Case Study: Government of the US Virgin Islands

There is a new case study that has been released for the Government of the US Virgin Islands and their switchover to Office 365. While it is not the most detailed since it is a cloud-based solution it is a good promotion for collaboration and consolidation of disparate systems.

You can see the full blog post here, and the case study here.

Serving the people of the US Virgin Islands (USVI) is behind everything I do as the Chief Information Officer of the Government of the US Virgin Islands. It’s a big challenge. There are significant obstacles to providing efficient government services to constituents across our four main islands (St. Croix, St. John, St. Thomas, and Water Island) and the other islands that make up our territory. When I joined the USVI, the Governor had issued a mandate to improve services throughout its 23 agencies. We needed to reduce bureaucracy and red tape. I believe IT can play a big role in transforming our processes to achieve more citizen-centric services and demonstrate that we are putting taxpayers’ money to good use. So my mission became to change the culture of computing at USVI by incorporating innovative technology solutions to facilitate the business of government. I selected Office 365 to help me accomplish this goal.

~ brad

"You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive."  ~ Maya Angelou, Interview from the April 2011 edition of O, the Oprah Magazine (2011)

Exchange 2010 SP3 RU6 now available

Exchange 2010 SP3 RU6 is now available.
Version 14.03.0195.001

Issues Resolved:
Update Rollup 6 for Exchange Server 2010 SP3 resolves the issues that are described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

• 2960652 Organizer name and meeting status field can be changed by EAS clients in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2957762 "A folder with same name already exists" error when you rename an Outlook folder in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2952799 Event ID 2084 occurs and Exchange server loses connection to the domain controllers in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2934091 Event ID 1000 and 7031 when users cannot connect to mailboxes in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2932402 Cannot move a mailbox after you install Exchange Server 2010 SP3 RU3 (KB2891587)
• 2931842 EWS cannot identify the attachment in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2928703 Retention policy is applied unexpectedly to a folder when Outlook rule moves a copy in Exchange Server 2010
• 2927265 Get-Message cmdlet does not respect the defined write scope in Exchange Server 2010
• 2925273 Folder views are not updated when you arrange by categories in Outlook after you apply Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 Update Rollup 3 or Update Rollup 4
• 2924592 Exchange RPC Client Access service freezes when you open an attached file in Outlook Online mode in Exchange Server 2010
• 2923865 Cannot connect to Exchange Server 2010 when the RPC Client Access service crashes
• 2920549 Store.exe crashes if you create a deeply nested subfolder in Outlook

~ brad

“The difference between e-mail and regular mail is that computers handle e-mail, and computers never decide to come to work one day and shoot all the other computers.” ~ Jamais Cascio

Voicemail Retention in Exchange UM

Every Exchange admin freaks out at least a little bit when you start talking about storing voicemails in Exchange, except for maybe the handful that are blessed with unlimited storage.

Most users are pretty bad about managing their mailboxes unless you have implemented storage quotas on their mailboxes. I've seen mailboxes with email going back years. Even though the actual storage requirements for a single voicemail is pretty low (especially compared to large pdf's, spreadsheets, Word docs, etc) it does add up over time.

Older systems typically performed automatic cleanup of old voicemails, usually after 14 or 30 days. Since this is not a default behavior of Exchange, Microsoft has introduced a retention tag specifically for voicemail. This is only available through PowerShell, not through the Console.

Using the New-RetentionPolicyTag command, you can specify the Voicemail Message Class (this is the only class you can specify, all other tags use All). You can then specify an action to be applied after the retention age limit has expired. You will probably want to specify an action like PermanentlyDelete or DeleteAndAllowRecovery.

To create the new retention tag, your command will look like:

New-RetentionPolicyTag -Name “Delete Voicemail after 30 days” -Type All -MessageClass Voicemail -AgeLimitForRetention 30 -RetentionAction PermanentlyDelete

You will then need to create a new retention policy (New-RetentionPolicy) or assign this tag to an existing policy (Set-RetentionPolicy). After you have a policy it needs to be assigned to mailboxes using Set-Mailbox -RetentionPolicy. To assign it to a database, you will need a command like

Get-Mailbox -Database "DB01" | Set-Mailbox -RetentionPolicy "Delete Voicemail after 30 days"

~ brad

Fun Fact:
Douglas Englebart, the inventor of the mouse, has never seen a dime from the patent. That’s because his patent expired just before the device became widely used with almost every computer. But he’s not cursing his luck – Englebart has had a hand in a multitude of other inventions, including hypertext.

Changing a User's SIP Domain

One of the big projects that we have been working on is re-branding with a global image. This project started with migrating all of our users to have the same email domain and SIP domain. When Lync was initially installed the decision was made to support two SIP domains.

I was lucky and we only had a handful of users that needed to be changed to out primary SIP domain and could make the changes manually. To change a lot of users you could use a script like this. I have not tested this script, so test it first.

$UserList = Get-CsUser -Filter 'SipAddress -like "*olddomain.com"'
foreach ($User in $UserList)
{
   $oldAddress = $User.SipAddress
   $newAddress = $oldAddress -replace "@olddomain.com", "@newdomain.com"
   Set-CsUser -Identity $User.Identity -SipAddress $newAddress
}

Once you change all of the users, you will want to update the Lync and Exchange address books. The changes will update eventually depending on your replication time and when Address Books are scheduled to rebuild, but we want to have as little impact on the users as possible. I ran all of the PowerShell commands just to be on the safe side.

To update the Lync address book:
     Update-CsAddressBook

To update the Exchange address books:
     Update-GlobalAddressList
     Update-OfflineAddressBook

Impacts to the User

• When the change is made, the user will be logged off Lync, and they will need to log in with the new SIP address.
• Internal contacts should update the SIP address automatically – no action required.
• External contacts will have to re-add the user to their contact list.
• Lync Online Meetings will now be scheduled using the new meet web address. Any existing meetings will need to be rescheduled. There will be a delay between the changing of the SIP address and the ability to schedule meetings with the new address. Once you have updated the Exchange Address List and Offline Address Book the users will need to close and relaunch Outlook for this change to be picked up.

~ brad

Fun Fact:

The MS 150 is a two-day, 180-mile fund raising cycling ride organized by the National Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society: Lone Star chapter. This ride is the largest event of its kind in North America taking in about 13,000 riders each year with a goal of raising $18 million towards finding a cure for MS.
This year's 30th Anniversary ride is scheduled 12-13 April 2014.

Exchange Server Build Numbers

Here is a list of all the Update Rollups and Service Packs that have been released for Exchange Server 2010/2013.

Exchange 2010

Update	Release Date	Build	Link
RTM	November 2009	14.0.639.21
UR1	December 2009	14.0.682.1	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976573
UR2	March 2010	14.0.694.0	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979611
UR3	April 2010	14.0.694.0	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981401
UR4	June 2010	14.0.702.1	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982639
UR5	December 2010	14.0.726.0	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2407113
SP1	August 2010	14.1.218.15	http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff459257(v=exchg.141).aspx
UR1	October 2010	14.1.255.2	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2407028
UR2	December 2010	14.1.270.1	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2425179
UR3	March 2011	14.1.289.3	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2492690
UR3-v3	April 2011	14.1.289.7	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2529939
UR4	June 2011	14.1.323.1	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2509910
UR4-v2	July 2011	14.1.323.6	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2579150
UR5	August 2011	14.1.339.1	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2582113
UR6	October 2011	14.1.355.2	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2608646
UR7	August 2012	14.1.421.0	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2743248
UR7-v2	October 2012	14.1.421.2	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2756496
UR7-v3	November 2012	14.1.421.3	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2778158
UR8	December 2012	14.1.438.0	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2787763
SP2	December 2011	14.2.247.5	http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh529924(v=exchg.141).aspx
UR1	February 2012	14.2.283.3	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2645995
UR2	April 2012	14.2.298.4	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2661854
UR3	May 2012	14.2.309.2	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2685289
UR4	August 2012	14.2.318.2	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2706690
UR4-v2	October 2012	14.2.318.4	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2756485
UR5	November 2012	14.2.328.5	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2719800
UR5-v2	December 2012	14.2.328.10	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2785908
UR6	February 2013	14.2.342.3	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2746164
UR7	August 2013	14.2.375.0	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2874216
UR8	December 2013	14.2.390.3	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2903903
SP3	February 2013	14.3.123.4	http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj965775(v=exchg.141).aspx
UR1	May 2013	14.3.146.0	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2803727
UR2	August 2013	14.3.158.1	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2866475
UR3	November 2013	14.3.169.1	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2891587
UR4	December 2013	14.3.174.1	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2905616
UR5	February 2014	14.3.181.6	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2917508
UR6	May 2014	14.3.195.1	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2936871

Exchange 2013

Update	Release Date	Build	Link
RTM	October 2012	15.0.516.32
CU1	April 2013	15.0.620.29	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2816900
CU2	July 2013	15.0.712.22
CU2-v2	July 2013	15.0.712.24	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2859928
CU3	November 2013	15.0.775.38	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2892464
SP1	February 2014	15.0.847.32	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2926248

Hope this helps!
~ Brad

Fun Fact:
The first webcam watched a coffee pot. It allowed researchers at Cambridge to monitor the coffee situation without leaving their desks.

Exchange 2013 SP1 Released

Exchange 2013 Service Pack 1 (Build 15.00.0847.032) was released on 25 February 2014.

You can find the Release Notes here. There is a schema update involved so be sure to read the notes.

There is also a good write-up on the Exchange Team Blog.

~brad

Fun Fact:
The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, also known as Rodeo Houston or HLSR, is the world's largest world's largest live entertainment and livestock exhibition.

Exchange Supportability for Server 2012/2012 R2

Microsoft has recently (20 February 2014) updated the Exchange supportability matrices. There is now support for Server 2012/2012 R2 to be used as the OS for an Exchange server, and as the OS for your domain controllers. In addition the new 2012 AD Forest and Domain functionality levels are supported.

See the tables below for release compatibility, and see Technet for full details and the latest information.

Supported OS for Exchange Servers

(Click to embiggen)

Support for Active Directory Server OS

(Click to embiggen)

Support for Active Directory Domain and Functional Level

(Click to embiggen)

~ brad

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." ~ Albert Einstein