The New Features in Exchange 2010 SP2

-Authored by Achinta Chatterjee (link to Linkedin Profile)

Introduction

The following are the key features and functionality that have been included in Exchange 2010 SP2.

1. Hybrid Deployment

2. GAL Segregation using Address Book Policies

3. Cross-Site Silent Redirection for Outlook Web App

4. Mini Version of Outlook Web App

5. Mailbox Replication Service Improvements

6. Disable Auto Mapping to Multiple Mailbox

7. Introduces new Multi-Valued Custom Attributes

8. Litigation Hold Mailbox improvements

Below are the details of each of these new features and how you can benefit from these features by implementing them in your organization.

1. Hybrid Deployment

A hybrid deployment offers organizations the ability to extend the feature-rich experience and administrative control they have with their existing on-premises Microsoft Exchange organization to the cloud. A hybrid deployment provides the seamless look and feel of a single Exchange organization between an on-premises organization and a cloud-based organization. In addition, a hybrid deployment can serve as an intermediate step to moving completely to a cloud-based Exchange organization.

A hybrid deployment enables the following features:

- Mail routing between on-premises and cloud-based organizations.

- Mail routing with a shared domain namespace. For example, both on-premises and cloud-based organizations use the @abc.com SMTP domain.

- A unified global address list, also called a “shared address book”.

- Free/busy and calendar sharing between on-premises and cloud-based organizations.

- Centralized control of mail flow. The on-premises organization can control mail flow for the on-premises and cloud-based organizations.

- A single Outlook Web App URL for both the on-premises and cloud-based organizations.

- The ability to move existing on-premises mailboxes to the cloud-based organization.

- Centralized mailbox management using the on-premises Exchange Management Console.

- Message tracking, MailTips, and multi-mailbox search between on-premises and cloud-based organizations.

Exchange 2010 SP2 introduces the Hybrid Configuration Wizard which provides with a streamlined process to configure a hybrid deployment between on-premises and Office 365 Exchange organizations. Hybrid deployments provide the seamless look and feel of a single Exchange organization and offer administrators the ability to extend the feature-rich experience and administrative control of an on-premises organization to the cloud.

2. GAL Segregation using Address Book Policies

This feature was already available in Exchange 2007 and is very useful for hosting companies. But with Exchange 2010 this feature was not available. Now with Exchange 2010 SP2 this very useful feature is available and will greatly benefit organizations. The benefit of this feature is that you can have a single GAL with multiple organizations inside and each organization will not be able to see the addresses of the other hosted on the same server.

Exchange 2010 SP2 introduces the address book policy object which can be assigned to a mailbox user. The ABP determines the global address list (GAL), offline address book (OAB), room list, and address lists that are visible to the mailbox user that is assigned the policy. Address book policies provide a simpler mechanism to accomplish GAL separation for the on- premises organization that needs to run disparate GALs.

Global address list (GAL) segmentation (also known as GAL segregation) is the process whereby administrators can segment users into specific groups to provide customized views of their organization’s GAL. In Exchange Server 2007 and earlier, segmenting the GAL was complicated, requiring you to use either a Query Base DN (which acted as a root for directory searches) or access control lists (ACLs) to allow or deny access to each address list.

To simplify the process, Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 (SP2) introduces address book policies (ABPs). When creating an ABP, you assign a GAL, an offline address book (OAB), a room list, and one or more address lists to the policy. You can then assign the ABP to mailbox users, providing them with access to a customized GAL in Outlook and Outlook Web App. The goal is to provide a simpler mechanism to accomplish GAL segmentation for on-premises organizations that require multiple GALs.

3. Cross-Site Silent Redirection for Outlook Web App

In a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 organization, a Client Access server can act as a proxy for other Client Access servers within the organization. This is useful when multiple Client Access servers are present in different Active Directory sites in an organization and at least one of those sites isn’t exposed to the Internet.

A Client Access server can also perform redirection for Microsoft Office Outlook Web App URLs and for Exchange ActiveSync devices. Redirection is useful when a user connects to a Client Access server that isn’t in their local Active Directory site or if a mailbox has moved between Active Directory sites. It’s also useful if the user should be using a better URL, for example, one that’s closer to the Active Directory site their mailbox resides in.

Although the Client Access server’s response can vary by protocol, when a Client Access server receives a request for a user whose mailbox is in an Active Directory site other than the one the Client Access server belongs to, it looks for the presence of an ExternalURL property on the relevant virtual directory on a Client Access server that’s in the same Active Directory site as the user’s mailbox. If the ExternalURL property exists, and the client type supports redirection (for example, Outlook Web App or Exchange ActiveSync), the Client Access server will issue a redirect to that client. If there’s no ExternalURL property present, or if the client type doesn’t support redirection (for example, POP3 or IMAP4), the Client Access server will try to proxy the connection to the target Active Directory site.

With Exchange 2010 SP2, you can enable a silent redirection when a Client Access server receives a client request that is better serviced by a Client Access server located in another Active Directory site. This silent redirection can also provide a single sign-on experience when forms-based authentication is enabled on each Client Access server.

4. Mini Version of Outlook Web App

The mini version of Outlook Web App is a lightweight browser-based client, similar to the Outlook Mobile Access client in Exchange 2003. It provides access from simple HTML-compatible browsers that support cookies and it’s designed to be used on a mobile operating system.

The mini version of Outlook Web App provides users with the following basic functionality:

- Access to e-mail, calendar, contacts, tasks and the global address list.

- Access to e-mail subfolders.

- Compose, reply to, and forward e-mail messages.

- Create and edit calendar, contact, and task items.

- Handle meeting requests.

- Set the time zone and automatic reply messages.

The mini version of Outlook Web App is based on Outlook Web App architecture. Because it’s an application within Outlook Web App, it uses all the segmentation flags that exist in Outlook Web App.

In order to be compatible with the widest array of mobile phone browsers, the mini version of Outlook Web App is designed to use Basic authentication. Basic authentication allows the credentials to be exchanged within the header of the HTTP request. The request should always be sent using a secure socket layer (SSL) encrypted channel. Different browsers handle passing credential information differently. Some request that the user type the information for each new session. Others only request the information if it has changed.

5. Mailbox Replication Service Improvements

The Mailbox Replication Proxy (MRSProxy) service is installed on every Exchange 2010 Client Access server. MRSProxy helps to facilitate cross-forest move requests and runs on the remote forest’s Exchange 2010 Client Access server. However, by default, MRSProxy is disabled.

In Exchange 2010 SP1, if you wanted to move mailboxes from on-premises to xxx.com or to another forest, you had to enable MRSProxy on the remote Client Access server. To do this, you had to manually configure the web.config file on every Client Access server. In Exchange 2010 SP2, two parameters have been added to the New-WebServicesVirtualDirectory and Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory cmdlets so that you don’t have to perform the manual configuration: MRSProxyEnabled and MaxMRSProxyConnections

6. Disable Auto Mapping to Multiple Mailbox

In Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Exchange introduced a feature that allows Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 clients to automatically map to any mailbox to which a user has Full Access permissions. If a user is granted Full Access permissions to another user’s mailbox or to a shared mailbox, Outlook automatically loads all mailboxes to which the user has full access.

To accomplish this, Exchange populates the msExchDelegateListLink attribute in Active Directory to locate mailboxes for which the user has Full Access permission, and then provides this information to the Autodiscover service. Autodiscover then populates the AlternateMailbox attribute with the information necessary for Outlook to open the full access mailboxes. If the user has Full Access permissions to several mailboxes, performance issues may occur when starting Outlook. In Exchange 2010 SP1, there was no way to turn this feature off. However, in Exchange 2010 SP2, you can use the Shell to disable this feature.

Below is an example grants the user Raymond Lim full access permission to Mark Tan’s mailbox and disables the auto-mapping feature.

Add-MailboxPermission -Identity MTan -User ‘Raymond Lim’ -AccessRight FullAccess -InheritanceType All -Automapping $false

7. Introduces new Multi-Valued Custom Attributes

Exchange 2010 SP2 introduces 5 new multi-value custom attributes that the administrator can use to store additional information for mail recipient objects. The ExtensionCustomAttribute1 to ExtensionCustomAttribute5 parameters can each hold up to 1300 values. The administrator can now specify multiple values as a comma-delimited list. The following cmdlets support these new parameters:

i. Set-DistributionGroup

ii. Set-DynamicDistributionGroup

iii. Set-Mailbox

iv. Set-MailContact

v. Set-MailPublicFolder

vi. Set-RemoteMailbox

8. Litigation Hold Mailbox improvements

In Exchange 2010 SP2, the administrator can’t disable or remove a mailbox that has been placed on litigation hold. To bypass this restriction, you must either remove litigation hold from the mailbox, or use the new IgnoreLegalHold switch parameter when removing or disabling the mailbox. The IgnoreLegalHold parameter has been added to the following cmdlets:

i. Disable-Mailbox

ii. Remove-Mailbox

iii. Disable-RemoteMailbox

iv. Remove-RemoteMailbox

v. Disable-MailUser

vi. Remove-MailUser

Conclusion

The above document provides the key new features that have been introduced in Exchange 2010 SP2. In addition to the features described in this topic, Exchange 2010 SP2 also includes fixes that address issues identified since the release of Exchange 2010 SP1 and that has been cumulatively fixed from Update Rollup 1 to 6.