SmartPhones and the Global Address List
Microsoft has released a small piece of software that allows mobile devices to access the Global Address List within your Exchange environment. While ActiveSync is the agent most think of when SmartPhones are mentioned, this particular add-on actually leverages the Public Virtual Directory in IIS and not the ActiveSync agent. In this article, I will show you the program’s features and what you need to do to get it working in your environment. [ check it out ]

MIIS Deployment for Exchange 5.5
There are situations where Exchange 5.5 will need to coexist with other directories for extended amounts of time. It is estimated that over 20 million Exchange 5.5 seats still remain in production environments and many will likely remain there well after E12 is released. This is a troubling thought for Microsoft and indeed for those procrastinating companies since Exchange 5.5 support is essentially over. Having said that, the estimate remains and so does the problem of coexistence. In this article, I will show you how to make Microsoft's Identity Integration Server (MIIS) keep these environments synchronized with separate Exchange Server 2000/2003 organizations.  [ check it out ]

Blocking Attachments with Outlook Web Access
Trend Micro’s “Q2 2005 Virus Roundup” report shows that nearly all reported virus outbreaks began or are propagated through email. Thankfully, Microsoft’s advances in the Outlook security tools have greatly reduced/blocked unattended distribution of these damaging programs. By blocking access to certain types of attachments (EXE, COM, VBS for example) and by restricting programmatic access to the address book and Outlook APS, it is much more difficult for an infected machine to systematically send messages to everyone in the address book. In this article, I will show you some tips and techniques for attachment-handling for your OWA clients as well as some sneaky ways of providing different access for different people. [ check it out ]

Fighting Spam with Exchange and Outlook 2003
Unless you live under a rock, you likely receive spam. USA Today estimates that over seven billion spam messages will be sent out this year alone. Microsoft is now as ready as you are to see an end to spam. Bill Gates has offered several discussions on the matter and published a few papers on spam and the need to stop it. To prove it’s point, Microsoft has included much more sophisticated spam-fighting features in the newest versions of Outlook and Exchange. In this article we will describe these functions in detail and point out both their strengths and weaknesses.  [ check it out ]

Spam (of the unsolicited mail variety) has become a household name
If you are like me and try to stay current on recent events in technology, you should have noticed that spam-related articles are becoming more visible. Just last week, I noticed that USA Today even had a story on the fight against spam. Moreover the media is now taking polls to survey the impact on spam on America and other nations. Businesses are being polled in order to establish more accurate estimates on revenue loss and the cost of the administrative overhead associated to fighting spam. Some estimates by USA Today indicate that companies are willing and in many cases paying $12-24 each year per user to combat spam. [ check it out ]

Book Review: Microsoft Encyclopedia of Networking, Second Edition
Getting into networking or starting an IT career is always confusing in that there are so many paths to take and skills to develop. For those of you new to this new industry, you will most certainly latch on to a book that becomes your networking bible. For me, that bible was a Microsoft internal document entitled: Microsoft Networking Architecture – Windows NT level. Today’s technologist needs something more modern and preferably in hardback since these books tend to stay current much longer than application-specific or operating system-specific books. Mitch Tulloch's new book provides this and much, more. [ check it out ]

Is your Exchange Environment Secure?
Security is not a sexy topic, bit things can get downright ugly when the executive's password is found out or someone attacks and cripples your mail server. Often, a company is unable to prioritize security until something terrible happens and the payroll summary mysteriously appears in the break room or your server is getting constantly bombarded with mail or packet bombs. More often, it is this pain that provides the security "wake up call" for many companies. In this article, we try to save you some of this pain by sharing some ideas on securing your environment. [ check it out ]

“Secure” your Exchange Server on the Internet for $100
I know the security folks are going to tear into me for this, partly because I use the word Secure, and partly because it is not truly secure. If you have a small network and you want to let your users connect from the Internet with their MAPI client as well as OWA, I can show you how. Follow the link for a one-server approach to AD, WEB Hosting, IIS, DNS, DHCP and Exchange 2000.  [ check it out ]

Improving Coexistence between Lotus Notes/Domino and Microsoft Exchange
Lotus Notes/Domino (or simply “Notes”) and Microsoft Exchange migrations have traditionally been painful processes. In nearly every migration, there is an amount of time where running both systems is required, especially in large scale deployments. In many cases, both systems remain indefinitely in the environment. In this article, we show you some ways to improve the relationship between Notes and Exchange.  [ check it out ]

Exchange and SharePoint: Two Peas in a Pod?
It is rarely wise to do something simply because you can. With Service Pack 2 of Exchange 2000, it is now possible to run Exchange 2000 and Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server on the same box. I may argue against such a configuration in the name of network efficiency, but I am not completely one-sided in my opinions when I touch ever so cautiously—on the few special scenarios for which it may be a good idea after all. [ check it out ]

How to get access to all mailboxes in Exchange 2000 Server
With Exchange 5.5, this was easy because we had a service account. We simply logged in with the service account or used the credentials to gain access. This was most helpful when we were restoring a mailbox or otherwise capturing data in a lab or temporary restore server. There are several ways to do the same thing with Exchange 2000. This article covers one such way. [ check it out ]

Windows and Office updates protected many from Nimda
Viral detection programs are a necessity in today's business environment as well as personal computing, but you can prevent attacks just by keeping your software up to date. In this outbreak, many were spared due to their efforts to keep their applications current and their security holes plugged. Follow the link to learn more.
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The problem with co-existence is the mail routing
Those of you who have rebooted their connector servers or experienced a performance hit with message conversions already know what I’m talking about. Those considering a migration to Exchange from cc:mail or Lotus Notes in particular should pay close attention. Those who have overcome this problem are encouraged to tell us what you did.
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Blueprint for an Exchange Service Level Agreement
A service level agreement (SLA) is a mechanism for creating a common understanding between two parties about services and service delivery. It is a communication tool that helps to manage expectations, clarify responsibilities, and provide an objective basis for assessing service effectiveness. This article describes the specific attributes of a messaging SLA. Warning: This document is not technical, but contains an extremely detailed business process for developing a Service Level Agreement between a company and an outsourcing vendor. The processes could also apply to an SLA between departments in the same company.
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What you should know about Exchange 2000 Front-End/Back-End
With Exchange 2000, Microsoft has taken the possible relationship between a front-end(FE) server and its back-end(BE) servers to a new level. If you intend to use HTTP in your Exchange 2000 applications (such as the new OWA), you may want to consider the advantages of using such a formal FE/BE configuration. On the other hand, if you need to use separate domains, ADO, CDO, MAPI, or WAN attached BE servers, you may need to consider other solutions. In this article I’ll discuss some advantages to the FE/BE server setup, backed by performance testing results, as well as some related restrictions to be aware of.
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The Complete Exchange 5.5. Reorg
It’s quite a dilemma. You need to consolidate some Exchange 5.5 organizations in order to ramp up for Exchange 2000 and Windows 2000, knowing all too well that your deployment of those new products is still a long way down the road. What do you do? If the Inter-Org tool comes to mind, I suggest you first check out all the TechNet Articles about this approach before investing too much time into it. A single org is a better solution. And what about the Outlook clients? What about Public Folders?

In this paper, we will go over the complete reorg process including steps the whitepapers do not tell you.
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Exchange 2000 WebStore Strategies
There’s quite a bit of information out there concerning the benefits of the database and storage group functionality of Exchange 2000. Due to the greater capacity of Exchange servers, companies are reducing their mailbox servers by centralizing mailbox populations as performance and scalability factors permit. More people on fewer servers is the current theme around most Exchange water coolers. But what about applications?

In this paper, we will go over some ideas on how to categorize Exchange 2000 applications in order to determine specific service level requirements. Once we have those requirements, we will discuss how to segregate those applications both in databases and in storage groups.
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Addressing the Scalability of Digital Dashboards
Having difficulty scaling your Digital Dashboard solution? You may be experiencing the same problems I saw when I first attempted to deploy Digital Dashboards to large user populations. To provide Outlook Today Dashboards that would allow folks to see all their stuff at once, I chose to use SQL-Based Dashboards for its flexibility, but when I delivered this thing to a large pilot group, BAM…brick wall.

In this paper, we will look at some of the performance tests we did in the lab and talk about some solutions.
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