that it works with PureMessage 3.0, seeing as the previous settings worked fine with PureMessage 2.6.1 (which was only accept messages from the Exchange Journalling mailbox).

Outlook Web Access 2003 New E-mail Problem

One of my clients contacted me to say that their Distribution Lists weren't working in Outlook Web Access 2003. Due to the roaming nature of staff and the lack of Outlook installed on the PCs, I was unable to get them to switch to Outlook to check if the problem occurred there.

I spent a bit of time on it earlier this evening, only to find that I got a cryptic "The item could not be found. It may have been deleted" error pop up when trying to send an e-mail to a Distribution List created in the user's Contacts.

OK. Back to basics. I created a new Distribution List and added the addresses one by one. Wouldn't you know it, the problem only reared its ugly head on the last email address. Interestingly, the same problem occurred when I entered in the email address into a new message.

I looked at the Contact entry with the associated email address and found the cause of the problem - there was a trailing space at the end of the email address. I backtracked the cause of the error - an import of e-mail addresses from Alt-N's WorldClient created a trailing space for each imported address. How very nice of the Exchange Migration Wizard to create Contact entries with invalid email addresses. Grrr.

Looks like I'll be writing a script to strip trailing spaces from the email fields of the Contact entries...

Exchange Server 2003 Mailbox Recovery Using Recovery Storage Groups, NTBackup and Exmerge

OK, this is my quick-n-dirty guide to recovering a mailbox from an Exchange 2003 system. I'll tidy it up later.

• Download Exmerge from Microsoft


• Follow the instructions in MSKB 292509 to create a group that will allow the Administrator account to read/write mailbox data


• Open Exchange System Manager, expand Servers. Right-click on <server name> under Servers. Select New > Recovery Storage Group...


• Enter in a name for the RSG and also the file locations. The defaults are fine. Click OK


• Right-click on the Recovery Storage Group object.


• Choose Add Databases to Recover…


• Highlight the Mailbox Store (the one to be restored).


• Enable This Database can be overwritten by a restore


• Run NTBackup, select Restore and Manage Media, find the correct media, expand the Exchange Information Store and select Logs and Mailbox Store.


• Click Start Restore, Restore to <server name>, and set the Temporary location to the file location used to create the Recovery Storage Group. Enable Last Restore Set.


• After the database has been restored, mount the Recovery Storage Group database using Exchange Server Manager.


• Run Exmerge and select Extract or Import (Two Step Procedure).


• Select Step 1.


• Enter in <server name> for Exchange Server Name.


• Select Recovery Storage Group database.


• Select Mailbox to recover.


• Select Folder location to save .PST files to.


• Start ExMerge, click Next


• Choose Extract or Import (Two Step Procedure)


• Pick Step 2: Import data into an Exchange Server Mailbox


• Again type the name of your Exchange server then click Next


• Mark the mailboxes you want to merge, click Next twice


• Specify where the .PST files should be merged from and click Next


• Check mailbox data, then Dismount RSG database and remove files from the RSG file location


• You're done!

Exchange Server 2003 - Migration From IMAP4

Had to migrate mailbox contents from an MDaemon Pro 8.x installation to an SBS2003 installation. Client was only using WorldClient, so I decided to use the Migration Wizard to migrate from an IMAP4 server. I had already used the Active Directory Migration Tool to migrate users, groups and computers, so account creation wasn't needed.
I fired up the Migration Wizard and proceeded to get stuck when it asked for a User List file. A bit of hunting found me this page
which provided the format for the user list file. Thankfully MDaemon has a nice account export feature, so I was able to export to CSV, then use Excel to get the extracted information into the necessary format. The format required is as follows:

IMAP_Mailbox,SMTP_Address,IMAP_Password,IMAP_Server
user1,user3@legacy.test.local,password,192.168.10.101
user2,user3@legacy.test.local,password,192.168.10.101
user3,user3@legacy.test.local,password,192.168.10.101

The header is needed. The Migration Wizard then went and matched up the mailboxes to existing accounts. All account mapping were correct and the migration then proceeded without a hitch.
Another useful time-saving migration tool is the File Server Migration Toolkit. It makes share and security migration a breeze. The DFS Consolidation Root capability also allows the migration to occur leaving the orginal UNC path intact! Very, very slick!