There are two common password scenarios that occur:

1. When a users password has expired and they attempt to logon to OWA the user fails to logon and receive a generic error message.

2. When a new user account is created and an administrator wants to force the user to change their password at next logon, however the user will not be able to logon to OWA

Exchange 2007 SP3 and Exchange 2010 SP1 have remedied the two issues above by creating a new module in IIS that detects a user has an expired password or the user account is set to “user must change password at next logon”. 

You may ask what do I need to do?

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607232(EXCHG.80).aspx

1. Log on to the Exchange server that is running the CAS role by using an account that has local administrator rights

2. Start Registry Editor, and then locate the following registry subkey:

3. HLKM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchange OWA

4. Create the following DWORD value if it does not already exist:

5. Value name: ChangeExpiredPasswordEnabledValue type: REG_DWORDValue data: 1

6. Exit Registry Editor

7.  From a command window perform an IISReset

Let walk through some tests:

1. Create a new user called PwdTest

a. Open EMC

b.  Expand Recipient Configuration and select Mailbox

c. From the actions pane select New Mailbox

d. On the new Mailbox wizard select “User Mailbox” and click Next

e. Select New User and click Next

f.  Input PwdTest for the userId information and validate the check box “User must change password at next logon”

g. On the Mailbox Settings page leave the default and click Next

h. On the Archive Settings check the radius button “don’t create an archive” and click Next

i. On the New Mailbox page click New

j.  Click Finish to complete the mailbox creation

2. Now that we have created our new mailbox and have the account set to force a password change for our user we need to attempt to logon to OWA

a.  Open the OWA logon Page and attempt to logon with our new user PwdTest

b.  Notice we receive a generic password error message

3.  As we see the logon fails until we modify the Registry of our CAS server

a. Start the Registry editor : Start – Run –RegEdit
b. Expand to  HLKM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchange OWA

c. Create the following DWORD Value: ChangeExpiredPasswordEnabled

d.  Set the value to 1

e. Exit Registry Editor

f.  From a command window perform an IISReset

4.  Now that we have created the appropriate Registry key we can attempt to logon to OWA again

a.  Open the OWA logon page and attempt to logon with the PwdTest user

b. We are now presented a change password form

c. After completing the form you will receive and successful change message

d. You are now presented the OWA logon form again. Attempt to logon with the newly created password

e. you now have a successful OWA logon

Today in Exchange 2010 when a user logs onto OWA and selects the options button they are taken into what is now called the Exchange Control Panel or ECP which has added some functionality for users.  One problem that I have found is that Microsoft has provided users with some nice links telling them how to configure their mobile device or Outlook anywhere but those links directt users to Outlook.Com configuration which tends to generate support calls.

Those links are controlled by a file located here  C:\Exchange\ClientAccess\ecp\PersonalSettings\QuickLinks.ascx , this file can be copied and modified with company faq settings to direct users to the appropriate place. I must note that every RollUp applied or Service Pack will overwrite your custome file and you must recopy the file back to this directory.  The 2nd point I need to make is that every build of Exchange (after rollup or service pack) you need to copy the new file and modify that file because Microsoft could have made changes in security or configuration, reusing the same old file could cause issues.  You will also have to copy this file to each CAS server.

Lets logon to OWA and take a look at the default settings:

You can see when I hover over Connect  Outlook to this account the url is set to http://help.Outlook.com

Close OWA

1. On your CAS server browse to the following file C:\Exchange\ClientAccess\ecp\PersonalSettings\QuickLinks.ascx copy this file to your desktop so we can edit it

2.  Open the QuickLinks file with Notepad

3.  I have highlighted the section we are going to work on which is the Mobile section

4.  We are going to remove this line <div><asp:Literal ID=”ltlMobileDevices” runat=”server” Text=”<%$ Strings:QLPushEmail %>” /></div>

5.  Insert and href like this : <ecp:<P><A HREF=http://www.exchange-genie.com target=”_blank”> Configure your mobile device with Active Sync for Beta Mail </A></P>

6. Save our file

7. Rename the origianl file to .old or some other extension

8. copy and paste our new file into the following location C:\Exchange\ClientAccess\ecp\PersonalSettings\QuickLinks.ascx

9. Logon to OWA into ECP

10. Hover over the Mobile link and you will see the url now points to http://exchange-genie.com

The only 2 items you should modify in this file are related to Mobile and Outlook connections

Exchange 2010 builds upon Exchange 2007 yet has made significant changes to the product that I believe makes this the best version of Exchange that has been built to date.  Now that Microsoft and many other organiztions have moved to the cloude concept I believe this to be one of the large drivers for many changes to the web interface for Exchange 2010. As the overall look an feel is similar to previous version of OWA the features and fucntioanlity that can be presented to the user has increased expodentialy with some saying you could use OWA as a full time mail client. I am not quite sure of that statment however I will let each user make that determination for themself.

One feature that I love is that you can now get premium OWA  with more browsers than just IE, the minimum version of IE has increased to 7 however with the addition of Safria on Mac and Firefox 3.X achieving 99% feature partity with only the exception of S/MIME this opens up to multiple platforms. If you are a chrome fan you will still be forced into OWA light. You would not believe how many companies are still using IE6 as a baseline browser which will force you to OWA Light.

Premium OWA with Firefox 3.X

One of my favorite items is that you now have the option to use IE7 or Firefox to view OWA premium. In Exchange 2007 you only receieve the light version of OWA when using firefox but now you can see from the image below that is not the case.

Owa Light

Owa premium

As you can see I am running Firefox 3.5 and I receieve OWA premium

Conversation views

The new default view in OWA 2010 is converstion view, this view groups messages togethor in an attemp to provide an easier message grouping. One of the nice features of this the view will expose the entire flow of the conversation, as user s will be able to see messages in their sents items as part of that conversation.

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Views

In the current Beta builds and RTM plans the bottom preview window view will not be available, you will only see a right preview window or none.  Since I typically only use the right reading pane this is ok for me but have found a number of users prefer the bottom reading pane.

Persistant inbox opening

This feature is similar to Outlook in which you can right click the mailbox and choose to open another users inbox.  Even after logging of OWA the next logon this connected inbox will stay resident. I would say the only limitation here is you can only see the inbox at this time so if there are any subfolder you will not be able to see them in this view and will need to use the open other users mailbox feature.

As you can see in the image below I have opend an additional inbox called support

Action Menu

When using the right reading pane a new button will appear called the action menu, when selecting this menu item a user will be presented with a number of actions they can perfrom on the message

The actions presented are 1. Reply 2. Reply All 3. Forward 4. Chat 5. Forward as Attachment 6. mark as read 7. create rule 8. junk email 9. delet 10. ignore conversation 11. move to folder 12. copy to folder 13. open delivery report.

As you can see there are a number of new features on the action menu that was not available in Exchange 2007 : 1. Chat 2. Forward as Attachment 3. Ignore Conversation and 4. Delivery Report

I will talk about those features later in this article.

Ignore Conversation

If you have ever been apart of the a large distrobution list or email chain that you did not need to be apart of this feature can be one of your favorites.  If you select the ignore conversation a rule is created in your mailbox to automatically delete any message related to this conversation. 

Forward as attachment

You can finaly choose to forward a message as an attachment with OWA 2010

Open Delivery report

One of the newer features that can assist users is the delivery report. This feature can allow users to validate that an email they sent or received has actually left the system, been delivered, or the message has been read.  http://www.exchange-genie.com/2009/06/user-delivery-reports-and-exchange-2010/

 IM Intergration

Exchange 2010 has been designed to work with a number of IM products and to intergrate with them allow for third parties to hook into OWA. If you are running Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 you will be able to take advantage of the IM and prescence in OWA.

If you have federations with your IM system your OWA users will be able to chat with those users as well.

Archive Mailbox

Exchange 2010 has introduced an archive mailbox feature, at this time I am not going to speak to much detail to this but to let you know that if an archive is created users will be able to access that data in the OWA expierence

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Help About

This item may be one of the most under under used and some time conterversial. In the top right on the inbox there is a question mark icon with a drop down menu.  When the drop down is selected if a users chooses about a window will open and display all the users connction options. This feature is built to assist Admins with knowing what systems the user is connected too

Quite often users send emails and do not know what happens after they click the send button, did the message queue on the server, and was the message delivered.

Exchange 2010 has provided users the ability to view delivery reports and track what has happened to their messages.

1. Once you have logged onto the web UI Select Options in the top right
   

    

   
   

    

    

    

2. From the Exchange Control Panel (ECP) menu select ORGANIZE E-MAIL
   

   
   

    

    

    

3. Select Delivery Reports from the menu
   

   
   

    

    

    

    

4. You currently have 3 fields the can receive input
   

   
   

    

    

5. For this example I am putting TEST in the search subject line
   

   
   

    

6. Click the SEARCH button or hit enter
   

   
   

    

    

    

    

    

7. If the search returns data select the message and click DELIVERY REPORT
   

   
   

    

    

    

8. The report shows the message was submitted and delivered
   

    

   
   

I have configured file share access from OWA and found it works well for small files but any large files seem to timeout making access to them unusable.

So how can you configure this feature?

To enable remote file share access there are a number of locations which configuration needs to be made.

1. Open EMC (or EMS) Server Configuration and select CAS

2. On the OWA virtual directory right click and select properties

There are 2 locations we can edit for these setting Public/Private computer file access however I am going to just focus on Private as we most likely do not want to allow this from computers that select the public option.

3. Select the Private Computer file access

4. If not checked, check the box Windows File Shares

5. Click Apply
6. Select the Remote File Server Tab

Lets take a look the option that are available under this tab

The first option is to specify a block list, this will set a explicit deny so that user cannot access these servers via the web interface and will take precidence over the allow list.

Next we have our allow list which specifies the servers which users can access

The Unknown Server option specifies how any server that is not explicity on the block or allow list should be handled

The domain suffix lists specifies what name space will be treated as internal and allowed to be accesses.

Example: Domain = Domain.local

select configure and input domain.local

**Please note this configuration is per OWA Virtual Directory **

Now its time for the user to configure thier end……

1. Logon to OWA
2. Select Documentation from the menu

3. Click “Open Location”

4. Input the UNC Path too the file share you want to access

**The Windows SharePoint Services and Windows file share integration feature is available only in the Exchange 2007 Outlook Web Access Premium client and when either Basic or forms-based authentication is used.***
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123700(EXCHG.80).aspx