Category: Exchange Server

Striking a balance between securing network resources and ensuring that users have the tools they need to do their job presents a difficult quandary for IT managers and network administrators alike. If your network is like most, your users are likely inundated with almost unmanageable levels of junk email. Spam is not only intrusive and annoying, but also costly in terms of server storage space and user time. On the flipside, providing users with access to email also comes with a security risk in that it provides a facility by which users can easily forward data to other users or even customers, be it sensitive corporate information or simply inappropriate content. Quite simply, companies need the ability to both monitor and manage email resources as necessary for both legal and/or security reasons more than ever before.

Out of the box, most email server products provide limited monitoring, security, and anti-spam functions. In those that do, the feature set tends to be weak and seemingly implemented as an afterthought. However, the new GFI MailEssentials 8 product from GFI Software not only provides the most comprehensive anti-spam capabilities currently available, but also industrial-strength mail monitoring, the ability to add disclaimers to all outgoing messages, and more. Impressively, GFI provides many of the products best features as freeware, making GFI MailEssentials 8 a must-evaluate product for administrators of both large and small networks alike.

One of the most frequent questions I see posted to both the 2000trainers.com newsgroup and the Microsoft public newsgroups is about setting up OWA (Outlook Web Access) to use SSL for security. This is especially important in a scenario where you are using a Front-end/Back-end configuration as Front-end servers only support basic authentication. This might not seem like a big deal at first, but when you realize that this means that information is being sent across the wire in an unencrypted format, you can see how important this becomes. Some administrators also want to be able to *force* users to a secure connection, rather than manually requiring them to type it in. Finally, a lot of folks want to use the functionality included with OWA that allows you to change a users domain password. We are also going to cover all of this, but be aware that this last step does require you to use SSL on your OWA server. Having said all that we will begin by actually enabling SSL on the Exchange Virtual Server. In order to do this, I used a digital certificate from my own CA that I installed into my network. You can get your certificate from a local CA or from any of the CA’s that exist out on the internet. Where the digital certificate comes from isn’t important. Installing it into the Exchange Virtual Server to enable SSL for OWA is what is important to us. We start by going into the Default Virtual Web Server through Internet Services Manager, as you can see in Figure 1.

Next up we go into the properties of the Default Web Server, as you can see in Figure 2.

From there, we go to the Directory Security Tab and select to install a new digital certificate. This launches the certificate wizard as you can see in Figure 3.Once you have stepped through the wizard you should be able to go in and view the properties of the new digital certificate that you have installed as you can see from Figure 4. If you would like an actual walk through of the Certificate Wizard you can find it here.

In a world where email has changed the way both individuals and companies communicate with one another, it’s easy to forget that only a few years ago, faxing was the accepted worldwide standard for the timely transmission and reception of just about any document. While the use of email to transfer documents continues to grow in popularity, the use of faxing isn’t going to end any time soon, since much of the world still relies upon faxes for the transfer of critical information. Although the Internet is changing the ways that companies look at communicating with both their customers and suppliers, faxing still represents a secure, convenient, and ubiquitous technology that almost all companies worldwide accept and make use of.

Although a popular communication mechanism, most companies still rely on traditional manual faxing using a dedicated fax machine. While still acceptable in cases where a company rarely or very sporadically requires the ability to send or receive faxes, the manual fax machine is clearly out of date in any environment that regularly relies on fax communication. The main issue with manual faxing is the need for individuals to literally get up, walk to the fax machine, wait for their fax to send, and then return to what they were doing – just to send a single document. Furthermore, the user sending the fax needs to look up the recipient’s fax number, possibly create cover pages, and more. On the receiving end, time is wasted with the sorting and manual routing of faxes, which can easily be lost, forgotten, or otherwise not received in a timely manner. At the end of the day, manual faxing leads to only two sure things – lost productivity, and by extension, wasted money.

Aright, now that the summer is over, I guess that it is time to get back to work and start writing articles again on a somewhat regular basis. The topic for this particular article is going to be address list views and is in part inspired by a question posted by one of our newsgroup readers. The reader was looking for a way to create a new address list, but set it up so that only specific users would be able to access it. Well, that is exactly what we are going to do here today, so lets go ahead and jump right into it! Our first screen shot is taken from within Outlook, showing the different address lists that are configured and accessible by our clients. What I am going to do is a two step process. First, I will go ahead and create a new address list and show how that is done. We will then verify that the address list is visible and accessible to the Outlook users by logging in and trying to access some information from within the address list. Then, I will go ahead and hide that address list from view so that only specific users with the appropriate permissions will have the ability to connect to or even see the particular address list in question. Sound fun? Well let’s give it a whirl then! The first thing I want to point out is the default address lists that are visible from within Outlook 2000. As you can see from the figure below, there is nothing out of the ordinary here, although I do already have one custom address list that I created called Demo. (ok, so there is something out of the ordinary!)

Figure

Now the first thing that I do is go to the machine that is running the ESM, and I open up Recipients, and then All Address Lists. This should display the different address lists that have been created or are created by default upon installation of Exchange 2000. You can see the list in Figure 2.

Figure

In my last article, I had mentioned that we would be talking about Address lists the next time that we talked. Lets go ahead and take a look at the default address lists created in Exchange 2000, and how to create new address lists as well. The first thing that I want to cover is the default address lists that exist in Exchange 2000.

Figure

What I have done is opened the Exchange System Manager (ESM). I opened up Recipients, and then All Address Lists. The first thing that I would note, and one of the things that most people immediately question, is why you can’t see the actual addresses when you highlight one of the default address lists, like so;

Figure

This is by design. In Exchange 2000, unlike previous versions of Exchange, we are using LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) filters to create the address list. In order to see what addresses fall under a particular address list, you must right-click on the address list in question, and select properties. From the General tab, select the Preview button, and the addresses that display will be the appropriate addresses for the particular address list in question.

Figure

Figure

As you can see, the first screen shot is the actual LDAP filter that is used to define the recipients in question. In this case, I have selected the All Users address list. The point of my showing the LDAP filter is not to get into an in-depth discussion on LDAP, but rather to illustrate what an LDAP filter looks like. For more information on LDAP, you can look here. Also, RFCs #1777 and #1960 can give you a good jump on what LDAP is and how to use it in your network. Having said that, we have uncovered one of the mysteries of address lists in Exchange 2000!! If you have been working with Microsoft Windows 2000 for a while now, one of the things that you have probably realized is that there have been many changes to the interface. The same thing holds true for Exchange 2000, and address lists are a great example of how things have changed from previous versions of Exchange. What I am going to do is create a sample address list to give you some ideas on how to create one. Keep in mind that there are many different options for creating address lists, and this article simply means to serve as a starter, so to speak, for some of the different things that we can do. In order to create an address list, we right-click on All Address lists, and select New, and then Address list, like so;

Figure

Next, we provide a name for our address list, and then we have to define the filter that we will be using for this particular address list. In my case, I have named my new Address list Demo, and the filter that I have defined filters my users based on their Department, specifically the Marketing Department. The next graphic shows the default Filter that appears when you click on the filter button;

Figure

What I am going to do is modify the default filter to only apply to Exchange Users and Contacts, and the only field that I am interested in is the Department field. Again, the only users that I want to have appear are those in the Marketing Department. The filter will look something like this;

Figure

On the advanced tab, I select Users, and then select Department as my field of interest. I select “Is Exactly” and then Marketing. I click on Add, and then Ok. I have now defined my new LDAP filter that will list only users in the Marketing Department. Now, let’s make certain that we understand the practical application of this. If I had a very large company with users all over the world, my company address list (aka, the All Users List) could grow quite large. Instead of requiring my users to go through thousands of users names and address lists, I could create an address list similar to the one that I have just defined, and it would only show users from the Marketing Department. This would make it easier for users in the Marketing Department to locate users anywhere in the world, because the Marketing users are a small subset of all the users in the organization. This could be repeated numerous times, until we had defined all the appropriate address lists we needed for our organization. Having said that, if we go into the properties of our new address list, and click on the Preview button (on the General Tab), we should see something like this;

Figure

Not quite the scenario that I described a moment ago, but it definitely helps to illustrate the concept involved! One thing that I should point out is that once you actually create your new Address list, there could be a delay between the time you create the list, and the time that it takes for your recipients to show up in the list. The Recipient Update Service (RUS) is responsible for updating this information, so that would be the point to start troubleshooting from should you have problems getting the list to update. For some additional information on working with Address lists in Exchange 2000, take a look at Q319213. Also, take a look at Q253828 for information on how the RUS works to update address lists in Exchange 2000. Anyway, that about wraps it up for today. Normally, I give you a hint about what my next article will be on, but that will not be the case this time around. All I can tell you is that I will be back next time with another article discussing working with Exchange 2000. Until then, cya!!

Ok, now that I have had a little bit of a break, I guess it is time to get back to the articles! Today we are going to talk about Recipient Policies. Not necessarily the most glamorous feature of Exchange 2000, but definitely something worth knowing about. In Exchange 5.5, similar functionality was found in the Site Addressing object. However, as you will see, Recipient Policies in Exchange 2000 are much more flexible than Site Addressing was in Exchange 5.5, as well as having additional functionality to boot. The first thing that we will look at will be where we go to create our Recipient Policy, which is the Exchange System Manager (ESM). Once we open up the ESM, we will see on the right hand side the Recipient Policy container, like so;

Figure

When we expand the Recipients container, the first thing listed under it should be our Recipient Policies, with the Default Policy listed over in the right hand pane as you can see here.

Figure

Now what we are going to do is take a look at how we create a new Recipient Policy. In my case I have decided that several of my users require an additional SMTP address so that they can continue to receive email from their old address as well as their new address. I right-click on the Recipient Policies container, and I should see something like this;

Figure

Now I can go ahead and configure my settings for this particular policy. As we can see, the first thing we must configure is a name for the new policy. Once we have specified that, we can actually get on with configuring the properties that will really matter as far as this policy is concerned. As I mentioned before, my goal was to create a secondary address that would be accessible by some of my users that have come over from a merger with another company. After defining a name for my policy, I select Modify from the General Tab, and this will allow me to create my LDAP filter that will be used to define what users, groups, or objects my new policy will effect. The screen should look like this;

Figure

You should notice a couple of things about this particular utility. First off, it is the same utility that we can use to search through Active Directory to locate objects. Secondly, there are two parts to the search. First, we specify what type of object we want to find from the list box at the top of the dialog box, and then we select what type of recipients we want to filter, based on our earlier selection. You should notice that the available selections change, based on what you select from the Find drop down box. For example, if I wanted to filter based on Group Membership, I could create a filter similar to the following;

Figure

In this case, you should notice that I defined Users, Contacts and Groups as the focus of my search. I then went to the Advanced tab, and further stipulated that I only wanted to find a group called Administrators. In this way, I have complete flexibility and customizability when it comes to creating my Recipient Policies. In my case though, I don’t want to filter based on Group Membership. Instead, I would like to filter my recipient addresses based on the defined value listed in the City field for the user object. To do so, I would define the following filter;

Figure

This should have the intended effect that I am looking for, in that it will allow me to define a secondary SMTP address that these users will be able to use in addition to the default address generated by the Default Recipient Policy. One thing that I can do to make certain that my new Recipient Policy is working correctly is to use the Find Now button from the filter dialog box to make certain that my LDAP filter is working properly. As you can see from the following graphic, my filter is working just fine.

Figure

If you get to this stage and when you select Find Now, nothing appears in the results window, you need to refine your LDAP Filter. You might have defined the scope of your search too narrowly, or you could be attempting to filter based on a non-defined attribute. Once you redefine your LDAP Filter, try using the Find Now button again to ensure that you are seeing the objects that you want your new policy to apply to. Given that your filter is now working properly, we will want to apply our filter changes by selecting OK, and going over to the E-Mail Addresses tab. One thing that I should note, you will receive a warning message after creating your filter. The message simply reminds you that you have to select to Apply your policy after creation in order for it to take effect. Once we are on the E-Mail tab, we will create a new SMTP address for the recipients that we defined in our LDAP filter earlier. We select the SMTP address to highlight it, and then select the modify button. What we should see next is something that looks like this;

Figure

Now I have defined the actual SMTP address that I want to have applied to my users defined in my new Policy. I select OK, and I should receive the following warning;

Figure

Select Yes, and then we will need to Apply the Policy. Over in the right-hand pane, we right-click on the appropriate policy, and select Apply This Policy Now, as shown;

Figure

Now when I look at the properties of my recipients that have been effected by my new policy, I should see that they have a new address listed, and in this case it has been set as the Primary address for the recipients I have defined.

Figure

As we can see, my two recipients that were defined in the LDAP filter I created when I defined my new policy will both have a new SMTP address in the format @Bellcs.com. This will allow them to continue to receive email from both their old domain (Bellcs.com) as well as their new domain(2000trainers.com). You should note that because the policy I defined has a higher priority than the Default Policy, the new SMTP address was automatically generated as the Primary address. If I simply wanted to add a secondary address to all the users in my organization, but still wanted to maintain their 2000trainers.com address as the primary address, what I would have wanted to do was modify the existing Default Policy. One thing that you should notice about the Default Policy as well is that although you can modify the E-Mail Addresses tab, you cannot modify the LDAP filter! This is by design. The basic premise here would be that modifying the Default Policy is fine if you want the changes to apply to everyone in the organization, but if you want the changes to only apply to a specific group of users, or Organization Unit, or Administrative Group, then you would need to create a new Recipient Policy. One last thing to note about Recipient Policies. If I remove a policy that I have previously defined, it does not remove the E-Mail addresses that were defined in that policy. For example, we only had one custom defined Recipient Policy, so deleting it would leave us with only our Default Policy. This would mean that our two users should go back to having @2000trainers.com as their Primary address.

Figure

As you can see, the addresses themselves have not been removed, but the Primary Address has been reset to @2000trainers.com. For additional information on Recipient Policies, see Q319201. Also, I mentioned earlier that one of the things that you could use Recipient Policy for was defining multiple domains that your Exchange Server could receive email from. This was handled in Exchange 5.5 from the Properties of the IMS object on the routing tab. For additional information on setting this functionality up, see Q268838.

Well, that about wraps it up for this weeks article on Recipient Policies. I hope that you have found the information useful. When we come back next week, we are going to take a look at Address Lists in Exchange 2000 and how we define them. Until next time, cya!!