Setting up Timezone in Outlook Web App

Outlook Web App is the Online Version of the Outlook Client. This obviously runs in the browser of choice. New or fairly new users of Office 365 might receive notifications Informing them that the Timezone has not been set in Outlook. This notification comes in a regular basis and it might get annoying. So, before this gets Into your nerves, here is how one would set up their Timezone in the Outlook Web App. 🙂

The How?

You would have to go to this link https://outlook.office365.com/owa/?path=/options/regional and then select your Timezone and format.

Enable External Senders to send emails to an Office 365 Group

Office 365 Groups is an upgrade to the Distribution List in Exchange. The difference is now members can see what the past conversations were even if they joined the group much later.

In Amazon

Office 365 Groups by default do not allow external senders to send emails to the group. If you require external senders to email Into a group, you would have to enable it.

All you have to do is goto the Exchange Admin Center, click on “Recipients” from the Left Navigation and then select “Groups” from the top nav. Click on “Create a new Office 365 group.” Then you would see a page similar to the above screenshot. If you need to enable external senders to email to the group then make sure you enable the option highlighted.

Exchange Admin-Message Trace

The Message Trace in Exchange Admin Center allows one to check the status of messages that were sent to a specific recipient or sent from a specific sender. It shows whether messages were successfully delivered or not.

In order to get to Message Trace, one would have to select the mail flow option from the left navigation and then click on Message Trace from the top navigation.

The Figure above shows how the fields/criteria for Message Trace looks like.

One must note that it would also show emails delivered to the Junk Folder. In that case the status would show Filtered for Spam.

 

To Setup Forwarding from a distribution list to an Office 365 Group

There is not a straight forward process to forward email from a distribution list to an Office 365 Group. You would need to follow these steps in order to do that-

1. Create a Shared Mailbox.
2. Add the newly created Shared Mailbox as a member of the distribution list. Doing so would allow the Shared Mailbox to receive email from the distribution list.
3. Set up Email forwarding in the shared mailbox to forward email to the Office 365 Group. Now there is a point to be noted here, you would not be able to do this in the Exchange Online Admin Center. You would need to use Power Shell in Order to setup forwarding to an Office 365 Group.

Set-Mailbox shared -ForwardingSmtpAddress <EmailAddress> -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true

Connecting to Exchange Online using PowerShell

Exchange Online is part of the Office 365 Suite. The Exchange Online Management Center is used to manage and maintain the Exchange online mailboxes. Power Shell can also be used to accomplish these tasks. In order to connect to Exchange Online using Windows Power Shell, one would have to follow these steps-

Steps

1. Run Windows Power Shell as an Administrator.
2. Run this cmdlet Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
3. $UserCredential= Get-Credential
4. A Windows PowerShell dialog box would pop up, type in your Office 365 Credentials.
5. Then run this cmdlet $Session= New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri http://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
6. Import-PSSession $Session
7. Once you have completed your work, you can close the session by Remove-PSSession $Session

Disabling Outlook Web App for a User in Microsoft Exchange

Outlook Web App is the browser version of the Mailbox. One could open their email on a browser rather than downloading the Outlook Client on their Computer. This has got it’s pros and cons. It is normally enabled by default for an Organization. Nowadays many Organizations are considering disabling the Outlook Web App Feature. The reason for this is due to security concerns. When one tries to access Outlook using the Outlook Web App on a public computer, there is a potential risk of login credentials getting exposed.

In order to Disable the Outlook Web App feature for a user, it can be done in two ways-

1. Exchange Admin Center
2. Power Shell

In the Exchange Admin Center, one would have to follow these steps-

1. Click on Recipients
2. Activate the Mailboxes tab
3. Select the Mailbox which you would like to disable the Outlook Web App Feature.
4. Click on the Pencil Icon
5. A new Window would pop up. Now click on Mailbox Features.
6. Under Email Connectivity, click Disable.

This can be also done on the page where you would get the list of mailboxes. The Steps are as follows-

1. Launch the Exchange Admin Center.
2. Click on Recipients.
3. Activate the Mailbox Tab.
4. Select the Mailbox which you would like to disable the Outlook Web App Feature.
5. On the Right Pane under Email Connectivity, click Disable.

Power Shell can also be used to Disable a Mailbox on a Per- User Basis.

For Example if we want to disable Outlook Web App (OWA) for a Mailbox with the Primary Email Address as abc@gmail.com . The Power Shell Cmdlet for disabling OWA would be-

Set-CasMailbox  abc@gmail.com -OwaEnabled $False

 where

Cas in ‘CasMailbox’ stands for Client Access Server

The Name of the cmdlet is Set-CasMailbox. The reason we are applying the “Set” Action on the Mailbox is because we want to modify the existing properties of the Mailbox.

The Parameter applied to the cmdlet is ‘OWAEnabled’. It has two possible values- $true and $false. If the parameter is set to $True, it means that Outlook Web App is Enabled and if the parameter is set to $False, it means that Outlook Web App has been disabled.

The Advantages of using PowerShell over the GUI is that the action can be applied to multiple Mailboxes at once. For Example we can write a command to disable OWA for the Entire Organization. The Power Shell cmdlet would be-

Get-Mailbox  -ResultSize Unlimited -Filter {RecipientTypeDetails -eq “UserMailbox”} | Set-CasMailbox -OwaEnabled $False

Here we are using two cmdlets. The result of the First Cmdlet is given as an Input to the Second cmdlet. The first cmdlet ‘Get-Mailbox’ retrieves all the Mailboxes in the Organization. The Second cmdlet ‘Set-CasMailbox’ is used to Disable OWA for all the Mailboxes obtained from Get-Mailbox

Order of execution of Anti Malware Policies

In Microsoft Exchange one can create Anti Malware Policies. Anti Malware Policies are policies which prevent Malware from entering your organization. Malware are attachmentso in your email which may cause harm to your computer. 

One of the policies which could be set is  in case a Malware is detected on the email , all the attachments are deleted. Now there is an order in which Anti Malware Policies are executed on Microsoft Exchange. The Anti Malware Policies which were created the earliest are executed first and the ones created more recently are executed the last.

Converting a Regular Mailbox to a Shared Mailbox

Microsoft Exchange has different kinds of mailboxes. Depending on your requirement one mailbox can be chosen above the other. There may be a need sometimes to convert a Regular Mailbox to a Shared Mailbox.

A shared Mailbox is a mailbox where more than one user can have access to the Mailbox. All the users can view the content of the mailbox. And depending on the permissions set one can have either a single User or multiple users able to send mail from the mailbox.

In order to convert a Regular Mailbox to a Shared Mailbox follow these steps-

1. Goto the Exchange Administrator Center.
2. Click on Recipients and Activate the Mailbox tab.
3. Select the Mailbox which you would like to convert to a Shared Mailbox.
4. Navigate to the panel on the right and click Convert.

Within a few minutes the Mailbox would be converted to a Shared Mailbox.

Retention Hold

Retention Hold is a feature in Microsoft Exchange Online. Once Retention Hold is applied on a mailbox all the Retention Tags for the Retention Policy are not processed. This essentially means that Items will not expire or get deleted. The use or need of a Retention Policy is to manage emails in a way that the Inbox doesn’t become too full.

A Retention Policy consist of Retention Tags. And a Retention Tag can be used to tag default folders in a Mailbox such as Inbox, Sent Folder etc. Default Folders are folders which are created automatically once a Mailbox is created. So with Retention Tags we can specify an Action and a duration after which the Action would take place. For Example we could have a Retention Tag on the Inbox which says that Delete all Emails which are older than 2 years. In this case the Action is Delete Emails and the Duration is 2 years. The reason why it is named as “retention” is because Mails would be retained in the Inbox for a specified period of time after which an Action would take place either Deleting the Items or moving it to another folder or an Archive Mailbox.

This is a good way to manage your Mailbox. Following this Principle Emails would not accumulate and would periodically get deleted. In case you still need old emails, you could create an Archive Mailbox and create a Retention Action which specifies to Move Emails from the Inbox to the Archive Folder after a specific period of time. This can be done by using a Default Policy Tag.

Now, suppose you have some people who are on a vacation. It is more than likely they would not be checking their emails. Now what if there is a Retention Policy which Deletes Emails in the Inbox every 2 weeks? This means that the lifespan for an Email is only 2 weeks after which it would be deleted. So the people on vacation would actually be missing all the communication once they come back. Microsoft has a solution for this situation. There is something called as a Retention Hold.

Once a Retention Hold is applied on a Mailbox, the Retention Policies and the Policy Tags do not get processed. Due to this the Emails in the Inbox would not have an expiry date and would continue to remain in the Inbox even after 2 weeks. So if Employees are on Vacation, the Exchange Admin normally puts their Mailbox on a “Retention Hold”. All Emails are Retained so that the people can access them once they come back. And then the admin can remove the Retention Hold from the Mailbox.

 

 

Enabling Litigation Hold in Exchange Administration Center

A mailbox is placed on Litigation Hold in case the person is subject to Investigation. Once the mailbox is placed on Litigation Hold, the person would not be able to delete emails from his account. The quota for the recoverable items in a folder increases from 30 GB to 100 GB. The reason for this Increase is that the mailbox should be capable to hold all emails which includes deleted emails.

In order to enable this functionality one needs to be an Exchange Administrator. One would basically need to go onto Exchange Online Administration. And click on Recipients. Then activate the Mailbox tab. Search for the Mailbox you want to put on Litigation Hold and select it. The click on the pencil icon in order to edit the properties. This opens up a new window. Now click on Mailbox  Features and under Litigation press Enable. This would take you to another window. Here you can specify the duration that the Mailbox would be put on Litigation Hold. In case it is indefinite leave that field blank. And click Save, this would now enable Litigation Hold on the Mailbox. It would take approximately 60 minutes for it to be fully enabled.