Author: bretappleby

Optimising Modern Public Folder Access

In a large Public Folder deployment, the public folder mailboxes hosting content could end up being geographically dispersed. As there is now no concept of Public Folder replicas, client applications will always connect to the Public Folder Mailbox hosting the content requested.

However, before content can be returned to the client, the Public Folder hierarchy has to be fetched.  Outlook’s autodiscover process will return a random Public Folder mailbox for servicing the hierarchy.  This means that in a large, dispersed deployment a non-optimal mailbox may be selected.

In this scenario, a Mailbox User can be configured to always retrieve hierarchy information from a specific Public Folder Mailbox.  This can be done with the following PowerShell command:

Set-Mailbox <mailboxID> -DefaultPublicFolderMailbox <ChosenPFMailboxID>

Office 365 Pro Plus Shared Computer Activation

Shared computer activation can be enabled by editing the configuration XML file (part of the Office Deployment Tool) to include the following lines:

<Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="True" /> 
<Property Name="SharedComputerLicensing" Value="1" />

Any licensed user who subsequently uses the computer to run Office 365 Pro Plus will be able to (and will be granted a temporary token).  The temporary token does not count against the user’s 5 computer limit, and a user can have a ‘reasonable’ number of tokens on various shared computers.

For more details please see: Overview of shared computer activation for Office 365 ProPlus

 

Quarterly Exchange Updates (March 2017)

Microsoft have released the latest updates to Exchange. The updates are:

Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 5
Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 16
Exchange Server 2010 Update Rollup 17 for SP3

Updates include:

Exchange Server 2013 and 2016 now requires .Net 4.6.2

More details can be found on TechNet

Azure AD Connect Pass-through authentication

Azure AD Connect build 1.1.371.0 introduced Pass-through authentication (Preview).  Pass-through authentication can be used by many organisations as an alternative to AD-FS.  Jeff Guillet has published a very good article explaining how this technology works at ENow Software

Quarterly Exchange Updates (December 2016)

Microsoft have released the latest updates to Exchange. The updates are:

Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 4
Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 15

Updates include:

  • A New Outlook on the Web compose experience.
  • Support for .Net 4.6.2
  • Change to Pre-Requisites installed by Setup
    • Media Foundation now required instead of Desktop Experience on Windows Server 2012 and later.

More details can be found on TechNet

Quarterly Exchange Updates (September 2016)

Microsoft have released the latest updates to Exchange.  The updates are:

  • Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 3
  • Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 14

Updates include:

  • Windows 2016 support for Exchange 2016
  • Network bandwidth for DAG replication reduced

More details can be found on TechNet

Latest Exchange Updates (March 2016)

Microsoft have released the latest updates to Exchange.  The updates are:

  • Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 1
  • Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 12
  • Exchange Server 2010 SP3 Update Rollup 13
  • Exchange Server 2007 SP3 Update Rollup 19

Included in the updates are:

  • Updates OWA S/MIME control (now SHA-2 compliant)
  • Remote PowerShell now uses Mailbox Anchoring