Exchange Server

You can capture Exchange mailbox events in the Office 365 audit log, but only if you remember to enable auditing for target mailboxes. Exchange Online doesn’t enable new mailboxes for auditing by default, so administrators must remember to enable the mailboxes manually – and check for new mailboxes periodically. If you don’t, nothing is recorded and your audit log will be empty.

After returning from the Ignite conference, I have pages of notes to pour over. Here are some of the more interesting things i learned about Office 365, including who should be in my “inner loop” and “outer loop”, why Microsoft talks about Microsoft 365 when they really mean Office 365, and some Exchange Online cmdlets I had not heard about before.

Revealed at the Ignite conference, Microsoft plans to make some changes relatively soon to relieve the complexity and overhead of deploying and managing hybrid Exchange organizations. Microsoft also showed how to move mailboxes between tenants. It’s a small part of the tenant-to-tenant migration scenario, but it’s good to see it happening.

Everyone has a different experience at a massive conference like Microsoft Ignite. Here’s some personal notes from Day 1 of the 2017 event. As always, my conference days are a mixture of sessions, chats, and walking.

Apple released iOS 11 and found that the mail app cannot connect to Exchange Online or Exchange 2016. It’s all to do with HTTP2 connections. Apple tries to connect via ActiveSync but doesn’t do so the way that Exchange likes, or something like that. In any case, maybe now’s the time to consider Outlook for iOS.

Microsoft has new tools to migrate public folders (the “cockroaches of Exchange”) to Office 365 Groups. Sounds good. The good news is that the tools work, even if they need a lot of manual oversight. ISVs offer tools to do the same job with more automation. The choice is yours!

Hardware vendors publish their solutions for Exchange through the Microsoft ESRP. The only thing is that some of the solutions are illogical and unworkable. In fact, some solutions are simply ridiculous. Sure, you could implement them – but at what cost and what level of reliability. But the solutions get your attention and that’s their purpose.

Google has made several improvements to G-Suite that make it easier for organizations that use both Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange Server to integrate and maintain functionality across the two platforms.

Surprisingly, Microsoft has never included a central method to manage user autosignatures within the cloud or on-premises versions of Exchange. Which means that you must let users manage their signatures, build your own tools, or deploy a commercial solution.

Microsoft told us some months ago that they would block the creation of new eDiscovery cases in Exchange and SharePoint. A course reversal has happened because of the humble discovery mailbox, which Exchange uses as a target for eDiscovery results. The block has lifted for Exchange but remains for SharePoint. It will eventually happen for Exchange but Office 365-wide functionality is better than workload-specific features.

The quarterly cumulative updates for Exchange Server quietly appeared with little fuss this week. Meanwhile, in cloud land, Office 365 continues the crusade to eradicate distribution lists with new bulk conversions to Office 365 Groups.

Microsoft now supports the migration of modern public folders to Exchange Online. ISV solutions allow you to migrate public folders to other places, like Office 365 Groups and shared mailboxes, which seems like a lot more interesting.

The IT world often focuses on big changes and announcements instead of looking at how small changes can really make a difference. One example is how Microsoft has changed what happens when users recover deleted items to allow items go back to where they came. It’s a great change, even if it is seven years overdue.