Exchange, Issue, Office 365, Outlook 3 comments

Optimizing the Outlook AutoDiscover process by skipping the root domain query

Updated 8/15/2014: see the bottom of this article for additional information on changed AutoDiscover behavior of Outlook 2013. Consider the following scenario: An Active Directory (AD) domain named equal to the SMTP Suffx, so the mailaddress dmstork@contoso.com in the contoso.com AD domain. No on-premises Exchange, this means that there is no Service Connection Point (SCP) in A. Outlook 2013 (or lower versions from Outlook 2007 up). Exchange Online (or any hosted Exchange for that matter). Additional issue: You’ve got an external

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Exchange, Management, Question of the day Leave a comment

Managing Mailbox quota’s: databases with different settings?

So, a while back I discussed an on-premises Exchange design for a customer. When discussing database distribution in an Exchange 2013 Database Availability Group (DAG), the topic of mailbox quota’s came along. They insisted on having different Database (DB) level quota’s and move mailboxes to other databases when the user requires more storage space. It’s a tactic I have seen before, especially during Exchange 2003 (Enterprise edition) and Exchange 2007. I can understand why organization adopt this practice, it’s easy

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Exchange, Issue Leave a comment

Exchange mail flow not working? Check your (Cisco) firewall!

I’ve come across this issue several times: External mail (or mail between Exchange servers) cannot be delivered, however when you check with telnet the Exchange server(s) are responding. When you check via telnet on the external IP you get something similar: In this case it was a Cisco ASA firewall that had (E)SMTP filtering feature (also called Mailguard) enabled, which is the default setting. Unfortunately, this feature filters very strict and blocks extended commands that are allowed by RFC5321 which

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Exchange, Personal One comment

I am now an Exchange MVP!

For those who weren’t following me on Twitter (or Facebook or whatever), today I received an important mail: Dear Dave Stork, Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2014 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Exchange Server technical communities during the past year. After checking headers for spoofing etc. (hey! It’s my expertise after all

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Exchange, Exchange 2013, Migration/Transition Leave a comment

Legacy Public Folders to Exchange 2013 migration tips

A couple of weeks ago I performed a Public Folder migration from Exchange 2007 (aka legacy) towards the modern Public Folders of Exchange 2013. As you may know, the traditional migration method using Public Folder replica’s isn’t available due to a radical redesign of the Public Folder architecture. Instead of dedicated databases, the hierarchy and data are now stored in mailboxes. The biggest benefit is that Public Folders can now be protected via a Database Availability Group, the downside is

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Exchange, Exchange 2013, Issue, Office 365 Leave a comment

Office 365 users can’t see free/busy of on-premises users

The past few days I was working on making an on-prem Exchange Server 2013 SP1 environment hybrid with the Office 365 tenant. You would expect that running the Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW) would be it, after setting all the requirements as they should. Unfortunately after running the HCW, Office 365 mailboxes couldn’t access free/busy information of on-prem mailboxes. The other way round was functional. Enter troubleshooting mode! I will spare you the whole story and summarize it to the basics.

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Active Directory, Exchange, Groupware, Migration/Transition Leave a comment

From open source groupware solution Zarafa to Exchange: Part 2, Active Directory

See also Part 1: A New Beginning When using Zarafa there are several possible directory services you can use for authentication. I will restrict this post to situations relevant to Active Directory (AD) integration. Even if you did not use Active Directory (or Zarafa for that matter) previously, I believe this post still contains valuable information. Getting to know your current environment is key if you want to change it. If you migrate from one version of a product to

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Events, Office 365, Personal, Windows Phone / Mobile Devices Leave a comment

Behind the presentation: Office 365 apps

Last Monday evening I presented “Office 365 apps” for the Dutch NGN-NGI interest group. And obviously the presentation was interesting, I think a little behind the scenes look for this particular presentation is worth a blog post. Actually, they might complement each other! So, I was asked to present something about apps on an Office 365 themed event. That was basically the assignment and please notice the very broad scope it could have. That was the first challenge. The first

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Issue, Office 365 Leave a comment

Does your Office 365 DNS records check fail?

Recently I was working on building an hybrid Exchange 2013 environment. During the setup for specific mail domains, Office 365 didn’t seem to see the DNS records required. In this case it was the SPF record, that would not be accepted. However the record was made as specified as requested, TTL was an hour and after several hours it still didn’t pass the check. Other records made at the same time, were checked okay. Unfortunately that delayed other required changes…

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Exchange, Exchange 2013, OWA, Question of the day Leave a comment

Disable Offline OWA in Exchange 2013

Although the Offline OWA functionality in Exchange 2013 is a great addition for those that cannot use Outlook (Anywhere with Cached Mode), but are frequently without internet. However, as the browser database in which Exchange OWA stores it’s information isn’t encrypted, it can be a security issue. It can be turned of via the Exchange Admin Center (EAC) via Permissions>Outlook Web App Policies and then edit the policies by double-clicking them. Navigate in the pop-up window to Offline Access and

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