By default the Outlook Web Access (OWA) will automatically time out for the security purposes. This feature has been designed to restrict unauthorized access to any mailbox when the user is using a public or shared computer. You can select this option before you logon to your mailbox.

Though this feature is good for security reasons it may be annoying for many users who use OWA regularly and they may not want to enter the password several times after the time out. This can settled down with a simple registry tweak on the CAS server that runs your Internet facing OWA site. This can be done by following registry modification:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeOWA
Name: PublicTimeout
Type: DWORD
Value: {value in minutes} (This value is 15 minutes by default)

The above suggestion applies only when the user selects the Public Computer option from the OWA logon screen. For the user who select the Private Computer from the logon screen you might want to modify:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeOWA
Name: PrivateTimeout
Type: DWORD
Value: {value in minutes} (This value is 8 hours by default)

If you don’t see the DWORD values named, PublicTimeout and PrivateTimeout then you have create then manually.

 Last week Exchange Service Pack 2 has become available! Here are some new features: 

You can download Exchange 2007 Serivce Pack 2 here.

If you want to learn all the ins en outs about PowerShell….this is your chance! Download the free PowerShell eBook Mastering PowerShell

An easy way to manage your windows event viewer is to use PowerShell. With some simple commands you can open all the events. Let’s have a look on that….

Get-EventLog *
(gives an overview of all the available event sources)

When you put the following commands into a PS1 file and schedule it on a specific server, you’ll receive the event logs in an e-mail!
(in this example you’ll receive an e-mail from eventviewer@e2k10.local with the 10 newest event logs)

—————————————————————————
$body = Get-EventLog -LogName “dns server” -Newest 10 | out-string
$From = “eventviewer@e2k10.local”
$to = “administrator@e2k10.local”
$server = “srv-exc2010.e2k10.local”
$subject = “Event Viewer – srv-exc2010.e2k10.local”
$msg = new-object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage $From, $to, $subject, $body
$client = new-object System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient $Server
$Client.Send($msg)
—————————————————————————

If you’re using a service account for example your backup software, it’s some times nessesary that this account has full controll permissions on all the mailboxes in your Exchange environment. Now you can set the full controll permissions on all the mailboxes, but it’s better to set the permissions on your information store. So if there are new mailboxes created, they have also the right permissions automatically. With the following command you can set the permissions on information store level:

get-mailboxserver Servername | add-adpermission -user svc-backup -accessrights GenericRead, GenericWrite -extendedrights  Send-As, Receive-As, ms-Exch-Store-Admin

In some situations it’s verry usefull to have an export of all the available distribution group in your Exchange 2007 environment. With the following script you can export alle the distribution groups with there Name, Alias, SMTP address and secundary SMTP addresses.

—————————————————————————————————
Get-DistributionGroup | select name , alias ,EmailAddresses | foreach {
  “Name: “+$_.name
  “Alias: “+$_.alias
   $_.EmailAddresses | foreach {
     if($_.SmtpAddress){
     “SmtpAddress: “+$_.SmtpAddress
   }
}
write-host
}
—————————————————————————————————

When you copy and past this code in notepad and save it as Get_Dis.ps1 , you get the following export for example:

Name: Exchange Team
Alias: ExchangeTeam
SmtpAddress: Exchange2003Team@e2k7.local
SmtpAddress: Exchange2007Team@e2k7.local
SmtpAddress: ExchangeTeam@e2k7.local

Name: ICT Helpdesk
Alias: ICTHelpdesk
SmtpAddress: Helpdesk@e2k7.local
SmtpAddress: ICTHelpdesk@e2k7.local

Name: ICT Management
Alias: ICTManagement
SmtpAddress: ICTManagement@e2k7.local

With the following command you can list all the mailboxes that are hidden from the GAL (Global Address List). A very usefull command when you’ve to perform a migration from Exchange to Exchange and you’ve pre-created the new Exchange mailboxes.

Get-Mailbox | Where {$_.HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled -eq $true} | ft -wrap

Get-Mailbox | Where {$_.HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled -eq $true} | Select Name, HiddenFromAddresslistsEnabled, ExchangeVersion

To view all the full access permissions on all the mailboxes in your environment, you can use the following command in the Exchange Management Shell.

Get-Mailbox | Get-mailboxpermission | where {-not ($_.User -like “NT AUTHORITY\SELF”)} | Ft -wrap

When you want the full access permissions configured on one specific mailbox, you can add the -identity switch. For example:

Get-Mailbox -identity systeembeheer | Get-mailboxpermission | where {-not ($_.User -like “NT AUTHORITY\SELF”)} | Ft -wrap