Microsoft has just released their Exchange PST Capture tool that will allow you to install agent on client computers in order to search for PST file and import them to one of the following:
1) Exchange Mailbox
2) Exchange Archive Mailbox
3) Office 365 Mailbox
Download:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=28767
Overview:
PST Capture is used to discover and import Outlook Personal Folder (.pst) File Format files into Exchange Server and Exchange Online. PST Capture helps an organization that wishes to gain more control over their email data repositories by placing them into Exchange. By optionally installing PST Capture Agents on target machines, administrators can determine where .pst files are located and who their file owner is via the PST Capture Console. Administrators can import .pst files via Import Lists to Exchange Server or Exchange Online. Data can be directly imported into the primary mailbox or associated archive mailbox.
System Requirments:
Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
- Review the Technical Documentation prior to installation of Microsoft Exchange PST Capture
- Exchange Server 2010, if used to import to Exchange Server 2010 mailboxes or archives
- Exchange Online (Office 365) subscription if used to import to Exchange Online (Office 365) mailboxes or archives
- Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 or 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 x64 (only required on the host computer where you install the Central Service and Console)
The Microsoft Lync 2010 mobile client for Apple IOS devices has been released. Now you can get your Lync on from your iPhone or iPad.
Go and get it from the Apple App Store for the iPhone or the iPad.
Source: http://www.expta.com/2011/12/lync-2010-mobile-client-released-for_20.html
Microsoft just released the long awaited Service Pack 2 for Exchange 2010:
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP2 helps IT Professionals achieve new levels of reliability with greater flexibility, enhanced user experiences, and increased protection for business communications.· Flexible and reliable - Exchange Server 2010 SP2 gives you the flexibility to tailor your deployment based on your company's unique needs and a simplified way to keep e-mail continuously available for your users.· Anywhere access - Exchange Server 2010 SP2 helps your users get more done by giving them the freedom to securely access all their communications - e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging, and more - from virtually any platform, Web browser, or device.· Protection and compliance - Exchange Server 2010 SP2 delivers integrated information loss prevention, and compliance tools aimed at helping you simplify the process of protecting your company's communications and meeting regulatory requirements.Before you install Exchange Server 2010 SP2, we recommend that you review the summary of system requirements and technical information located in the Exchange Server 2010 Technical Documentation Library.
This Exchange Server 2010 SP2 software may be used to perform a new installation or to update an existing Exchange Server 2010 installation to Service Pack 2 (SP2) level.
For new installations, you may use the software without entering a product key for 120 days after the initial installation only to demonstrate and internally evaluate it. You may upgrade the trial installation at any time to Exchange Server 2010 SP2 Standard or Enterprise edition by entering a product key.
If you use the Exchange Server 2010 SP2 software to update an existing installation of Exchange Server 2010, you do not need to enter the product key again.
I strongly recommend waiting at least a week or two before installing SP2 on any production environment:
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28190
The Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Best Practices Analyzer is designed for administrators who want to determine the overall health of their Lync Server environment.
You can use Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Best Practices Analyzer to identify and resolve problems with your Lync Server deployment. The Lync Server 2010, Best Practices Analyzer gathers configuration information from Lync Server 2010 components.
With the proper network access, the Best Practices Analyzer can examine servers running Active Directory Domain Services, Exchange Server Unified Messaging (UM), and Lync Server. You can use Best Practices Analyzer to do the following:
- Proactively perform checks, verifying that the configuration is set according to recommended best practices.
- Automatically detect required updates to Lync Server 2010.
- Generate a list of issues, such as suboptimal configuration settings, unsupported options, missing updates, or practices that we do not recommend.
- Help you troubleshoot and fix specific problems.
Best Practices Analyzer provides the following features:
- Minimal installation prerequisites.
- Online documentation about reported issues, including troubleshooting tips.
- Configuration information that you can save for later review.
- State-of-the-art system analysis.
Download
A very nice tool that I've found, which helps you managing the Exchange 2010 RBAC permission in a convenient way (and not only by ECP).
Source
Download
Use this stencil to create Visio drawings that contain Exchange 2010 objects. These shapes include icons for the following:
- Exchange 2010 server roles
- Features new to Exchange 2010 SP1
- Networking, telephony, and Unified Messaging objects
- Active Directory and directory service objects
- Client computers and devices
- Other Exchange organization elements
download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=901d471c-8bd9-47ad-b6db-452309f12ebe
In the past, in order for us to determine the exchange database whitespace (In Exchange 2000/2003/2007), we could examining the application log for event ID 1221 which includes the amount of white space that could have been defragged and save us space.
In exchange 2010, event id 1221 does not exist anymore, and in order for us to find the whitespace, Microsoft has provided an appropriate command shell:
Get-MailboxDatabase -Status | Select-Object Server,Name,AvailableNewMailboxSpace
The same goes for backup states, as we can run the following command to get the last full backup state:
Get-MailboxDatabase -Status | Sort -Property LastFullBackup |ft Identity,LastFullBackup
Microsoft has an RSS feed product index that lists the most recently published KB articles on most of Microsoft platforms and technologies.
For those of you who love to subscribe to RSS feeds (either via outlook or by any other RSS reader) this is a great way to keep updated upon most recent KB's from Microsoft.
The link to the RSS Feed Product Index is: http://support.microsoft.com/selectindex/?target=rss#top
Another website that offers the same RSS feeds is KBalertz.com
Enjoy...
An updated version of the PFDAVAdmin tool has been released to the web. You can get it from the download center at this link:
PFDAVAdmin - v.
| 06.05.8164 - 06/04/2010 |
This update contains various bug fixes that have been made over the last three years (the prior version on the Download Center was from April of 2007). It also has some changes that make it work better against Exchange 2007. For instance, the old versions of PFDAVAdmin expected certain directory objects to be present for all Exchange servers. In Exchange 2007, some of those objects are only present with a CAS role. This resulted in a situation where PFDAVAdmin would only connect to Exchange 2007 mailbox servers that also had the CAS role. That problem is fixed in this version of PFDAVAdmin, which has no problem connecting to Exchange 2007 with only the mailbox role installed.
The dependency on .NET Framework 1.1 remains, which means you should run PFDAVAdmin from a workstation with Framework 1.1 installed - you should not install this old version of the framework on your Exchange servers, because it makes IIS unhappy.
PFDAVAdmin still cannot connect to Exchange 2010 servers, because WebDAV is gone from 2010. If you need similar functionality for Exchange 2010, use ExFolders instead.
Source: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/04/09/454590.aspx
Download ExFolders: http://msexchangeteam.com/files/12/attachments/entry453398.aspx
Archiving and Discovery Enhancements
With the release of Exchange Server 2010 last November, we introduced integrated archiving capabilities aimed at helping you preserve and discover e-mail data. In SP1, we've enhanced this archiving functionality based on the great feedback you've given us since our launch. This includes adding the flexibility to provision a user's Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox. This means your organization can now more easily implement separate storage strategies (or tiered storage) for less frequently accessed e-mail. And, we didn't just stop there! We've also added new server side capabilities so you can import historical e-mail data from .PST files, directly into Exchange, as well as IT pro controls to enable delegate access to a user's Personal Archive.
To help streamline the implementation of retention policies, SP1 updates the Exchange Management Console with new tools to create Retention Policy Tags, so you can automate the deletion and archiving of e-mail and other Exchange items. New optional Retention Policy Tags give you even more flexibility in defining your organizations retention management strategy.
Lastly, we've made several improvements to the Multi-Mailbox Search features, which can be used to conduct e-Discovery of e-mail for legal, regulatory or other reasons. A new search preview helps with, for example, early case assessment by providing you an estimate on the number of items in the result set-with keyword statistics-before e-mail located in the search are copied to the designated discovery mailbox. And, you now have a new search result de-duplication option, that when checked, only copies one instance of a message to the discovery mailbox. This can help you reduce the amount of e-mail you need to review following the search. Finally, added support for annotation of reviewed items means you can make your e-Discovery workflow even more efficient and less time consuming or costly.
For those of you that have been holding your breath for this one, we're also happy to let you know that in SP1 timeframe, there will be an update which will enable us to support access to a user's Personal Archive with Outlook 2007.
Outlook Web App - Better Than Ever
We didn't stop working with archiving and discovery, OWA gets a significant facelift with SP1 as well. With new work to pre-fetch message content, the OWA reading experience becomes faster. With delete, mark as read, and categorize operations running asynchronously, these actions feel instantaneous to the user. We've also made sure that certain long running operations, such as attaching a very large file, will not block the rest of the OWA experience, protecting the user from irritating web UI hang-ups. You'll see a number of other UI improvements as well to de-clutter a bit; helping make it easier to find common tasks with updated action icons and menus. The simpler UI will make OWA much friendlier to the smaller screens of ever popular Netbooks. Users will also be able to share their calendars to anonymous viewers via the web, assuming you enable this functionality as the admin.
In RTM, we delivered Information Rights Management (IRM) capabilities in OWA, allowing you to read and compose IRM-protected messages just like you've been able to do with Outlook in the past. In SP1, you'll be able to add Web-Ready Document Viewing of IRM-protected documents as well and you'll be able to do so in Safari on a Mac as well as in Firefox or IE on a PC.
Finally, for those of you who have been dying to change the look and feel of OWA, we're bringing OWA themes back; adding several OWA themes so you can match the OWA experience to your particular style. Oh yeah, and yes, the reading pane can be placed on the bottom or the right side.
All The Mobility, All the Time
While Exchange Active Sync (EAS) has become the de facto standard for mobile communication, there is no resting on any laurels in Redmond here either. In SP1, mobile users will be treated with tether-free IRM support in EAS, enabling you to send and receive IRM-protected mail without having previously connected your device to Windows Mobile Device Center to provision IRM. Updated EAS capabilities also enable support for send-as, support for notifying the user if their device has been placed on block or quarantine by their admin, full implementation of conversation view including the ability to sync only unique parts of messages. Also, for those users who need help setting up their mobile device to access mail via POP/IMAP/SMTP, we've added information in OWA to provide them the server names for these services. For those of you who haven't already seen Michael Higashi's blog post from March, take a look to read about all the updated Outlook Mobile capabilities already delivered.
New Management UI
We know you all love PowerShell, as do we, but SP1 will bring several new management UI enhancements to enable a number of management tasks in the Exchange Management Console (EMC) and Exchange Control Panel (ECP). Here's a taste:
- Create/configure Retention Tags + Retention Policies in EMC
- Configure Transport Rules in ECP
- Configure Journal Rules in ECP
- Configure MailTips in ECP
- Provision and configure the Personal Archive in ECP
- Configure Litigation Hold in ECP & EMC
- Configure Allow/Block/Quarantine mobile device policies in ECP
- RBAC role management in ECP
- Configure Database Availability Group (DAG) IP Addresses and Alternate Witness Server in EMC
- Recursive public folder settings management (including permissions) in EMC
Source: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/04/07/454533.aspx