Exchange Server

After returning from the Ignite conference, I have pages of notes to pour over. Here are some of the more interesting things i learned about Office 365, including who should be in my “inner loop” and “outer loop”, why Microsoft talks about Microsoft 365 when they really mean Office 365, and some Exchange Online cmdlets I had not heard about before.

Revealed at the Ignite conference, Microsoft plans to make some changes relatively soon to relieve the complexity and overhead of deploying and managing hybrid Exchange organizations. Microsoft also showed how to move mailboxes between tenants. It’s a small part of the tenant-to-tenant migration scenario, but it’s good to see it happening.

Everyone has a different experience at a massive conference like Microsoft Ignite. Here’s some personal notes from Day 1 of the 2017 event. As always, my conference days are a mixture of sessions, chats, and walking.

Microsoft has new tools to migrate public folders (the “cockroaches of Exchange”) to Office 365 Groups. Sounds good. The good news is that the tools work, even if they need a lot of manual oversight. ISVs offer tools to do the same job with more automation. The choice is yours!

Hardware vendors publish their solutions for Exchange through the Microsoft ESRP. The only thing is that some of the solutions are illogical and unworkable. In fact, some solutions are simply ridiculous. Sure, you could implement them – but at what cost and what level of reliability. But the solutions get your attention and that’s their purpose.

Google has made several improvements to G-Suite that make it easier for organizations that use both Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange Server to integrate and maintain functionality across the two platforms.

Surprisingly, Microsoft has never included a central method to manage user autosignatures within the cloud or on-premises versions of Exchange. Which means that you must let users manage their signatures, build your own tools, or deploy a commercial solution.

The IT world often focuses on big changes and announcements instead of looking at how small changes can really make a difference. One example is how Microsoft has changed what happens when users recover deleted items to allow items go back to where they came. It’s a great change, even if it is seven years overdue.

The U.S. patent office granted IBM a patent in January that seems to cover email auto-reply. The only problem is that auto-replies existed a long time before IBM claimed to have invented them. But it’s all good now.

Exchange 2007 reaches end of life on April 11. The importance of this version cannot be overstated, especially in terms of its contribution to Exchange Online and Office 365. But it is time to let go and move to a more modern platform.