Public Folder management in Exchange 2007

Network Management - Since Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 does not include many tools for supporting Public Folder management, it is common for administrators to install Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 to perform management tasks, such as management. Public Folder copies. This Exchange 2007 SP 1 version provides two Public Folder administration environments: Exchange Management Console and Exchange Management Shell.

Manage Public Folders using the Exchange Management Console

After installing SP1, you will not see any changes in the Exchange Management Console. But when you go to the Tools menu, you will see a link to the Public Folder Management Console as shown in Figure 1.



When the Public Folder Management Console opens, (initially not displaying any items) you will first have to use the Connect to Server link (Figure 2) to select the Exchange server you want to manage.

When connecting to the server, this Console only allows you to connect to Exchange servers containing the Public Folder storage area. Therefore, you will not be able to use Public Folder Management Console to create a Public Folder storage area, instead you will have to use E xchange Management Console or Exchange Management Shell to perform this task, then use Public Folder Management Console to create a Public Folder when a storage area is available.

Once connected to an Exchange server, Public Folder Management Console displays two containers:

1. Default public folders ( Default Public Folder)
2. System public folders (Public folder system)

The Public Folders you created will display in the Default public folders container. Selecting this container and all Public Folders below it will be displayed in the details pane. If you right-click on a Public Folder you can delete, update the content, activate mail or access the Public Folder property page.

When you right click on a Public Folder and select Properties, you will see the properties displayed with 3 tabs: General , Replication and Limits .

The General tab provides some size information and allows maintaining readings for each user for that Public Folder.

The Limits tab allows you to set limits on that Folder.

Tab Replication helps control Public Folder's responsiveness. As you can see in Figure 3, this tab allows control of Public Folder replication servers.

When you click on the Add button, Public Folder Management Console will list the Public Folder storage areas on the Exchange system, which simplifies the process of creating replicas because you only need to select the storage area you want to create a copy in.

By default, Public Folder data will be copied according to the storage area's creation schedule. To set a schedule to create your own copy, cancel the Use Public Folder Database Replication check box, and select the option to create a pre-installed copy or choose the Use Custom Schedule option from the drop-down list.

The last option in the Replication tab is Local Replica Age Limit . If a Public Folder is often used, the data in that directory can take up a lot of server disk space. To prevent this situation from happening, Exchange Management Console allows to create a data limit in Public Folder. The data sent before the deadline will be removed from Public Folder.

Note: The term only affects the copy on the server that has entered Public Folder Management Console. If you want to set a limit for every copy, you must use the Limits tab in the properties page.

Manage Public Folders using the Exchange Management Shell

Configure permissions for workstations

Configure workstation permissions in Exchange Management Console using the Add-PublicFolderClientPermission and Remove-PublicFolderClientPermission commands. The syntax of these two commands has the following list:

Add-PublicFolderClientPermission -Identity "name public folder" - username -AccessRights permission to be allocated -Server "server name"

Remove-PublicFolderClientPermission -Identity "name public folder" - user name –AccessRights permission to cancel –Server "server name"

In addition, Exchange Management Shell has several other parameters:

Identity : Specifies the name of the Public Folder affected by the command. This parameter always appears in the command syntax.

User : Specify the username that the command affects. You can enter the user name or alias, or enter the name in the user domain format.

-AccessRights : Specifies the assigned or canceled permissions of the specified user for a specific Public Folder. You can specify some other permissions like CreateItems or DeleteOwnedItems .

Server : Allows to specify the name of the server on which the requested action is executed.

There is also another optional variable named DomainController that allows the domain controller to be used when configuration changes are written to Active Directory. If you use the –DomainController variable in the command, you will have to specify the name of the Domain Controller in a fully qualified domain name (FQDN).

For example, to authorize User1 and create items in the Finance folder stored on Exch1 server you need to use the command with the following syntax:

Add-PublicFolderClientPermission –Identity "Finance" –User user1 –AccessRights CreateItems –Server "Exch1"

Decentralized administration

Exchange Management Shell can be used to perform some administrative tasks related to Exchange 2007 Public Folder management, including the ability to administer administration. This task needs to use the Add-PublicFolderAd administrativePermission command.

Basic syntax for decentralizing Public Folder administration is:

Add-PublicFolderAd administrativePermission –Identity "Public Folder name" - user name –AccessRights permission to allocate –Server "server wants to execute task"

The PublicFolderAd administrativePermission command can also be used to remove distributed permissions. The structure of this command then has the following command:

Add-PublicFolderAd administrativePermission –Identity "Public Folder name" - user name –AccessRights permission to remove –Server "server wants to execute task"

In addition, there are additional options and parameters for decentralizing Public Folder administration for Exchange 2007. While most parameters perform the same type of functionality as the PublicFolderClientPermission group, some parameters can be performed. Other functions. For example, the AccessRight parameter works as if used to grant workstations to the client, which takes values ​​related to administrative tasks instead of client access. The following values ​​can be assigned to the AccessRight parameter:

1. AdministerInformationStore
2. AllExtendedRights
   
3. AllStoreRights
   
4. ModifyPublicFolderACL
   
5. ModifyPublicFolderAdminACL
   
6. ModifyPublicFolderDeletedItemRetention
   
7. ModifyPublicFolderExpiry
   
8. ModifyPublicFolderQuotas
   
9. ModifyPublicFolderReplicaList
   
10. None
    
11. View InformationStore

In addition, Exchange Management Shell also contains some optional parameters for Public Folder. The first is the Deny parameter used to deny access to a specific Public Folder.

Parameters Inheritance Type helps control the Public Folder method of handling inheritance. You can install InheritanceType for All , Children , Decedents , None or SelfAndChildren .

The Owner parameter allows installation of Public Folder owners. You can enter a username using the username, alias or username according to the domain / user format.

The Instance parameter (not needed when specifying administrative rights) is quite useful in the case of calling the PublicFolderAd administrativePermission command from a script. This parameter allows to ignore the entire object to process this command.

When using the PublicFolderAd administrativePermission command, you can specify multiple administrative rights in a single command. For example, to grant User1 all storage rights and all permissions to the Finance folder on Exch1 servers, you can use the following command:

Add-PublicFolderAd administrativePermission –Identity "Finance" –User user1 –AccessRights AllStoreRights AllExtendedRights –Server "Exch1"

---

Activate mail for Public Folder

By activating mail for a Public Folder in Exchange 2007, you have assigned this folder a mail address that can send data to Public Folder by sending mail to the associated address. The basic command to activate mail for a Public Folder is Enable-MailPublicFolder .

Before using this command you need to confirm that Public Folder wants to activate mail that is not yet activated, using the Get-MailPublicFolder command. This command will display all Public Folder mail enabled. To check the details of a particular Folder, enter the Get-MailPublicFolder –Identity public_folder_name command, where public_folder_name is the current Public Folder name to check.

Once you have confirmed that Public Folder wants to activate mail yet to be activated, then use the Enable-MailPublicFolder command. This command is quite simple although there are many optional parameters associated with it, such as: AcceptMessagesOnly From, AcceptMessagesOnlyFromDLMembers, Alias, Contacts, DisplayName, DomainController, .

The only information that needs to be included in the Enable-MailPublicFolder command is the name of the Public Folder. For example, enable Public Folder mail with Marketing name, you only need to enter the following command:

Enable-MailPublicFolder –Identity "Marketing"

Note that there is no email address specified in this command. If you do not specify an email address, the Exchange server will create an address for you by combining the Public Folder name with the default SMTP domain. For example, if this command is run on an Exchange server with the primary SMTP domain is contoso.com , this Public Folder will be assigned an email address as marketing@contoso.com .

You can also assign an Exchange 2007 Public Folder email address using the PrimarySmtpAddress parameter for the Set-MailPublicFolder command. For example, to assign an email address advertising@contoso.com to Public Folder named Marketing, you need to enable mail for Public Folder with the MailPublicFolder command, then use the Set-MailPublicFolder switch to set the email address for this Folder. The full command has the following syntax:

Set-MailPublicFolder –Identity "Marketing" –PrimarySMTPAddress: Advertising@contoso.com