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

My coworkers first reaction was  hey, why are the sending limits so low, 5mb is nothing for an attachment size?

My first response was, we do not have 5mb attachment limits but have them to set to 30mb ……….

What to do?

I opened a trusty TS session to the CAS server that he was connected too and I knew that in the web.config file there is a setting that OWA uses to specify that max attachment size.

Note : By deafult the web.config file is located C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\ClientAccess\Owa

After I opened the web.config file with notepad I located the section for <httpRuntime maxRequestLength=”30000″ />

The <httpRuntime maxRequestLength=”30000″ /> is stored in Kb which mean that OWA defaults to 30MB attachment size limits so that could not be that users problem

Where are all the attachment size limits?

1. trasnport config

2. Send connectors

3. recieve connectors

4. users mailbox settings

Lets open EMS and take a look…………

The first command we are going to run is get-mailbox Brian.Tirch | fl max*

we can see that current the user does not have any limits set for sending or receiving.

Next we check our send connector which by default is configured for a 10mb limit so that could not be it……

that does not appear to be the issue ….

Lets check the receive connector which by default is set to 10mb

we can see the connectors on each server are set to 10mb and should not be causing the issue…with only one place left to check and that is the transport configuration.

Lets use the get-transportconfig | fl max* command to get our settings

by default in Exchange 2010 this should be set to 10mb but in this situation you can see that we are set to Unlimited just like on our users properties.

After checking all the settings there is nothing configured to force OWA to a 5mb attachment limit so now what do you do………. After reaching out to some friends in MS who ran into this before we found out that unlimited on the transport config does not really mean no limit

The problem here is the meaning of Unlimited…  Basically Unlimited means that the values for the MaxSendSize and MaxMessageSize are not specified.  It doesn’t mean any size message will be sent. 

There are limits for mailbox, system, and connectors.  The MaxSendSize for the system is set with set-TransportConfig.  The MaxMessageSize for the ReceiveConnector and SendConnector are set on those connectors.  When the attributes for a user, “submissionContLength” and “deliverContLength” are not set in AD (default setting) a query by “get-TransportConfig” will return that the size is also unlimited.  However, the exact meaning is that the MaxSendSize is that the setting is not specified.
In this case, the sending code will use its own way to decide what is the maximum allowed send size.  If the client is OWA, the default maximum allowed message size is 5MB when the MaxSendSize is not specified.  If the MaxSendSize returns a value, OWA will use that value up to the value set on the maxRequestLength in the web.config.

When a user accesses the  ECP directory https://mailurl.com/ecp or clicks the options button in the top right of OWA the below view is what the users will see.

one item I would like to point out, is the links “shortcuts to things you can do“. Most of these links take the user to other sections of the ECP however if you click “connect Outlook to this account” they will be directed to http://help.outlook.com .  In the current builds its unsupported to attempt to modify this information to point to internal faq’s

Accounts

The default page a users lands on is the Account sections, which by default will allow a user to update a number of their AD properties like Address, Phone Number, etc..

1. click edit at to bottom of the page

2. Modify attribute and click SAVE

Organize E-Mail

The next section Organize E-mail has 3 features that we can use 1. inbox rules, 2. automatic replies, and 3. delivery reports.

Inbox Rules

This is similar to the rules we had in Exchange 2007 however there are some new features available to us.

1. click New

2. Select create a new rule for arriving messages

3. On the menu select the drop down under the  section “When the message arrives, and:”

4. I am going to select apply to all messages

5. Under the “Do the following:” sections  I am going to pick “Redirect the message to”

6. When the address picker windows open I am going to select Jodie (if you want to redirect to an address not in the GAL just type the address in)

7. click OK

8.Click  More Options

9. Select move,copy, or delete and then Delete the message

10.  If you want to add an exceptions, select the Add Exception button

.

11. Select the exception that applies

12. Now that we have created the rule we want click the save button

Now we can see we have a rule that will redirect all messages to Jodie

Automatic Replies

The Automatic Replies section does not bring any new feature from Exchange 2007 but is the section that we use to set an Out Of Office message or for the old school exchange advocates OOF (Out of Facility)

The first section is set to internal away messages, this is determined by the Accepted Domains that are configured in your Exchange Org.

1. Click the button to Send automatic replies

2. Specify the date range you want to use

3. Enter the message

4. If you wish to set a message for external senders repeat steps 1.-3 for the External Senders section

5. Click the Save button

Delivery Reports

One of my personal favorite features is Delivery Reports which allows a users to perform self message tracking on messages to them or send by them. If enabled the user will also see that the message has been read even if a read reciept was not sent with the message.

* to enable the read tracking use Set-OrganizationConfig -ReadTrackingEnabled $true more can be found at   http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/06/25/451680.aspx

Unfortunately you must use the user picker feature and cannot just type in either  of the first two fields

Lets search for the 2 test messages that I sent out

1.  Click the radius button “Search for messages I have receieved from”

2.  When the address picker opens select the user (or just type in the address) and click OK

3. Click the Search button

4.  You can see I have 2 messages in the report, you can either double click the message or highlight it and click the details button

5. You can see in this report the date and time the message was submitted , that is was delivered and marked as read

Groups

A nice feature that was been made available is the ability for users to join groups that have been created. If you also choose to enable another feature users have the ability to create distribution groups from ECP as well.

1. Clikc the Join button

*I have created 3 groups Demo-Open, Demo-closed,Demo-ManagerApproval *

2.  A windows will open showing all the available groups that can be joined

3. Lets select the first group which is set to be closed and attempt to join it

You see we get a message stating we cannot join this group because its closed

4.  Lets select the next group which requires manager approval

You see we get a message back stating that we have to wait for the manager approval

As the group Owner you will get a message to approve the user

5.  Lets select the remain group which is open to everyone can join

You can see what receieved a message stating we have joined the group

6. Lets now leave the open group that we have joined, select the group Demo-OpenMember and click the Leave button

7. You are now presented with a validation that you want to leave the group, click Yes

Settings

Mail

The first section under the settings tab is Mail,  which is broken up into 5 subsections – 1. E-Mail Signature 2.Read Receipts 3.Reading Pane 4. Conversations 5.Message Format and 6. Message Options

                 Read Receipts

The Read Receipts section provide us 3 options on how to hande Read Receipts on messages

1. Ask me before snding a response <Default>

2. Always send a response

3. Never send a response

            Reading Pane

The next section is the Reading Pane section, which allows a user to configure how to handle a message that is viewed in the reading pane and provides us 3 options

1. Mark the item displayed in the Reading Pane as Read

2. Mark the item as Read when the selection changes <Default>

3.  Do not automatically mark the item as Read

  Conversations

By default in the OWA UI messages are placed into the new conversation view which does take a bit of getting user too.  This section controls how the conversation view is displayed

This section is broken up into 2 parts

1. Sort messages in the conversation Reading Pane in this order:

Choose how to sort the messages in List View in an expanded conversation.

E-Mail Signature

There is nothing really new in this section but provides a user a location to input an email signature, if you want this signature added to each out going message you need to select the check box at the bottom Automatically include my signature on messages I send

 Message Format

 The Message Format section allows us to modify the following

1. Always show Bcc

2. Always show From

If either of the above are selected when creating a new message you will see the from and BCC fields on each message

3.  Compose messages in this format allows us to set the default message type of HTML or Plaint Text

4. We can configure the default font type and size of messages 

6. Empty the Deleted Items folder when I sign out

Spelling

The spelling section allows us to configure a number of options for spell checking.  The ability to configure a custom dictionary is still not there however we do have the same options as Exchange 2007.

 Calendar

General

The General section allows us to configure two options

1. E-Mail name resolution

2. Accessibilty

Once common issue I have found over the years is a user enabling the accessibility options when they first logon to thier mailbx which will then force OWA Light.

Regional

Reginal settings allow a user to configure the following

1. Language

2. Date format

3. Time format

4.  Current time zone

Password

The password section allows a user to change thier current password however you must know the old password when using this feature.

S/MIME

The S/MIME button will only be avaiabled with IE7+ and is not a feature that is supposed with Firefox or Safari since this uses an active X control. When attempting to install this control you will need to have local Admin rights to the machine.

The S/MIME control allows a user to be able to digitally sign or encrypt a message

*Note : currently the control requires the user to have thier certificate published to the directory however there is no feature in the web UI that allows a user to publish thier certificate and there for an Outlook profile or automatic provisioning will be required to use send digitally signe or encrypted messages.

Phone

The phone section is broken down into 3 sub sections Voice Mail (only if your account has been UM enabled), Mobile Phones and Text Messaging.

Voice Mail

Exchange 2007 introduced a new server role called Unified Messaging which intergrates Exchange into systems like OCS and telephony devices.  The OWA web UI now allows a users the ablity to managed settings.

There are 4 sections that can be managed

1. Call Answering Rules

2. Outlook Voice Access

3. Notifications

4. Voice Mail Preview

Mobile Phones

Text Messaging

Another new feature of  Exchange 2010 is the ability to use text messages to send notification to your phone. If you are already using a phone like Windows Mobile, Iphone, Palm Pre etc.. that can sync with Exchange this is most likely not a feature that you would be using however for those users who do not have a phone that is capable of syncing with the system this feature provides you notification for email, calendar, and voicemail.  By default this feature is disabled.

Enabling Notifications

Click “Turn on Notifications”

Next we will be ask to select our country and cell phone provider

You may note if you carrier is not listed there is a link that will take you to the following information page http://help.outlook.com/en-us/beta/ms.exch.ecp.configureregionandmobileoperator.aspx?r=ia&l=0

Click Next

Now you are ask to input your cell phone number

Click Next

A text message will now be sent to your cell phone with a  pin code that will be used to complete the next section

Input the pin that was sent to you phone and click Finish

Once this process has been completed you will find a new rule that has been created to send copies of information to your phone.

Block or Allow

 Exchange provides users with a simple interface to allow user to configure junk filters for thier mailbox.

The first section that we come across is the ability to turn off or on the junk mail filtering

By enabling this feature you  allow the system to move messages into our junk email folder that meet your configuration. Please note that the system can be configured to move messages to the junk folder as well.

Under the Safe Senders and Recipients section we can add users to our safe list to these users to not get placed into our junk mail foler

We also have the option of trusting anyone in our contact list

After the allow section we find the Blcoked Senders information. If a user is added to this section it will not block email from them but tag this message to be listed as junk and move the message to the junk folder.

We can also specify to that all email is considered junk unless the users is explicity listed in our safe list.

If you attempt to add a user that is apart of  your email organization you will receive an error stating you cannot perform this action

One of the major product enhancements is the ability to share ones calendar from the new OWA UI and easily consume a calendar in a side by side view.

 Open Shared Calendar

As we know in the past you could open a shared calendar with a url string however  there is a nice easy to use user interface now the provides simple access to another shared calendar.

Share Calendar

One of the exciting scenarios about this feature is if you have enabled federation calendaring you will be able to share your calendar with users on your mail system or other users who are located on Exchange 2010.

1. From the Calendar page select – Share – Share Calendar-Calendar

2. A new message page appears and you can select from 3 options to share your calendar

 A. Free/Busy info  B. Free/Busy with Subject and Location and C. All information

I have selected Free/Busy with Subject and Location

3. You can see that Jodie now gets an email with sharing invite

4. Jodie then clicks the Add this calendar  

5. Now when we go to Jodies calendar there in side by side view she can see Brian’s calendar

Change Permission on calendar

Another new feautre allows a users to remove permission(s) from thier calendar

1. From the Calendar page select – Share – Change Sharing Permissions -Calendar

2. In this view you can see who has what permission to the calendar and delete them if you choose

side by side view

Another nice feature that we have had in Outlook since 2007 is the ability to have side by side calendar views, this feature has now been exposed to the OWA UI allowing users to view shared calendars togethor.

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
   

    

   
   

 Another new feature to Exchange 2010 provides users the ability to manage groups from the web UI, if you are a group owner you can configure settings on the group and add members. However, if you do not own the group you have the ability to attempt to join the group. The manager configures the settings to allow one of the following

1. Open membership

2. Approval required

3. Closed

 I have created a group called Exchange2010_Discussion  for this demo 

The following steps out line how to join a group

 Click options in the top right corner

1. Click Groups from the menu 
2. Click the join button to bring up a list of groups that are available

   

3. Select Exchange2010_Discussion
4. Click the JOIN button
5. You will receive an informational message stating you have successfully joined the group

   

6. If you no longer want to be a part of the group ,highlight the group you want to exit and click the LEAVE button

    

7. You will receive a warning stating you are about to leave, select YES or NO 

   

8. Click closed on the successful group exit